Thank you. Thank you. All right. Hey, guys. I think that I have everybody in from the waiting room now.
I think we've got eight, nine people that are now here today. I was hoping that we would have at least 10. There's number 10 right right there. So we'll go ahead and let everybody in the rules kind of for this zoom session. You are more than welcome. to leave your video on or off.
That's certainly up to you. If you have a question or you need to make a comment, you're welcome to do so. The mute, your microphone should be muted as you enter, or if it's not, if you would please go ahead and mute it just so that there's no background noises. If I mute your microphone myself, And it doesn't mean anything.
It's just trying to keep the background noises eliminated so that we can all hear each other just fine. And if you need to talk, you can unmute it while you talk. So that's perfectly fine as well. Hopefully, I've got a couple of videos that I want to show you with today's Zoom class as well. and I'm hoping that this will go fine in the event.
that you have to drop off sometime during the session today. The entire Zoom class is being recorded and will be on the Alabama Tax Law YouTube channel. I'll provide a link for that on the announcement page.
In addition, any other Zoom class that we have, and I'm staggering the times just so I'm not making it inconvenient for everyone. mute everybody there. I'm staggering the time so that it's not going to be inconvenient for the same people over and over. If you can make these, I think it's beneficial to make it live, but if not, you're perfectly fine in watching it on a recorded basis on that YouTube channel as well.
Okay, let's go ahead and get started. Today we're going to talk about the Stolabek versus McDonald's case. And some of you may have heard of this case and some of you may not. It's been quite a number of years ago now. When it first came out, it was a big joke for a lot of people.
The national news hit it. The newspaper stories were written about this dumb lady that bought a cup of coffee from McDonald's. It was a little bit hot. She spilled it and she won millions of dollars when she sued them as a result.
There are some elements of the media reports that were accurate and many that were not accurate. And so today what I want to do is to dissect this case and talk about what elements were accurate, what were not accurate, but even more to kind of talk about how the lawsuit progressed and to sort of integrate you to the legal process and why the result was as the result was. First of all, let me hopefully by now all of you have read.
the handout material that I have on Blackboard. If you have not, you're going to be a little bit at a disadvantage today because we're going to talk about some of the things that were involved in the McDonald's case that it would be helpful if you have already read it. But if not, it is in the Blackboard under the PowerPoint section of the Blackboard under the exam one folder about the McDonald's coffee cup case.
Um, the, uh, there's a good introductory video that I want to share with you. And I'm going to go ahead and, uh, let you see that right now. Hopefully, uh, you guys will, will tell me if it, uh, if it works the way it needs to. And I'm going to go ahead and ask you, do you see my Adam ruins? everything if any if somebody can raise their hand or uh use the raise hand thing to let me know that they see this good thank you thank you griffin thank you thank you uh whoever i heard perfect thank you very much okay uh sit back and enjoy this is a little five minute five and a half minute video and we'll talk about it in a minute We can't hear the video.
Can't hear the video? Okay. People are having a hard time hearing it. Let me stop it for a second. You said you're having a hard time hearing it.
Are you hearing it a little bit, but just not much? Like it sounds very distorted, and three people in the chat said they can't hear it. Okay.
All right. Well, then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to give you the links to this. I'm not sure.
I've got the volume set the entire, as high as it goes. And as far as I know, I may just need to figure out how to do that in the future. So for right now, what I'll do is I'll just give you the links to it and we'll just talk about it.
But, okay. The truth about the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. First of all, let me show you this. You don't really need to hear this. That's boiling water from my personal microwave and my trusty thermometer gun.
at 185 degrees 190 okay um that's the temperature that the mcdonald's coffee was served to miss lebec it literally was boiling in my microwave oven i pulled it out of the microwave It cooled for, what, two seconds, and I began to check the temperature with my thermometer gun. Now, let me ask you this question. How many of us would intentionally take a cup of boiling liquid, whatever that may be, out of a microwave, sit it down for a second, and then drink it, pour it down our throat? No. And those.
Wouldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah, Jada says she wouldn't do that. If any of us would do that, I'm probably going to see you in the fall retaking the class.
I don't think that would be a very smart thing to do intentionally. That's the temperature that the McDonald's coffee was being served at. So just to give you an idea that, you know, you talk about it being hot and that's one thing, but this was being.
served at a temperature that's I think beyond hot and I'm gonna I've got something else that I'm gonna show you at the end of the class today another little video again probably without sound and I apologize for that but we'll we'll talk about you know exactly what temperatures other coffee is being served at let me go ahead and take you off the uh to share okay we should be uh yeah i can't hear it we really can't i can't hear the video okay uh that's what everybody's saying well i'm sorry for uh for that but okay um mcdonald's coffee cup case the um she went to purchase some coffee at mcdonald's And a lot of the reports showed that she was driving her car. She was not driving her car. She was riding in the car.
