Liebeck v McDonalds Tort Law

TORT LAW

Tort Law: Liebeck v. McDonald’s

Step 1

For this discussion, I elected to focus on the Liebeck v. McDonald’s (1994) case. Sometimes in 1992, Liebeck bought coffee from McDonald’s which she ended up spilling on her lap – causing third degree burns on her thighs as well as genital area. She later on filed a suit accusing the fast-food and restaurant chain of negligence in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico (Horsey and Rackley, 2013). It is important to note that before proceeding to court, the plaintiff had sought an amicable settlement with McDonalds which the company turned down by floating a counteroffer that Liebeck considered too little to consider. In the suit, the plaintiff claimed that McDonald’s had offered for sale a defective product that was unreasonably dangerous, i.e. owing to the fact that the coffee served by the restaurant chain was significantly hotter than similar products offered for sale by other companies. According to Horsey and Rackley (2013), a verdict was reached upon by a 12-person jury to the effect that the restaurant chain was to a large extent responsible for the incident under comparative negligence principles. Thus, the plaintiff was awarded punitive damages to the tune of $2.7 million and compensatory damages to the tune of $160,000 (Horsey and Rackley, 2013). It is, however, important to note that the judge awarded a total of $640,000 (after slashing punitive damages to $480,000) (Horsey and Rackley, 2013). Both the plaintiff and the defendant appealed the decision but later on settled the matter out of court, without disclosing the settlement details.

Step 2

In reaching its verdict, the 12-person jury argued that both the plaintiff and the defendant were at fault. However, from a comparative negligence perspective, the defendant carried a greater burden (at 80%) of blame than the plaintiff (at 20%) (Okrent, 2014). In basic terms, comparative negligence could be conceptualized as a key “tort principle used by the court to reduce the amount of damages that a plaintiff can recover in a negligence-based claim according to the degree of negligence each party contributed to the incident” (Hylton, 2016). The defendant argued that the coffee cup had a warning label indicating that the contents of the same were hot and should be handled with care. However, as Okrent (2014) indicates, the jury in this case made a finding to the effect that the warning on the coffee cup - about how hot the coffee was – was not prominent enough. It is important to note that during trial, the plaintiff’s attorneys had successfully demonstrated that the coffee served by McDonald’s was substantially hotter than what other restaurant chains served. Expert opinion also indicated that at 190 °F, McDonald’s coffee was hot enough to cause serious burn injuries – and was, a burn hazard (Horsey and Rackley, 2013). To a large extent, this particular case restated the need for business enterprises to establish a balance between the utility of a product and its potential to harm the consumer. However, it would be prudent to note that the outcome of the case could motivate some unscrupulous consumers to pursue frivolous litigation against businesses – resulting in unnecessary negative publicity for the targeted enterprises.

Step 3

The court’s decision in this case forces businesses to be more vigilant about the potential of their product to occasion harm to consumers. To a large extent, the conduct of McDonald’s was unethical. As Okrent (2014) indicates, prior to Liebeck’s case, there had been numerous other reports filed with the company about customer burns. Thus, from a deontological ethics perspective, McDonald’s failed to do what was right in the light of several complaints about the burn hazard that its coffee presented. As a business that relies on its customers for survival and continuity, it ought to act in a way that promotes the best interests of the said customers, i.e. by lowering the temperature of its coffee.

Step 4

The implications of the said decision also extends beyond the restaurant industry. For instance, entities in the automotive industry ought to rethink the need to electronically limit the top speeds of their vehicles. This is more so the case given that it could be successfully argued that an automotive company was negligent in its release of units whose top speeds made it difficult for drivers to maintain control. For instance, the Hennessey Venom F5 has a top speed of 301 MPH. The car is manufactured by Hennessey Performance Engineering. If a driver of the car were to cause an accident while driving at a high speed, those injured by the said accident could bring a suit against the car-maker – citing comparative negligence. Thus, there may be need for the executive team at the organization to electronically cap the said speed at a lower max speed or align the top speed of its units with the industry average.