McDonald's hot coffee case: Why Everything You Think You Know About Stella Liebeck Is Wrong

[00:00:01] Kyle Risi: They also said that the only reason her injuries were so severe. Was because of her old skin, basically. God, if she had been younger, they claimed her injuries would not have been so bad, like f old people. Right. And they're old skin. Yeah.

[00:00:15] Adam Cox: If you were young and hot, you would've been fine. Yeah. What a bunch of bums

[00:00:46] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:00:55] Adam Cox: We explore stories from the dark corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the [00:01:00] jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:02] Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your ring master for this week's episode.

[00:01:05] Adam Cox: I'm Adam Cox, your doggy daycare manager for this week. '

[00:01:09] Kyle Risi: cause people have dogs.

[00:01:10] Adam Cox: That's right. And they need them to be looked after whilst they're performing in the circus.

[00:01:14] Kyle Risi: Oh, so it's just for the circus performers? Yeah. What about a daycare nurse?

[00:01:18] Kyle Risi: Like for people who have kids? No, like little, little, little circus freak kids. They have

[00:01:22] Adam Cox: to fend for themselves. Okay. Just the dogs. Just the dogs.

[00:01:25] Kyle Risi: More important. Yeah. I love it.

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[00:02:55] Kyle Risi: Alright, then freaks enough of the housekeeping. because Adam, [00:03:00] today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of lawsuits, lies and latte level. Negligence

[00:03:08] Adam Cox: latte level negligence. Mm-hmm. Someone didn't pour in milk or pour in off milk that negligence for a latte.

[00:03:15] Kyle Risi: Let's start with a headline. Okay. Especially for you because for some of our non-American listeners, a lot of them will not be familiar with this story. But I wanna know your first reaction when you hear news articles like this one.

[00:03:27] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So I want you to read out this news headline in kind of like a punchy, newsboy kind of way. Imagine you are selling your very last paper of the day, and soon as you sell this one, you can get to go home and you get to play on the PlayStation. Okay? Okay.

[00:03:40] Adam Cox: extra. Read all about it. Women burned by hot. McDonald's coffee gets $2.9 million. What? Yeah, that's. That's a lot of money for just burning your mouth on some hot, liquid.

[00:03:51] Kyle Risi: So this was actually released back in August of 1994 by the Associated Press, who ran with the story and the opening kind of, uh, segment of the [00:04:00] actual article goes.

[00:04:01] Kyle Risi: A woman who was scolded when her McDonald's coffee spilled was awarded nearly $2.9 million or about two days worth of coffee sales at the fast food chain.

[00:04:11] Kyle Risi: Lawyers for Stellar Liebeck argued that McDonald's coffee was far too hot.

[00:04:16] Kyle Risi: The state district court jury awarded 2.9 million IMP punitive damages on top of $160,000 in compensation damages.

[00:04:25] Kyle Risi: Testimony that Wednesday revealed that mcDonald's served its coffee at temperatures between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 82 to 87 degrees Celsius for our UK listeners,

[00:04:37] Kyle Risi: he goes on to say, based on advice from coffee consultants who claimed it tastes better at their temperature.

[00:04:44] Kyle Risi: So, Adam, have you heard of that headline before? have you heard of this story before?

[00:04:48] Adam Cox: I'm trying to think. Maybe, or things very similar to it if it's not this one.

[00:04:52] Kyle Risi: So hearing this headline just at face value, what do you think the intent of stories like this are?

[00:04:58] Adam Cox: I reckon it's to invoke [00:05:00] rage amongst people. 'cause how dare she? I got burnt the other day. Mm-hmm. I didn't get money.

[00:05:04] Kyle Risi: And of course this did cause outrage all over America.

[00:05:07] Kyle Risi: When you think about American culture, especially when you see it from the outside as , Europeans, there are some kind of typical cultural stereotypes that spring to mind, obviously within the context of what we've just talked about.

[00:05:19] Kyle Risi: What do you think some of those stereotypes might be

[00:05:22] Adam Cox: in, in the us? Mm. Um, it's kind of that, where there's blame, there's a claim, like people I don't know, would slip over and then break their neck and then they'd get like a paycheck of like $20,000 or something.

[00:05:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that is it. And I know we have it in the UK as well. Mm-hmm. But in America especially, they have developed this kind of culture or this reputation as been a bit kind of sue happy. Do you know what I mean?

[00:05:43] Kyle Risi: You hear about it all the time. Especially like TV and film. Oh yeah. And We've all heard those kind of stories before. Like A mother trips over her own child in a supermarket and then suddenly there is this massive lawsuit against the shop. It becomes this big deal where like the mother's life has never been the same again and she can't work. And so [00:06:00] they go off and they sue the supermarket.

[00:06:01] Adam Cox: Yeah. 'cause she can't bend over into the frozen veg aisle anymore.

[00:06:04] Kyle Risi: But all these stories typically have the same thing in common and they always zoom in on the irony or the ridiculousness or the audacity of the situation. For example, it was her kid as she fell over.