She was a passenger. Moreover, the car was not moving. Now, the car was stationary, and she was in the car, and she did something really, really dumb. She did not drink her coffee black. Those of us who are coffee drinkers, how many of us drink our coffee with cream and sugar in it?
Me. Yeah, that's a mistake, guys. You're supposed to drink coffee black.
Look at raising their hands. You don't drink coffee with cream and sugar. You drink it black like I do. Why not? You know, the funny thing is that I began.
trying to drink coffee when I was in high school and I just couldn't didn't like it couldn't stand it i put more and more sugar in it and creamer and all this and i just i gave up and one day i just decided you know i think i'll just drink it without putting anything in it and i was like this isn't that bad and uh and so ever since then for a number of years more than i'm going to admit to i've i have uh my coffee and a drink black but so Ms. Lebec did as some of you do and she made the mistake of not drinking it black. She was going to put cream and sugar in her coffee and she stuck it between her knees. She pulled the cup off the top off the cup and when she did she spilled it into her lap.
Now coffee's hot. We know that coffee is hot. And if I spill coffee on myself from my home coffee maker, I'm probably going to say some words that my mama told me never to say.
And I'm going to be irritated and I'm going to maybe if I have time, change clothes. But that's all. I'm not going to go to the hospital. I'm not going to need medical attention.
I'm not going to require skin graft surgery or physical therapy or any of the kind of things that occurred to Ms. Levesque. When she spilled the coffee, it was her fault and her fault alone. And that's one thing that's going to be important in this class is that we have to recognize that sometimes bad things happen, but we as a society allocate responsibility. for those bad things.
It doesn't mean necessarily that it's somebody else's fault just because something bad happened. But by the same token, we're allocating responsibility. It means that sometimes there can be more than one party who is responsible for an injury that occurred. In the Lebec case, we had Ms. Lebec of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was 100% respect responsible for spilling your coffee now interestingly if you have um netflix or amazon prime it's on amazon prime there is a documentary called hot coffee and uh it's it's not a great documentary but there's certain parts of it that are interesting it's about an hour long and a good portion of it focuses on this case and in that documentary it says that the coffee cup itself was different in 1992 than it is today, and that it sort of disintegrated into itself. It almost like imploded as she was taking the top off, and that was the reason for the spill.
Now, I wanted to mention that to you because that's out there. That's something that I've heard said before, but I want to just forget it for our purposes of discussion today because I don't think it's relevant to the discussion and it really hurts our analysis of this this case in the way that I'd like to analyze it. For our purposes let's assume that Ms. Lebec was 100% responsible for spilling her coffee.
Nobody at McDonald's dropped the coffee into her lap. as they were handing it through the drive-thru window. They didn't bump into her. She wasn't seated at a table at McDonald's that was wobbly and a leg was jostled and it fell on her.
Nothing like that happened. Instead, she and she alone was 100% responsible for spilling the coffee. Now, she could have been sitting at a table and spilled it. or sitting on a park bench, or any other place.
She happened to be in her car, but I think the car is a little bit of what the law would say is a red herring. I don't think that really is relevant. She wasn't driving the car. The car wasn't even moving.
It was parked at the time. But the point is that she spilled it. Nobody else did.
She spilled it. She was responsible for spilling it. Then the question becomes, Was she 100% responsible for her injury? Well, if the coffee came out of my home Black & Decker coffee maker. She wouldn't go to the hospital.
She wouldn't require the medical attention. She wouldn't have the surgery. She wouldn't have the physical therapy.
All the things that she incurred would not have incurred because the temperature that my Black & Decker coffee maker serves it is at a different temperature than what McDonald's was. So this case involved the analysis of whether or not McDonald's served a reasonably safe cup of coffee. One of the things that's important in this class is that not only are we determining responsibility, but we determine it through a process to see what is reasonable under the circumstances. Not fair. I don't want to hear sometime during the semester, Mr. Cartwright, that's just not fair.
That's a non-starter for me. That doesn't have anything to do with law. Law isn't about fairness. Law is about reasonableness. What is reasonable under the circumstances?
We're going to talk about reasonableness today. We'll be talking about reasonableness in the middle of the semester. We'll talk about reasonableness at the end of the semester.
What a reasonable person would have done? What is reasonably safe under the circumstances? What should a reasonably cautious person have done in this situation? This objective, reasonable person standard applies in many different areas of the law, and it does relate to law.
