Hot Coffee: Not a Lesson in How Not to Spill Hot Coffee

Group: Kate, Aimee, Cody, and Me
DocFest at the Kima: Hot Coffee, the documentary

In 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79 year-old Albuquerque woman, spilled hot McDonald’s coffee in her lap and later sued McDonald’s. The 2011 HBO documentary Hot Coffee derives its name from her infamous lawsuit. The documentary follows the “war” on our civil judicial system, which has resulted in caps on damages and the buying of state Supreme Court justices more likely to rule in favor of business.

The opening segment of the documentary focuses on Ms. Liebeck’s case and the media’s role in shaping public perception of litigation by distorting, or withholding, the facts of her case. In the documentary, random citizens were asked about what they knew about the case. Essentially, they described it as a woman who spilled hot coffee in her lap while she was driving and then sued McDonald’s – for her negligence. There was no love for Ms. Liebeck. But when confronted with facts of the case not revealed in the media – she wasn’t driving; pictures of the severe burns she suffered; 700 previously filed complaints against McDonald’s regarding excessively hot coffee, etc. – these same random citizens began to rethink their positions. One gentleman said that seeing the photos of her wounds changed everything for him.

But the damage has already been done.

This case was the poster child for tort reform in the 90’s and was referenced indiscriminately by “citizen groups” – Karl Rove-like groups comprised of businesses and political profiteers – to persuade voters to put an end to frivolous lawsuits by passing state propositions to cap damages. Spilling coffee became a euphemism for winning the lottery. Their campaign was successful. There has been little sympathy for Ms. Liebeck – now deceased – and her plight. The coffee was hot? Well, duh! Coffee is supposed to be hot, isn’t it?

How can the facts of a case be so distorted? Why are people willing to just accept at face value what they are told and not question what they may not be being told?

Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “‘[m]en to a great extent believe what they want to’…‘Man is like any other organism, shaping himself to his environment so wholly that after he has taken the shape if you try to change it you alter his life’… ‘All of which is all right and fully justifies us in doing what we can’t help doing and trying to make the world into the kind of world that we think we should like…’” (Menand 63).

It’s in our nature to create worlds that suit our beliefs, and supporting policy and campaigns that mirror our beliefs is one way to create this world. It is natural then to accept at face value what we are told if what we are told reflects what we believe – even if what we are told has been distorted.

Holmes respected this nature in his neighbor: “‘I don’t care to boss my neighbors and to require them to want something different from what they do – even when, as frequently, I think their wishes are more or less suicidal’”(Menand 62).

But he also detested “‘a man that knows that he knows’” (Menand 62) and was skeptical of causes, or campaigns. He had seen the ill fruits of the certitude of causes in the many lives lost during the Civil War.

However, our nature to re-create the world in our vision is often achieved through the very causes, the very campaigns, Holmes detested.

One documentary interviewee recounted a story of a man who had voted for a Texas proposition to cap damages awarded to plaintiffs through civil litigation. He thought he was voting for a proposition that would block frivolous lawsuits, block those seeking money for harm they could have mitigated. Certainly, he hadn’t helped pass law that would hinder him from collecting monetary damages to cover the harm he had suffered. He was wrong.

Yes. Our nature is to create a world that mirrors our beliefs and to hold vigorously to that world. We support campaigns for change and for the status quo. I can’t fault “citizen groups” for launching campaigns or the media for presenting news steeped in their beliefs, reflective of their agendas. It is, after all, in their nature. And admittedly, the hot coffee campaign was rhetorically effective. Tort reform was passed, and still, to this day, people jokingly threat to sue for spilling hot coffee. Ms. Liebeck’s legacy for the general citizenry is her perceived greed and ignorance.

I have to live with my neighbor in a society with rules. If my neighbor is going to help pass laws that hinder my ability – and his – to protect myself, I want my neighbor to have as much information he needs to make that decision. If it’s not in the nature of the campaigner or media to provide this information, it better be in the nature of us all to concern ourselves with their nature, to question their underlying beliefs and motives.

Ultimately, as one of her family members attested in the documentary, Ms. Liebeck was not trying to win the lottery. She was trying to secure enough money to pay her hospital bills and to redress a wrong, as I hope we all would. I don’t suggest we fight our nature, but only that we acknowledge it, particulary in our deliberations.