[00:06:15] Kyle Risi: So why should the supermarket. Be responsible for paying her out when she was the one who fell over her own kid.

[00:06:20] Adam Cox: How do they get away with this though? It just seems so crazy to think that, I guess maybe just being from the UK mm-hmm. To ever think that you could get away with suing the supermarket or whatever, when you know that it was your kid's fault. It's like, how does that, I dunno, it doesn't compute with me.

[00:06:34] Kyle Risi: To do that. And the thing is though, that's the point of these stories is that they do highlight the ridiculousness of these situations whereby people do go, well, how can she possibly get away with that?

[00:06:43] Kyle Risi: And because it's a lawsuit and because she was awarded that amount of money or whatever it might be, that just creates even more outrage because like she's managed to argue that. The supermarket is culpable for her falling over a kid, for example.

[00:06:55] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I guess that just encourages other people to then sue for other ridiculous [00:07:00] things.

[00:07:00] Kyle Risi: Exactly. But here's the thing. What most people don't know is that this reputation of being trigger happy with suing people, especially businesses in the USA, is rooted in how the American legal system is physically set up.

[00:07:12] Kyle Risi: It's by design to make it easier for regular citizens to take legal action against companies that might have harmed people in some sort of way. And its history goes all the way back to the 1940s when the US government started introducing a ton of policies to make it easier for citizens to do exactly that thing.

[00:07:29] Kyle Risi: Whereas in countries like the uk, they take a very different approach and we'll come back to that in a little bit more detail later on. But while these stereotypes, they do actually reflect real cultural differences, this one, the idea that Americans are outrageously litigious. Is actually a massive myth.

[00:07:47] Adam Cox: So where does that come from then?

[00:07:49] Kyle Risi: Believe it or not, this was actually crafted by big American corporations through a very carefully orchestrated campaign designed to stigmatize anyone who dared to take a [00:08:00] company to court. And these campaigns, Adam, they worked flawlessly.

[00:08:04] Kyle Risi: They were so effective because these campaigns would painstakingly comb through and cherry pick extreme sounding lawsuits like the one I just described with a woman falling over a child. They would strip them of all their context, they would leave out the humanity at the center of them and then lean heavily into the mockery aspects.

[00:08:20] Kyle Risi: But also, it wasn't unusual for these campaigns or these companies to just make shit up altogether.

[00:08:27] Adam Cox: And this was to try and discourage people from, doing a lawsuit or suing anyone because they read all these ridiculous stories.

[00:08:34] Kyle Risi: Exactly. That. And as a result, these people, they start to believe that these frivolous lawsuits were a serious national problem in America.

[00:08:41] Kyle Risi: On top of that, they were resulting in this belief that organizations were offering out less jobs. They were lowering wages, and they were making prices across the USA increase as these corporations try to settle the cost of all these big expensive lawsuits that were being flung at them. Mm-hmm. All of which by the way, was just fear-mongering.

[00:08:59] Kyle Risi: [00:09:00] They were pushed by the same organizations trying to avoid accountability in the first place.

[00:09:04] Adam Cox: Right. Okay.

[00:09:05] Kyle Risi: And once this idea starts to seep into the culture, it starts showing up in American movies and sitcoms. And so eventually the rest of the world bought into this belief that Americans were very litigious and that would sue you just for looking at them.

[00:09:18] Kyle Risi: Funny. And the kicker is that this just simply was not true because when you actually dig into the data, it turns out that Americans are less likely to sue for punitive damages than citizens in many other developed countries. It's just that other countries like the UK have a different way of doing it.

[00:09:34] Kyle Risi: Really

[00:09:35] Kyle Risi: eventually this lawsuit epidemic, if you wanna call it that. This narrative got so loud that politicians in America start paying attention to this. And then with pressure from corporate lobbyists, new laws start getting drafted, many of which make it all the way to the American President's desk.

[00:09:53] Kyle Risi: And it's all designed to make it harder for regular citizens to sue big businesses. Essentially, corporations wanted to [00:10:00] operate without risk of being held to account even when their products were literally killing people.

[00:10:05] Adam Cox: No way. I always thought maybe it was just like one of the not 10 commandments, but in America, you can have a gun, you can have a white picket fence.

[00:10:12] Adam Cox: Yeah. And you have the right to sue. Yes.

[00:10:15] Kyle Risi: The thing is that they do have the right to sue, and there's by design that they should have that. Right. And I'll explain a bit about the history in just a moment.

[00:10:22] Kyle Risi: So it was just a massive scandal. The fact that more people around the world don't know about. This is actually really shocking to me. This idea that American corporations are lobbying governments to screw over the working class is just not a new concept.

[00:10:37] Kyle Risi: And one of the most famous examples of frivolous lawsuits that was used to win public support for pushing changes to the law. Was the very famous case of Stella Liebeck, that woman who spilled her McDonald's coffee in her lap while driving and then sued for $2.9 million because that coffee was far too hot.

[00:10:56] Adam Cox: So I thought it's stories because of like that, is why you have like that, like [00:11:00] extreme warning on all these foods, like hot, super hot.