So was this product reasonably safe? Let's look at a couple of things. First of all, had this type of injury ever occurred before? Was Ms. Lebec the first person ever to have suffered?
some sort of injury as a result of McDonald's coffee. No, no, she wasn't there. There was a process.
I referenced it in the, uh, in the handout called discovery. Discovery is where each side finds out about the other side's case. I ask questions that are directed to you. You ask questions that are directed to me. through written interrogatories, through requests for production of documents, through depositions, requests for admissions, etc. Yesterday, I went on a site inspection because one of my clients was sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And as part of the discovery process, they filed a motion to inspect the premises. And of course, we're entitled to be there as well. But all that occurs in this process known as discovery.
A lot of times you'll hear that most cases get settled before they go to trial. And that's true. And the reason generally is because through discovery, both sides find out about the other side's case. I know my strengths and weaknesses.
Now I know your strengths and weaknesses, and you know mine. And because of that, we can kind of come up with what a reasonable resolution should be of this case. Well, in Ms. Lebec's case, through discovery, the plaintiff's attorney, Ms. Lebec's attorney, had asked the defendant to turn over any documentation they had regarding people who had filed a report or made a claim about being injured through McDonald's coffee. And more than 700 times, somebody had made a claim about being injured by McDonald's coffee. So they knew.
They knew it was hurting people. And they continued to do this. Now, why were they serving it between 180 and 190 degrees?
As I showed you on that little short video, that's roughly the temperature of a boiling. cup of liquid after it comes out of a microwave oven for uh for just a second or two and uh and cools off while the bubbles have just finished dissipating why were they serving it at that temperature well this kind of goes go ahead i didn't know if that was a real question but uh it's because mcdonald's claimed that uh the customers threw out their data that the customers wanted to be able to have their drinks hot by the time they got to work or slash home which is not the case because people usually drink their coffee in the car or immediately Exactly right. That's perfect.
I have to kind of get used to the video way of teaching this, of kind of hesitating for a minute. I'm used to asking questions, and if someone answers, I let them answer. On video, I have to give a little more hesitation with it. So I'd work with me on this.
I apologize. But that's perfect. That's exactly right. McDonald's said that Well, you know, people want to buy this coffee and they want it to be nice and hot when they get home or they get to their office, you know, half an hour away before they do it. Now, you know, was that the case?
And let's think about how this is trying in a court because this case did not settle. It went to court and there was a trial. So at trial, there's you got a McDonald's. person representative sitting on the stand i said well why do you serve it at that temperature well we serve this temperature because you know our customers want it good and hot when uh when they they drink it at home 30 minutes later or at their office and so uh that's why we do it well do they wait 30 minutes to to do it until they get to the no no we we uh our research shows they intend to drink it right away.
let me let's do a little little test i'm a mcdonald's coffee cup coffee drinker i like mcdonald's coffee and uh you know when i teach this class as an 8 30 a.m class you'll often find me with a mcdonald's coffee cup right beside me now let's do a little test if you've got a stop feature on your cell phone or uh or all. a watch or something like that let's let's see if this is 30 minutes this is how long it takes me to drink my first drink of a taste of a mcdonald's coffee uh i'd like mcdonald's coffee please large cup thank you ready go i'm grabbing it boom i'm drinking was that 30 minutes i don't know was that 30 minutes i'm not real good with time That's how long it takes me. It doesn't take me very long. And I don't think I'm unusual.
I sometimes ask classes. I'm not going to ask you today, but I sometimes ask classes if, um, if the, uh, uh, how many people will drink coffee or a soft drink in their car. And usually everybody raises their hand. And sometimes somebody said, well, I've got a new car. I don't drink in my car, which I've done.
I've been there before. That usually lasts about a month, and then I kind of get tired of doing that. But in any event, McDonald's own research showed that that wasn't true.
So you're sitting there on the jury, and you're listening. Wait a minute. You said that the reason you did this was because of this reason, but then you've just now admitted that that reason is false, and you knew it was false. Well, have you, you know? Let's talk about somebody else.
So McDonald's brings somebody else up to the stand to testify, their quality assurance manager. And he says, oh, well, you know, we keep this at 185 to 190 degrees. Well, you know, is there a burn hazard with that?
Well, you know, anytime there's a food product that's over 140, there's a burn hazard. Really? Well, um...
What about drinking this coffee at 190 degrees? Now here's the part that's really interesting, and if you do get a chance to watch the hot coffee documentary on Amazon Prime, maybe Netflix as well, you might find this interesting because they actually have excerpts from depositions that are taken, and the deposition was taken. of the quality assurance manager.
