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We’re watching Hot Coffee, the documentary about so-called “tort reform” and the famous McDonald’s hot coffee case, and getting pissed off. Lots of hollering going on here
A short list of people whose appearances so far have caused us to erupt in jeers and cursing:
-Reagan
-Bush the younger
-Karl Rove
-young John Kasich
-Reagan
-Bush the younger
-Karl Rove
-young John Kasich
If you’re not familiar with the actual facts of the McDonald’s case, you may know the version we were fed: that this woman was driving, stuck her coffee cup between her legs, then had the gall to sue McDonald’s because her coffee spilled on her and it was hot. Right?
It became the poster child for the supposed epidemic of “frivolous lawsuits.” The trouble with that interpretation, which became joke fodder for YEARS, is that it’s entirely untrue
What actually happened is this: 79 year old Stella Liebeck was in her nephew’s car, while he was driving. They got their food and then pulled over in the parking lot. The vehicle was PARKED when Liebeck held her coffee in her lap to open it and put in her cream and sugar
Why did she hold it in her lap? It was 1992. Many cars still didn’t have cup holders, including her nephew’s car. And unfortunately, when Liebeck opened her coffee, it went badly and her lap was covered in hot coffee. How hot? Well...
Her inner thighs and groin were covered in deep third degree burns. She had to receive extensive skin grafts. In fact, initially she wasn’t expected to LIVE.
As it turned out, McDonald’s kept its coffee between 180-190 degrees, per the manual. That is too hot to drink right out of the machine without burning your mouth and throat. In fact, there were more than 700 other McDonald’s burn cases before Liebeck’s
This particular machine may have been even hotter. But that temperature is dangerous anyway. Anyway...now the documentary is talking about how Karl Rove began masterminding the conservative takeover of the courts as far back as the 1980s specifically to fight consumer lawsuits
Which has reached its apotheosis in recent years with the Trump years and Mitch McConnell turning the Senate into a judge-confirming machine. This has been a very long game and they’ve done it very well and goddammit, we have to get that good at playing it
Ooh now we’re on to how the US Chamber of Commerce is NOT A GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION, did you folks know that?? Because a lot of people think it is. It is not. It’s a corporate lobbying group.
I do highly recommend this documentary, it’s been fascinating and also highly informative. Although I am also getting an informative commentary track in the form of living with @alketrolyat, who works for @MyConstitution and is happy to tell us all about more current law news
We are on to the Jamie Leigh Jones case, so I will issue a trigger warning for this documentary: there is some detailed discussion of what happened to her (she was raped by Halliburton coworkers in Iraq, while working as a contractor supporting the US military)
It is making me sigh to see her championed by Al Franken. Oh, Al, you should have done a better job living up to the ideals you espoused. But he’s very right here talking about how fucked up binding arbitration clauses are especially in a case like this