[00:11:03] Kyle Risi: That's actually a myth in itself because when Stella Beck went to McDonald's on that day and was handed her hot coffee, it did actually say that the contents of the coffee was really hot.

[00:11:13] Kyle Risi: The only difference was, is that back then in the early nineties when you bought a coffee from any coffee shop, it served in a white styrofoam cup. Mm-hmm. So the warning on it is just embossed over it so you don't even see it anyway. Yeah. But it was there. So that is a little bit of a myth, but it is also true to say that since then.

[00:11:30] Kyle Risi: Those warnings were a lot more pronounced on the cups. And also they made like different provisions for you to kind of have the little sippy cup hole mm-hmm. On the top, because before you had to take the lid off in order to drink your coffee, now you even have, takeaway cups that you can, you don't even need to remove the lid to put your sugar and your milk into them.

[00:11:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. There are two types of people though.

[00:11:49] Kyle Risi: Go on.

[00:11:50] Adam Cox: There's people that like hot coffee. Mm-hmm. And there's people that like, drinkable coffee straight away.

[00:11:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah. You, you like drinkable coffee straight away.

[00:11:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. Because if it's too hot, I feel like there's [00:12:00] a burnt ness to it and it's just not Right.

[00:12:02] Adam Cox: Like when we got our coffee maker, there's a thermometer and it says what temperature it should be for different drinks.

[00:12:07] Kyle Risi: Is it? Yeah. Interesting. We're gonna get into some of the details around. How hot coffee should be sold a bit later on because it's fascinating. You can quiz me, but I love my coffee stone cold, but I love it to be brewed and served, boiling hot because I love the anticipation of knowing I'm gonna be in strip my coffee in a bit, but I always let it cool down almost to the point where it's stone cold.

[00:12:29] Kyle Risi: That's stupid. I know. That's why I always freak out at you for like stop setting the kettle to boil at 85 degrees I'm like, boil it at a hundred. But then you're like, Kyle, you don't drink your coffee until it's five degrees.

[00:12:40] Adam Cox: Exactly. And also if you're a mum, I understand why hot coffee is important because you don't get to drink your coffee for like ages. So that makes sense to have it extra hot then.

[00:12:50] Kyle Risi: This is gonna be such a great episode because I'm going to tell you some really crazy things that McDonald's think about when it comes to their temperature coffee.

[00:12:56] Adam Cox: They do think of moms

[00:12:57] Kyle Risi: They think about money, Adam. The story of [00:13:00] Stellar Liebeck, it became one of the most widely shared and mocked legal stories in America. But the thing is, Stellar's story is not what people think because crucial information is deliberately left out of the story.

[00:13:10] Kyle Risi: And a lot of folks even today don't even know what the facts are So today, Adam, I wanna tell you the real story behind Stella Lebeck and the infamous McDonald's hot coffee case.

[00:13:22] Kyle Risi: Okay? She didn't lose like an arm or anything, did she?

[00:13:24] Kyle Risi: Put it this way, her vagina will never be the same again. Oh my word. Maybe we should redact that, but it's true. We're not gonna go into the details of it.

[00:13:34] Kyle Risi: Basically. That's, that's the truth.

[00:13:36] Adam Cox: Well, then I get why she perhaps was awarded that money. That hell,

[00:13:40] Kyle Risi: let's not focus on that because let's remember the humanity behind some of these stories today.

[00:13:44] Adam Cox: Oh, the humanity.

[00:13:47] Kyle Risi: So today's episode, I'm going to show you her case and many others like it, that were used to coordinate this effort to strip Americans of their right to recover damages. When a company kind of causes serious harm to you, and not just serious, I'm not [00:14:00] talking life altering, sometimes even fatal harm.

[00:14:03] Kyle Risi: This story has it all.

[00:14:04] Kyle Risi: Adam, at the heart of it, it is a myth to be busted, but also a conspiracy. A conspiracy by massive organizations disguised as grassroot nonprofits pushing what they called the tort revolution.

[00:14:17] Kyle Risi: And today's story will hopefully highlight, especially in today's world, which is filled with endless feeds of kind of one line headlines and click baits, that what you read in their headline isn't actually the full story.

[00:14:29] Adam Cox: No, that happens all the time.

[00:14:31] Kyle Risi: Happens all the time. But also it's always happened. And this is going to highlight just how that concept of people just reading the headlines can really impact the national collective thinking of Americans and also people around the world where those tactics are being used.

[00:14:45] Adam Cox: I say any country that has tabloids is gonna have this right.

[00:14:49] Kyle Risi: And the UK is not exempt from that at all. Look at the different scandals that we've had in the UK with the news of the world and things like that. So yeah, it happens all over the place and it's almost used as a [00:15:00] weapon, which is just crazy to me.

[00:15:01] Adam Cox: Yeah. It reminds me of those headlines with Meghan Markle and the fact, I dunno what she was eating in avocado. Whatever.

[00:15:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They just spin it in a way. Like the fact that they've mentioned the word avocado, like she's eating avocado. It just, even though they don't explicitly say it, it's made out to be. A negative thing.