And you can see his testimony here. And it's, it's pretty, pretty funny. Actually, they asked him, they said, Well, you know, can you drink it at, at the temperature that you serve it? And he laughs.
He says, You better not. What? This is McDonald's testifying McDonald's. You know, a lot of people think that that a corporation is a thing.
It's like a box. And it's not. It's not a box.
It's not a thing. A corporation is people. They testify through their people.
They're represented by their people. They're experts. They're people just like you and me.
And McDonald's people. were sitting there in front of the jury saying, you better not drink our coffee at the temperature that we serve it, and admitted it wasn't fit for human consumption at that temperature. So they laughed about it.
And they said that a burn hazard existed at 140. Well, did you check to see if there was any... If it was safe at that temperature at all? No, we didn't really look at that. Do you intend to stop to lower the temperature? Oh, no.
No, we're not going to do that. We know we've hurt people over 700 times, but we're going to keep doing it. Ladies and gentlemen, the case is not trying well for McDonald's. They might should have considered settling this case.
Those of us who have had children or have cared for a child, maybe a little brother, little sister, niece, nephew, whatever, we know that if we are charged with giving them their bath, that we have to be very careful about the temperature of that bath water, right? Used to be, and I'm old, I know that, used to be they told you to check it with your elbow. because the elbow was more sensitive. You could put your finger in there and you could tolerate it better, but a baby's skin is thin and wouldn't tolerate it as well. Well, the plaintiff's expert showed that the temperature, just like the bathwater, if you drop that temperature of the bathwater just a little bit, it dramatically...
makes the water more safe for the baby. What might take like five seconds for them to be burned, if you drop it a few degrees, it might take five minutes at that temperature. It's crazy the difference just dropping it a few degrees would be. And in McDonald's case, they had an expert, not McDonald's, but the plaintiff had an expert, Ms. Lebec had an expert. And the experts said it took two to seven seconds, two to seven seconds to cause a full thickness, third degree burn.
That's the worst kind of burn, the kind that she suffered, two to seven seconds in contact with the skin. And Ms. Lebec was wearing kind of those sexy granny sweatpants things. And so when she spilled the coffee.
It kind of trapped the liquid against her in a very sensitive place long enough to cause this third degree full thickness burn. And I don't think there's any question, but that the injuries were severe. I'm not going to show you if you want to see. I have the photos of Miss Lebec's injury.
And they are awful. They're worse. Whatever you're imagining, they're worse.
The inside of her thighs are just ripped away. It's just, it is, it's heart-wrenching. It's just, oh, it's just, it is worse than you can imagine.
When I have a class on campus and I'm teaching this and I have it there on the computer. I ask the students to look away unless their stomach can handle it. They're that bad.
And then I go ahead and put it up and show the ones that want to see it. Bad stuff. But again, we know something bad happened, but we're trying to figure out how to allocate this responsibility.
So in this case, we had temperature of the coffee being served. at 180 to 190 degrees, 185 plus or minus five degrees. Very, very hot.
Similar to what I pulled the cup of water out of my microwave oven and put the thermometer gun on just to show you how hot that was. We know that the temperature, if it were dropped a little bit less, would have made it much, much safer. And we know that McDonald's said, well, we do it because of this reason, and that reason was false. We also know that McDonald's said, well, even though we know that we're hurting people and it's unsafe to do it at this temperature, we're going to keep doing it.
Now, let me ask a question. How much does it cost to be in a hospital on a daily basis? Answer is a lot.
I don't know. A lot. How much does it cost to have a surgery done?
Skin graft surgery. Same answer. Medicine's expensive.
In this case, Ms. Lebec was hospitalized for eight days. She had three skin graft surgeries. She had to undergo skin debridement treatment. Y'all know what skin debridement treatment is?
I didn't know what it was. I had to look it up. It's where you take off the burned skin by taking something like, almost like Brillo steel wool and scraping the dead skin away so it doesn't create scars. You want new skin to come in.
I'm going to tell you, I don't think they can give you enough good drugs to make that. a pleasant experience, especially where Ms. Lebec was having that skin debridement treatment because she spilled it right between her legs. I told you that, right? You read that. You knew that.
Lots and lots of issues. Oh, the other thing that I wanted to mention, when a lawsuit is brought, every lawsuit, allows recovery of something known as compensatory damages, damages designed to compensate the victim for the harm that has occurred if it was the fault of the defendant. These compensatory damages are mostly what you think, things that you've spent out of pocket. your medical bills, maybe you lost wages if you had to take off work, those kind of things.
