Liebeck V. Mcdonald's Case Study

Before digging deeper in to the Liebeck v. McDonald’s case, I had never particularly heard about it except the fact that a woman had sued McDonald’s after spilling her coffee on herself. When I did hear someone talking about the case, it always seemed that people were making light of the injury or saw the case as being a matter of greed. However, after looking deeper into the case, I have a better understanding of the issue and the legal concepts behind it. The case took place in New Mexico in 1994 when an elderly woman, Stella Liebeck, spilt coffee on herself while going to the McDonald’s drive through. The spill caused her to have 3rd degree burns on about 16% of her body and thus was in the hospital for a little over a week. She needed skin grafting and …show more content…
This allows the plaintiff to receive damages, however, she only receives the percentage of the damages caused by the defendant (Brodnick, 2017, p. 105). The court had decided that McDonalds was responsible for around 80% of the injury and the Liebeck was responsible for around 20%. Initially, the jury awarded $200,000 of compensatory damages which after Liebeck’s 20% of negligence was removed meant $160,000 (“Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants,” 2017). Compensatory damages is an award given that will make up for money lost because of the injury(Brodnick, 2017, p. 105). The jury also awarded the plaintiff $2.7 million in punitive damages, which the judge then reduced to around $480,000 (“Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants,” 2017). Punitive damages are awarded to the plaintiff to punish the wrong doer for their actions (Brodnik, 2017, p.103). Both parties decided to appeal the court’s decision but settled before the appeal could be finished. Their settlement was an unknown amount but said to be around $600,000 (“Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants,”