[00:15:17] Adam Cox: Yeah. I always remember that she was like synonymous with avocados and also she was touching her pregnant stomach as if that was a bad thing.

[00:15:23] Kyle Risi: And then they would show similar headlines when Kate Middleton was doing the same thing and how she was eating healthy to kind of, um,

[00:15:29] Adam Cox: look after her child, look after a child.

[00:15:31] Kyle Risi: And it was avocado and toast

[00:15:33] Adam Cox: and she was lovingly touching her belly.

[00:15:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Not like drawing a touch. So many racial undertones and dog whistle there. That was terrible. Yeah, it was awful. As much as Meghan Markle is insufferable to some people, I personally love her. I love her new show. With love for Meghan?

[00:15:48] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:15:49] Kyle Risi: You cannot better watch it.

[00:15:51] Adam Cox: I, I mean I do get drawn into it 'cause I'm like, why are we watching 30 minutes of her arranging flowers? But you do put flowers, flowers into everything. What is that [00:16:00] about?

[00:16:00] Kyle Risi: I don't know.

[00:16:01] Kyle Risi: Crazy. And she labeled everything like, so her best mate who came over to stay and she's I'm not sure if he's allergic to be nuts. So I'm just gonna label these as, contains nuts. Like he's your best friend. Yeah.

[00:16:11] Adam Cox: You're supposed to have known him for like 15 years. And you still don't know. He knows nuts. Yeah. Just that was show was just weird.

[00:16:17] Kyle Risi: Okay, so before we dive in, we need to build some context because this is going to be one of those episodes where it's a bit of a history lesson, a bit like the Gut milk episode where we talked about government cheese. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:27] Kyle Risi: So I need to first start by asking you, do you know what a TOT is? A tot?

[00:16:31] Kyle Risi: And this is not a Meghan Markle episode

[00:16:33] Kyle Risi: no, I don't.

[00:16:34] Kyle Risi: To put it simply, a tort is basically a civil wrong that is caused to someone who suffers loss or harm. It creates this legal liability for a personal organization who's responsible for causing you that harm, whether it's something that's caused to you through a fall or a break, or maybe you lose your job or worse, as a result, you're basically suing to be compensated while you recover. And if you can't ever work again, then basically this will put you [00:17:00] in good financial standing.

[00:17:01] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:01] Kyle Risi: The term itself goes all the way back to the medieval times, but the idea of taught law as we know it today, especially in the USA, really takes shape between the 1950s and the 1970s during a time of really huge progressive reform aimed at kind of protecting individuals. From corporate abuse.

[00:17:17] Kyle Risi: Like in 1966, for example, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was introduced and his goal essentially was to set standards to reduce road deaths and injuries.

[00:17:27] Kyle Risi: So we have something very similar to that in the uk. So it makes sense that these provisions are put in place because the roads are a really dangerous place.

[00:17:34] Adam Cox: Yeah. They're there to protect people.

[00:17:36] Kyle Risi: Or in 1972, for example, the USA created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and basically that is a federal agency designed to protect Americans from dangerous or defective products.

[00:17:48] Kyle Risi: So if you go off and you buy, let's say a child's toy, you wanna make sure that product is not gonna poison your child if they put that in their mouth.

[00:17:57] Adam Cox: Yeah. So it goes through like testing before it goes through [00:18:00] release.

[00:18:00] Kyle Risi: Exactly. There are these regulations that. American companies need to adhere to in order to make sure that their products don't harm anyone.

[00:18:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's like in Europe or the eu. You've got the CE that has to be on every product to make sure that it's, 100% standard.

[00:18:12] Kyle Risi: That's exactly it.

[00:18:13] Kyle Risi: so it's very similar to what we have in the uk, but the big difference here is regulation. In the UK we are very comfortable with regulators, bodies that inspect businesses and force them to clean up their act, if they're putting people in harm's way,

[00:18:24] Kyle Risi: or if you're injured by like a dodgy product or a practice, a regulator might even pay you directly and then they will then go after the organization to recover those costs. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:35] Kyle Risi: In America. Not so much and maybe it's a legacy thing of having once been under British rule, but Americans, they just do not like government overreach in any way.

[00:18:45] Kyle Risi: So instead of regulators, the USA took a different route. They make it easier for individuals, citizens to be able to take companies to court.

[00:18:54] Kyle Risi: And the idea is simple. If companies were regularly sued and forced to pay out huge amounts [00:19:00] of money in punitive damages, they'd be less likely to act irresponsibly in the future.

[00:19:04] Kyle Risi: I see. So you're hitting the company where it hurts and that is their wallet essentially.

[00:19:09] Adam Cox: That makes sense. But then I feel like surely there should be preemptive measures before it gets to that stage.

[00:19:15] Kyle Risi: There, there are some, there definitely are regulators in America, but there aren't as many as you would find, let's say in Europe for example, where there's a regulatory body for literally everything.

[00:19:23] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:24] Kyle Risi: So lemme give you a clear example. Do you remember like. Must be like 15 years ago when Nutella got dragged for claiming that their chocolate spread was healthy in the uk.