But in addition, they also include things like your pain and suffering. The law says, hey, you were free from pain and suffering before this injury. You have pain and suffering now, so you've lost that ability to be pain-free.
And because you've lost that, we can compensate you for that. There's a whole other discussion, which we're not going to get into about how you do that, how you calculate what that is. But the point is that there is some ability to recover for that as well. Also, the medical bills.
Some people say, well, wait a minute. What if Miss Lebec had insurance to pay for this and she didn't have? you know, much medical bills? Well, first of all, there is a concept known as subrogation. That's very important for you to know.
Subrogation says that if an insurance company pays for your medical treatment, your medical bills, and if someone else was responsible for the injuries that occurred that caused you to have to receive that medical treatment. Then the insurance company gets repaid first what they paid. So let's say that eight days in the hospital was $20,000 a day and other medical expenses, surgery, whatever. Let's say it was $200,000 total.
And let's say the insurance company paid $100,000. because they never pay what we pay. So they pay $100,000.
If Ms. Lebec sues McDonald's and a jury comes back and says, you get $100,000, Ms. Lebec actually gets zero because the insurance company steps in first through the process known as subrogation. Is that fair? Well, you know, number one, that's not really relevant. but it's the deal that you reached with your insurance company.
Nobody ever reads this, but it's part of your insurance contract that says, hey, we agree we're going to pay for your medical expenses, but... You agree if somebody else was responsible and they end up paying back money to you, that we get repaid out of that money first. So keep that in mind.
In this case, Ms. LeBec, the jury came back and said, you're entitled, Ms. LeBec, to compensatory damages. in the amount of $200,000. $200,000.
Now that's eight days. I know it's been 20 years ago, give or take. It's been a long time ago.
Medical bills have gone up in those 20 years, but still it's eight days in the hospital, three surgeries, skin debridement treatment, physical therapy, doctors, medicines, et cetera, plus her pain and suffering. Whatever the insurance company paid, they get paid back first out of the money the jury awards. But then they did something funny, or really the judge did it, and he reduced the amount of compensatory damages.
Anybody know why he reduced the amount by 20%? I got a guess. Okay, what's your guess?
Is it because of the fact that the original money, that's from what she got out of the whole situation? But because she technically was at fault still for spilling on herself, you can't award somebody who was still kind of in fault full of that money. Or it depends on like which state, depending on the rules. but he took money off because I think that state does not they what is the word it's you're all over you're all around basically he took money off due to the damages she got the award money from the jury they were like yeah we're gonna give you this amount but the judge was like yeah but you still kind of messed up so I'm gonna take this money off because of that that's that's I'm gonna help you out just a little bit.
I'm gonna give you a little bit of a sit. You're right. You're exactly right. What the judge did is the jury found that Ms. Lebec was 20% responsible for her injury. You remember the first part of the discussion today, we said, gee, you were the one responsible for spilling this on yourself.
You're 100% responsible, Ms. Lebec. We like you, but you are the one that spilled it. McDonald's didn't spill it.
You spilled it. So you're 100% responsible for spilling it. But McDonald's, man, you shouldn't be, you should not be cooking this at that temperature. That's just too hot. So we think you're responsible for the injury or for a good portion of the injury.
So they allocated it. And they said, Ms. Lebec, darling, you're 20% responsible. McDonald's, sorry, guys.
y'all are 80% responsible. Please make this a reasonably safe product in the future. So the judge took that and through the process known as comparative negligence, and that's where you were getting, Jade, I know that's where you were going with it. Through comparative negligence, you compare the negligence of the plaintiff with the negligence of the defendant. And if the negligence of the plaintiff is less than the negligence of the defendant, then the plaintiff wins.
However, their recovery is reduced by the percentage by which they are negligent. So in this case, the jury said you got $200,000 of compensatory damages, but you're 20% responsible. So you're going to have $160,000.
We're going to have to reduce it 20% and we're going to let you recover $160,000. Remember, the insurance company gets the first money. in the process known as subrogation. Now, in addition to compensatory damages, in some cases, not all, there's another way that the plaintiff can recover damages known as punitive damages. Punitive damages are damages designed to punish a wrongdoer and to deter a wrongdoer.
and others like the wrongdoer from engaging in similar conduct in the future. It's usually for intentional conduct or The conduct that rises to the level of intentional conduct. In this case, McDonald's knew they were hurting people through the discovery process.
We know that 700 times. And they said, we don't have any intention at all of reducing the temperature, even though we know we're hurting people and we're going to continue to hurt people. The jury says, the heck with that. We're going to teach you a lesson.