[00:19:33] Adam Cox: No. Did they just say that the fact it was nuts, like, you know, is made from real nuts and stuff like that and that's how they made to say is healthy?

[00:19:40] Kyle Risi: Exactly. When the reality is it can contain two hazelnuts, but a shit ton of sugar and chocolate.

[00:19:44] Adam Cox: Yeah. Always hurts my teeth every time I have it.

[00:19:46] Kyle Risi: Mm. So in the uk, consumer groups like Witch and the Children's Food Campaign challenged Nutellas Ads and the UK Advertising Standards Authority, they launched an investigation and in the end, Nutella agreed to change how they marketed [00:20:00] their products. Basically, You can't sell your product as a healthy kind of alternative breakfast when all it contains is like 95% sugar.

[00:20:08] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:08] Kyle Risi: But in the USA, there's no regulators riding into help, right? So instead, a Californian housewife, she launches a class action lawsuit against Nutellas parent company, Ferrero, and they end up having to pay out $3 million in refunds.

[00:20:23] Kyle Risi: Meaning that if you ever bought a jar of Nutella between a specific kind of time period, you could just go to the supermarket and then you can get your money back. That's how their system work. It's very much citizen led.

[00:20:33] Adam Cox: Okay. Interesting. And so anyone who felt like they were wrongly mis-sold that Natala could just get their money back.

[00:20:40] Kyle Risi: then.

[00:20:40] Adam Cox: How would you prove that though?

[00:20:41] Kyle Risi: I think if you had a receipt, most people wouldn't have the receipt. Maybe they might have a credit card charge. I don't know.

[00:20:46] Adam Cox: So you're telling me if I bought a jar and a teller six months ago that I've used mm-hmmAnd I, I still managed to kept the receipt. I could go in And claim it back

[00:20:53] Kyle Risi: essentially.

[00:20:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Wow.

[00:20:55] Kyle Risi: And this works in America, right? It works for them. Americans were standing up, companies were being held [00:21:00] to account and the whole thing was just functioning as it was intended, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:21:04] Kyle Risi: But guess who didn't like that?

[00:21:06] Kyle Risi: Companies.

[00:21:06] Kyle Risi: Big businesses. Exactly.

[00:21:08] Kyle Risi: They didn't want consumers telling them how to behave. Their attitude was, we should be able to run our businesses however we want, even if it kills someone.

[00:21:17] Kyle Risi: So what they do is they start launching these stealthy, well organized, very deliberate campaigns through fake organizations that pretend to be working in the public's interest.

[00:21:27] Kyle Risi: Basically they were called these NGOs, which stands for kind of non-governmental organizations. It sounds nice, right? It sounds very wholesome. It sounds very grassroots.

[00:21:36] Kyle Risi: But they were only disguising themselves as NGOs. One of them was an organization called The Center for Consumer Freedom, and it's like literally the perfect name, It's got the word consumer in it. It's got the word freedom in it. Two words that Americans love more than anything, but these companies essentially framed themselves as champions for personal liability. They claimed that runaway lawsuits were raising [00:22:00] prices, costing jobs, hurting wages.

[00:22:02] Kyle Risi: They said that basically, consumers were losing choice and that America was becoming a nanny state where kind of the government was having too much control by making it easier for ordinary citizens to be able to sue organizations.

[00:22:15] Adam Cox: Right? Okay.

[00:22:16] Kyle Risi: And the public, they la this up, right? But what most people don't realize is that these grassroots organizations were being bankrolled by companies like Coca-Cola, big Tobacco, and even like companies like genetic engineering firms.

[00:22:30] Adam Cox: So sounds a little corrupt.

[00:22:31] Kyle Risi: It sounds horrendous. Even worse is that behind the scenes they were being run by these massive PR firms like Burnham and co known for playing dirty when it comes to public messaging, right? Really aggressive pr. So when it comes to these fake NGOs, it wasn't just about complaining that Americans were too free to hold companies to account when they literally try to kill them. They were actively taking steps to try and change the law through a narrative. and manipulation.

[00:22:59] Adam Cox: Right. [00:23:00] Okay.

[00:23:00] Kyle Risi: And that is when we get introduced to the American Tort Reform Association, and basically, this was founded in 1970 and it had one goal. They wanted to limit how much companies could be sued for and make it harder for citizens to bring those lawsuits in the first place.

[00:23:17] Adam Cox: I see. So these are the people that are gonna start like putting out fake stories and stuff like that, is that right?

[00:23:22] Kyle Risi: Exactly, So in order to get backing for this tort reform, they need the public to get behind them.

[00:23:28] Kyle Risi: So what they do is they go digging, looking for lawsuits that they can twist into the most ridiculous sounding anecdotes that they can find.

[00:23:37] Kyle Risi: They take real cases, they strip out all the facts, they remove any humanity, surrounding these lawsuits, and they turn them basically into punchlines.

[00:23:45] Kyle Risi: Then at the end of every year, they'll publish a sort of a roundup, of the greatest hits of so-called frivolous lawsuits, and then they'll send them out as press material.

[00:23:54] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:23:54] Kyle Risi: So one example of these is a guy from Seattle who supposedly sued the dairy industry because he claimed [00:24:00] that he'd become addicted to milk, saying that he developed high cholesterol and the government should have put a warning label on the bottle and if they had, then he wouldn't have become addicted to milk.

[00:24:09] Adam Cox: I mean, how is that the government's fault?

[00:24:11] Kyle Risi: I guess it's 'cause of the governments are very heavily invested in kind of the dairy industry, right?

[00:24:16] Adam Cox: Yeah, I understand that. So he became so, addicted. How much was he drinking? Do we know?

[00:24:21] Kyle Risi: Who knows? That's the thing that there's a lot of context that's not even there, right? Yeah. But just anecdotes, they're just punchlines, so it sounds laughable, right? Yeah.

[00:24:30] Kyle Risi: But that's the point. These stories end up spreading like wildfire and they sort of become the equivalent of memes that kind of stood to ridicule the direction that the American legal system was going. Mm-hmm.

[00:24:42] Kyle Risi: It becomes really popular for a time to own one of these novelty desk calendars that sort of look like a stack of post-it notes, and each day you rip one off and on it every day as a brand new stupid lawsuit. And one infamous lawsuit that did the rounds and was in one of these calendars was the case of Judith [00:25:00] Hames, who was a psychic, who won a million dollars because a CAT scan had made her lose her psychic abilities.

[00:25:06] Kyle Risi: Oh my God.

[00:25:08] Adam Cox: Um, so she actually won. Mm-hmm. And how did she even prove that? Do you think this story is true? Well, hang on. Yeah, good point. The one of the milk sounded ridiculous.

[00:25:18] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:18] Adam Cox: No, it can't be, you can't prove that someone's sidekick.

[00:25:21] Kyle Risi: This is 100% true. How did she get the money? How did she prove it?

[00:25:24] Kyle Risi: So it sounds stupid. It sounds wild because it is deliberately distorted to sound that way. Mm-hmm. What actually happened was that Judith did in fact go for a CAT scan.

[00:25:32] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:25:33] Kyle Risi: One of the things they do before you go into the CAT scan is they inject you with an iodine based dye, which they call like a contrast material, which makes it easier to see your body in the scan.

[00:25:42] Kyle Risi: She mentions that she'd had allergic reaction to iodine based dyes in the past and asked if they could administer a dye that's made of something else. Perhaps.

[00:25:49] Kyle Risi: The doctor literally laughs in Judith's face and says There's no such thing as an allergy to these dyes.

[00:25:54] Kyle Risi: He then injects her anyway and almost immediately Judith starts experiencing searing pains [00:26:00] all over her body. Eventually she collapses and she has this massive seizure right there in the hospital.

[00:26:06] Adam Cox: Okay, so she is actually allergic then?

[00:26:08] Kyle Risi: Yes. In the aftermath. She is vomiting up for days. Her balance is wrecked. She's suffering from these constant, debilitating headaches. And from that moment on, it is impossible for her to focus on anything. She can't watch films, she can't read books. She can't even bake a cake without getting these splitting headaches.

[00:26:24] Adam Cox: So this has really affected her. It's almost like made her, I dunno, not immobile or anything, but just a bit you, well, she's ruined her life.

[00:26:30] Kyle Risi: She has, and yes, it is true that Judith was working as a psychic. She would do like a lot of police work assisting on criminal cases. But after that CAT scan injection, she says that she loses her psychic abilities entirely and with it she loses the entire way that she's able to support herself.

[00:26:47] Adam Cox: Ah. Although I am surprised that the police would use a psychic, but Okay.

[00:26:50] Kyle Risi: There was a time they probably not so much anymore, but they certainly did.

[00:26:54] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:26:55] Kyle Risi: Eventually, as the legal system allows and has always allowed, Judith [00:27:00] takes a hospital to court and eventually she's awarded $986,000.

[00:27:05] Kyle Risi: But what most people do not know is those punitive damages were immediately overturned on appeal because the judge decided that the amount was grossly excessive. He orders a retrial, and at that retrial, Judith's case is thrown out altogether. So she ends up with absolutely nothing.

[00:27:20] Adam Cox: But then her livelihood is gone.

[00:27:22] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So it turns out that the only reason, Adam, that she sued in the first place was because her son had died in a car accident. And she was convinced that if she still had her psychic abilities, that she would've been able to foresee this and then prevent it. So in the end, you have this deeply sad story of a woman with a disability who had lost her child, a woman whose legitimate case was thrown out, and she did not profit from this at all.

[00:27:46] Adam Cox: The thing is though, if they had. Explain more of that. You could say that this woman's lost a livelihood. She could then sue and there there's, there's, that's rightful damages. Mm-hmm. So.

[00:27:56] Kyle Risi: But that's not the intent of these anecdotes that exist in this [00:28:00] digest that have been pedaled by these organizations. It's not the point of it. Right? Yeah. They have their own agenda. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:05] Kyle Risi: And none of this nuance ever makes it into those headlines. Instead, her story, like so many others, is stripped down. It's spun around. It's weaponized by these big organizations as an example of why the legal system was broken.