And that's what punitive damages are designed to do. They are designed to punish a wrongdoer and to deter the wrongdoer and others like the wrongdoer kind of send a message not to keep doing this kind of thing in the future. So in this case, they awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages. an amount that was two days worth of coffee sales.
I liked the kid and I said, it was such a huge amount. It put McDonald's completely out of business and we never heard from him again. Everybody kind of looks at me like I'm crazy.
And I said, well, of course that's not the case. But what the point is, that's just barely a blip on their financial statements. You know, $2.7 million is supposed to be a punishment to punish them.
for doing something and to send a message you shouldn't do that again. Well, you know, it's kind of like me and a parking ticket. If I get a $20 parking ticket, man, $20, that punishes me. Well, $2.7 million is kind of like the $20 parking ticket to McDonald's.
Well, in this case, and I like to tell people, the legal profession, the judicial system takes a lot of criticism. And I think a lot of it's unfair. I think we've got the best judicial system in the world. Yeah, I know I'm part of it.
So I'm naturally biased. But I do think we have more safeguards built in than people think. One of the safeguards is this comparative negligence thing.
And if I don't mention contributory negligence before we end today, make sure that you remind me because I want to mention that. But another safeguard is the judge himself or herself can look at it and say, you know what? I see what you did, jury.
I know why you did it. I still think it's too much. And that's what the judge did here. The judge said, you know, I think that McDonald's, what you did was reckless and it was callous and willful and terrible and horrible and shouldn't be done again. But...
Punitive damages are just too much. And so he reduced that to $480,000. So that $2.7 million, that was never really a thing.
That's just what the jury came back with on their jury form. And the judge says, no, that's not going to be the case. It's only going to be $480,000. And frankly, if the jury had come back with that in the first place, I don't think we'd ever heard of this case.
You know, the $2.7 million was like newspaper headlines. It made TV shows and jokes about it. You know, be sure and watch that Truth About McDonald's. It's funny.
The Adam Ruins Everything, the Truth About the McDonald's case video, because there's some information about that on there. But the safeguard is built in. The safeguard. guard said gee it's just too much we're going to reduce it then there's another safeguard the other safeguard that's built in is the appellate process and for cases they can be appealed and that's what mcdonald's did here they said well it's still too much we don't think it's it's accurate uh we don't think it's uh it's accurate with uh With that at all, we think that we shouldn't have been responsible in the first place.
She's the one that spilled it. She should have been more than 50% responsible. And under comparative negligence, if she's more than 50% responsible, she loses.
So McDonald's appealed it. And the case eventually was settled while it was on appeal for a secret amount. What's that secret amount? Well, we don't know.
We don't know what that is. The lawyer that handled the case came from my law school, and I don't know that lawyer, but I've heard. that the amount that it settled for approximated her medical bills.
I don't know if that's accurate or not. Don't take that as gospel. I don't know, but it seems reasonable to me under the circumstances. Contributory negligence. There are 49 states in the country.
that use some version of comparative negligence, just like this case did in New Mexico. And one of the things that is sometimes frustrating to people who ask me questions as a lawyer from out of state is that I'll often tell them, look, I'm an Alabama lawyer. I don't know what the law is in Kentucky. I don't know what it is in Louisiana. I don't know what it is in Idaho.
because every state's laws differ. Albuquerque, New Mexico, the state of New Mexico law controlled here, and they use comparative negligence. Now, by the same token, we know that most states' laws are similar. So you can generally get a pretty good idea.
And in this case, 49 states use some version of comparative negligence. Some of it varies a little bit. There's one state in the country that uses a different legal principle known as contributory negligence. Guess what state that is? This hurts.
Think close to home. Think sweet home. Alabama?
Alabama. Yes. Alabama has a legal principle of negligence known as contributory negligence. We're the only state.
It's important for you to know that because A, this is where we live, and B, I usually test on it. Another reason to kind of know that. how contributory negligence works and how it differs than comparative negligence. It differs a lot. In contributory negligence, if the plaintiff is negligent at all, they lose.
If they contribute at all to their injury, they lose. There's no comparing negligence of the plaintiff and negligence of the defendant. You just look to the plaintiff and say, did you do something that you shouldn't have done that helped cause your injury? You did? You lose.
If the same facts occur at the Valleydale Road, Caldwell Mill Road, McDonald's, if we roll through, we got a cup of McDonald's coffee. at the Caldwell Mill, Valleydale Road, McDonald's, and spilled it, and it was 190 degrees, and we went to the hospital, and we had the surgeries, and everything else, and we filed suit, we would lose. Why? Because we spilled it.