[00:28:18] Kyle Risi: Also, that they can continue putting American lives at risk without any recourse. Isn't that just disgusting?

[00:28:24] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's, it's, it's manipulating the whole thing,

[00:28:26] Kyle Risi: isn't it? It's 100%. And remember, these are all backed by this PR company. Yeah. Bernard and Co. Who are driving these really aggressive narratives to make you change your mind.

[00:28:36] Adam Cox: Well, it's working.

[00:28:37] Kyle Risi: It gets to the point that these distorted stories become so embedded in the American culture that even Ronald Reagan himself uses Judith's story as a punchline during a speech that he's giving and he's laughing about it. He's like, Hey, did you hear about the one about the psychic who sued after losing her powers?

[00:28:53] Kyle Risi: And like people like literally laugh at her, like she's a laughing stock. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:57] Kyle Risi: But something genuinely tragic [00:29:00] has happened and she cannot support herself ever again.

[00:29:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I guess that's all people remember. If people aren't looking into the story and finding out that actually that didn't happen or she did get disabilities at the end of it. But then in the instance where the judge did look at it and then threw her case out, actually she didn't profit from it anyway.

[00:29:18] Kyle Risi: Sure. It's not one of those examples of frivolous lawsuits getting outta hand. If anything

[00:29:23] Adam Cox: this is an example of it. The system working, stopping people from these frivolous lawsuits. Yeah. '

[00:29:28] Kyle Risi: cause there's almost like a check there. Isn't there a check and a balance whereby the judge, yes, it's gone all the way through the court system, but then at the last minute, the judge has gone, Hmm, this is too much.

[00:29:37] Adam Cox: The actually outcome is, is, is correct

[00:29:39] Kyle Risi: Correct. Is a difficult one because the thing is though, maybe she didn't need $980,000 mm-hmm. But she did need something because she physically can't work again.

[00:29:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. Sorry. I meant it's correct in the sense with the sensational storyline yeah.

[00:29:52] Adam Cox: But actually, if there are cases of real people that are being affected and got medical conditions as a result, then well, then the system isn't really working [00:30:00] then for them.

[00:30:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:30:01] Adam Cox: So is there actually an issue is, is it broken the system.

[00:30:04] Kyle Risi: Exactly Like these checks and balances show how ordinary people. Don't have it easy in these lawsuits, so it's not anyone could just willy-nilly go and sue someone and get a payday. Right. Even in Judith Haynes case, when you think that she has a legitimate case, the judge is still had the power to overturn it.

[00:30:21] Kyle Risi: So it's ironic that the Crown Jewel case, the one that says, Hey, look how broken America is actually proves that the system is working exactly as it should. Mm-hmm. Isn't it just ironic?

[00:30:33] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:30:34] Kyle Risi: And just think for a second, just about how effective these NGOs are. They were basically laying the groundwork to convince the public that America needed to limit consumer rights.

[00:30:44] Kyle Risi: When consumer rights weren't even under threat in the first place. It's effective enough that it results in this narrative becoming so embedded in the culture that now you even have the president of the United States referencing it, that's dangerously close to real sweeping change happening [00:31:00] based on a complete lie.

[00:31:01] Kyle Risi: Because if they are successful and people can no longer easily compensate for the harms committed against them, that's potentially life destroying. If you do have an accent and you cannot sue because the governments have made it difficult because of these reforms. Who's gonna look after you?

[00:31:17] Adam Cox: Yeah. What's the success rate of actual cases?

[00:31:20] Kyle Risi: Solo. It is solo anyway, right? Like Judith Hayes's case being overturned is typical. Mm-hmm. Like very little amount of punitive damages ever get paid out, and we'll go into kind of the statistics of it later on, but it's not a problem.

[00:31:35] Kyle Risi: If anything, it's not easy enough. For American citizens to get paid out punitive damages they need cause them harm.

[00:31:42] Adam Cox: They just need to get rid of that PR company.

[00:31:44] Kyle Risi: They do what I'm, it shouldn't even exist. They should be shut down. So it's crazy that with enough money in careful pr, you can essentially manufacture reality that serves your interest, which is kind of what we're seeing right now in American politics under Trump, like you have all these tech [00:32:00] giants all of a sudden becoming Republican, leaning as a way to further their own interests. And they're using money because they know that is the language that Donald Trump can speak, right?

[00:32:08] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Business.

[00:32:09] Kyle Risi: Adam, let's take a quick break and when we get back, I'm finally gonna tell you because I know I've definitely made you work for this all about stellar Liebeck and the infamous McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. If you haven't guessed already. It's not all what it seems.

[00:32:25] Adam Cox: It wasn't hot coffee, it was tea

[00:32:27] Kyle Risi: It, it was Kool-Aid.

[00:32:31] Kyle Risi: So Adam, we're back. What are you thinking?

[00:32:34] Adam Cox: I'm thinking hang on this lady? Mm-hmm.