We're more than one percent negligent. The jury found that she was 20% responsible, 20% negligent. In Alabama, that means the jury would find she loses because of the principle known as contributory negligence. So in this case, the state law that applies really controls and would mean a completely different outcome in the state of Alabama.
And just a little hint, I see, Olivia, you had the answer right there on the chat session. I'm trying to, I'm learning how to use the chat session and glance on it as well. You're exactly right.
It is Alabama. But in this case, it would mean a completely different outcome. I often put that question on the test just so that you guys should have a benefit going in because I'll often do it.
And let me kind of give you, as we're sort of winding down today, I do want to show you a little short video at the end, probably without sound, but then I'll come back. But for purposes of tests, it's really important in this class, not. to just know what happened, but to know why it happened.
Give you an example. A common test question I've used before is saying something like, the jury awarded $2.7 million to Ms. Lebec to compensate her for her injury. And that answer is false. Why is it false? Because they didn't award it to compensate her.
They awarded it to punish McDonald's. It was punitive damages. So the reason is very important. And the reason why I'm such a stickler about this is because that's the way law works. It's important for all of us to know why something happened so that we can see what our exposure is in a given situation.
for us in our company or what our rights may be as an employee or a victim. It's really important to know why something happened, not just what happened, but why it happened as well. So you're going to have to know all the things that are there in the case and then apply it. You know, the funny thing is before I taught this, before teaching this as an online class, as we're doing, I have occasionally given an open book test.
Doesn't matter. Not for my tests. It's because my tests are about applying the law. So if you think it's just looking something up, that's not going to help you.
You know, you got to know why something happened, not just what happened and be able to apply it in a situation like that. A lot of people say, Mr. Cartwright's classes, his exams are tricky. That's what they're talking about.
That's what they're talking about. It's not tricky. It's just making sure you can apply the law correctly.
Let me go ahead and give you the little video. I hope this works. I hope this works. Black & Decker coffee maker at home.
And I'm making a pot at home. Can you all see that? Somebody raise their hand.
Is the screen still frozen? Oh, is it frozen? Hold on.
Are y'all not seeing the video work? No, sir. Okay, let me see what's going on. Oh, it is.
Okay. All right. Can y'all see the screen now? No, sir.
All right. How about now? Yes, sir. Okay. Let's get this going.
Thank you for telling me before we got too far. What did y'all do in class today? We watched coffee being made. It's my home.
You can see my handy-dandy thermometer gun. Y'all are not hearing the video, right? No. Okay, good.
I'll narrate it then. That'll be fine as long as you can see it. So that's my home temperature and... About 160 degrees. That's hot.
It's not going to put me in the hospital, but it's hot. And that's the Keurig coffee machine there at my office. What's your guess on this?
This is going to be hotter, not as hot. 190 degrees hot. Somewhere between, what was it, 130 to 140 degrees.
130 to 140. We'll see. It's about done. It's about 167. It's pretty hot.
Still won't put me in the hospital. 190 will. And I just want you to know how dedicated I am because there I am. in the McDonald's drive-thru at Caldwell Mill and Valleydale Road.
So we're going to see what it is from McDonald's today. And I ordered a large coffee because I'm a coffee drinker. And there's the coffee.
Notice I don't put that between my legs, even though I drink it black. It's really about the same temperature as the Keurig. I turned it kind of to the side accidentally. So if you saw 136, that was not a real temperature. 170 degrees is pretty close.
All right. okay um so you should have seen three different uh temperature tests for the for the coffee uh which was my home black and decker which was probably the uh the the coolest And the Keurig and McDonald's, 170 degrees was the hottest temperature. And even though that's hot, the difference between 170 degrees and 190 degrees is dramatic when it comes to how long it would take to burn you. Miss Lebec spills a 170 degree cup of coffee.
between her legs, she's not going to the hospital. She is going to be embarrassed because she's wearing those sexy granny sweatpants and they've got a stain in them. But otherwise, she's not going to the hospital. At 190 degrees, she is.
Now let's see if it worked. Does anybody know what happened when they did a check at that Albuquerque, New Mexico McDonald's? And later, after the jury came back, after the trial took place, what temperature was the McDonald's coffee being served at? Around 150. 158 degrees.
That's exactly right. So really about the same temperature as my Black & Decker coffee. So 158, 160, 170 degrees, any temperature like that. will probably be okay. You'll probably be safe.
At some temperature, it becomes unsafe. What temperature is that? Well, we know 190 degrees is not safe, so I don't know what it is below that, but it's something. That's the kind of thing that I want you to do as you go through all the materials that we have for purposes of this class.
You want to look at it you want to analyze it you want to figure out why they something happened the way that it happened and then not only know what happened but why it happened so you can apply it as well do we have any questions for for me about the Lebec versus McDonald's coffee cup case I have a question just to clarify something yes ma'am You said Alabama is the only state that does contributory negligence? Yes. And everyone else does comparative negligence? Yes, that's correct. that's correct we are out on our uh lonesome as the only state in the country that uh that use contributory negligence you may see in the torts section powerpoint slide that says something about uh the minority it's the minority view well yes the minority view we're the only one i looked at it looked it up a couple years ago because i just you know i deal with states on from time to time in different different states and I just haven't run across contributory negligence and so I looked and examined and no other state other than Alabama is using contributory negligence but it's important because this is where we are you know you need to know both you need to know how to apply both if I gave you an example on a test it.
of someone who was 55% responsible for their own injury. And I said that it was a contributory negligent state. You would know the defendant would win because the plaintiff contributed at all, any portion toward their own injury.
You would also know that the defendant would win even in a comparative negligent state because comparative negligence requires the plaintiff's negligence to be less than the defendant's negligence. If, on the other hand, I told you that the plaintiff was 10% negligent, you know in a contributory negligent state, the defendant wins for the same reason, because the plaintiff contributed at all to their own injury. But you would also know that In a comparative negligent state, the plaintiff wins because they're less than the defendant's negligence. However, their recovery would be reduced by 10% because that's the percentage by which they are negligent. That's how you have to apply the law in that kind of situation.
So not only do you have to know it, you have to apply it. Now, there is a student contract quiz that is on the content section of the Blackboard right now. It's a five-question quiz. For every question you get correct, and it's from the student contract, you'll get two extra credit points. I highly encourage you to do that.
They expire at the end of this week, May the 31st. Um, the quiz goes off. So please be sure and take that quiz before May 31st. So you can pick up, uh, your 10 extra credit points.
Okay. Uh, any other questions today? I do have a question about, um, something I was reading about the case. So I know it was like, she got awarded $2,000. Then it got reduced due to damages, but then.
I know they took money away from McDonald's. They took $2.7 million because they wanted to equivalent it to two days of revenue. But then I saw something that said post-verdict, they ended up reducing something to $4,800,000. Okay, here's what happened.
The jury awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages. That was reduced to $160,000 because she was 20% negligent under the principle known as comparative negligence. They also awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages, but the judge reduced that to $480,000.
Because he said that was excessive. It only needed to be three times the amount of compensatory damages. On top of all that, McDonald's never paid any of that because the case was appealed.
And the case was settled while it was on appeal. So we don't know what McDonald's actually paid. All we know, they appealed because they said the jury issued the wrong verdict. that in fact that Ms. Lebec should have been more than 20% responsible, more than 50% responsible, etc. So they appealed the case, and we don't know what they settled for.
My understanding is they settled for an amount that approximated the medical bills. We don't know that. That was a secret settlement, confidential settlement, not uncommon. That's generally what happens in a settlement. They do make it confidential, usually.
And so we just don't know. But keep that in mind. The jury rendered a verdict.
issued a verdict saying $200,000 in compensatory, but we're reducing it 20% to $160,000 because you were 20% negligent. They said $2.7 million in punitive damages to punish McDonald's, two days worth of coffee sales. But the judge reduced that. He said that was just excessive, even though what you did, McDonald's, was reckless and willful and callous.
I'm going to reduce it to $480,000. And then on top of all that, the case was appealed, so we never know how much was paid. So hypothetically, if it did not get an appeal, would she have gotten the $1,600,000 and the $480,000?
If it had not been appealed, she would have been awarded $160,000 compensatory and $480,000 in punitive. That's correct. And of course, her insurance company would have been repaid first out of that money through the process called subrogation. That's not in your materials, but that's something I think you need to know.
Any other questions, guys? Well, guys, thank you for today, and thank you for participating. It makes it a lot more interesting when you participate. We've got about four more of these sessions that I have planned for this year. I really, I'm a people person.
I like to interact with people. I know it's an online class, but hopefully you'll find this helpful from time to time as well. We've got all the materials on Blackboard. All the handouts are on Blackboard.
Audio lectures are on Blackboard. And occasionally there'll be a video that I'll have for you to watch as well. But where we can do these Zoom sessions, hopefully it'll help you. And I know I enjoy it. So hopefully I'll see you again on the next one.
Y'all have a good rest of the week and I'll see you on the next Zoom session. Bye guys.