[00:32:37] Kyle Risi: The hot coffee lady.

[00:32:38] Adam Cox: Yeah. She got awarded the money.

[00:32:40] Kyle Risi: She got awarded the money by a court? Yes.

[00:32:43] Adam Cox: Okay. And it was the full 2.9 million.

[00:32:45] Kyle Risi: The court awarded her the 2.9 million. Whether or not she got the 2.9 million we get to

[00:32:49] Adam Cox: Oh, okay. So interesting. All right. So yeah, I'm interested to know how this went down because obviously she did have an injury by the sounds of things. But what actually happened then? 'cause [00:33:00] it sounds like there's gonna be way more to it, like the other case. It's not just the fact that she spilled some hot water over her.

[00:33:05] Kyle Risi: Yes, that's right. So before the break, we laid out some very important historical context. We talked about how Americans have earned this reputation of being Sue happy,

[00:33:14] Kyle Risi: And this wasn't just some natural cultural traits. It was manufactured by some of America's biggest organizations coordinating together to stigmatize ordinary Americans for suing them when their products were literally killing people.

[00:33:27] Kyle Risi: We also then talked about how this then resulted in these fake NGOs pretending to fight on the side of ordinary Americans against the so-called litigious culture.

[00:33:36] Kyle Risi: Then we talked about some of the practices that these NGOs would undertake by deliberately going around routinely hunting for lawsuits that they could easily strip of all contexts and all humanity, turning real human tragedies into commentary, memes about how broken the American justice system was.

[00:33:53] Kyle Risi: And there's so many out there, there's so many examples of these anecdotal lawsuits do any come to [00:34:00] mind for you?

[00:34:00] Adam Cox: Interestingly enough, Kyle, during the break I did a bit of Googling because I was curious to know what are the crazy lawsuits are there that, maybe I don't know about or it doesn't make sense.

[00:34:10] Adam Cox: But these are the ones that I quickly found. So a man sues Budweiser for failing to help him attract beautiful women.

[00:34:16] Kyle Risi: Okay. Yeah.

[00:34:16] Adam Cox: The guy called Richard Ton filed a lawsuit against, the company because despite consuming more and more of their beer, in order to lure the attractive women in their ads, the lagger failed to make his fantasies of having beautiful women fawn over him a reality.

[00:34:30] Adam Cox: And so he, , he sued them only for $10,000. So not too much claiming to have suffered . Emotional distress, mental injury and financial loss. It was dismissed, of course,

[00:34:39] Kyle Risi: My point. Exactly. So it gets to the point where these stories, the media comes to know that they outrage the public to such a degree that they get desperate to find more of these cases.

[00:34:50] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And the reality is, because of these checks and balances that are in place, a, it gets dismissed because it gets recognized as a ridiculous lawsuit. Mm-hmm. So the judge throws it out [00:35:00] sometimes, even before then, they'll approach a lawyer and the lawyer will be like, this is stupid. And they won. Why are you wasting my time?

[00:35:05] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Or it'll get through the entire process. The jury will side with them, they will then award them damages, but then the judge will go, this is fucking stupid. And he'll give them nothing. So there's all these checks and balances in place, so very few actually get through to the end.

[00:35:18] Kyle Risi: So. In the media's rush to find these frivolous lawsuits, they start to just use mere threats to sue. Mm-hmm. As examples of frivolous lawsuits. Sure. When that's all they are, they're just threats. I can make a threat now to sue you for the most ridiculous thing. And it'll be considered legitimate by these media agencies.

[00:35:36] Adam Cox: I see. So I could sue you for making me do this podcast on a Sunday. And not allow me to go to the cinema.

[00:35:43] Kyle Risi: Do you wanna go to the cinema?

[00:35:44] Adam Cox: Maybe I'd like the option.

[00:35:46] Kyle Risi: Any more examples of lawsuits that you've got?

[00:35:48] Adam Cox: Uh, Yeah, I've got a guy, who sued himself,

[00:35:50] Adam Cox: in 1995, inmate Robert Lee Brock from Indian Creek Correctional Center, filed a lawsuit against himself for 5 million for violating [00:36:00] his own civil rights. He contended that his religion forbids the use of alcohol and that even so, he made the choice to drink, which led him to commit the crimes that had sent him behind bars. It makes no sense.

[00:36:13] Kyle Risi: But the thing is though, the point of suing someone is to put yourself into the position that you were in before the incident happened. How is him suing himself? Gonna put him back in the right position?

[00:36:23] Adam Cox: I dunno, but. Apparently he angrily, demanded 5 million for himself, but insisted that the state should pay it on his behalf. Ah. 'cause he was a warden of the state. And therefore, that's how he blamed it.

[00:36:33] Kyle Risi: And what was the outcome?

[00:36:34] Adam Cox: It was dismissed

[00:36:36] Kyle Risi: by himself. Yeah.

[00:36:37] Adam Cox: Uh, then I got a guy that sus Michael Jordan because he looked like him. And it was basically harassed for 15 years. Uhhuh it was dropped because it's ridiculous.

[00:36:45] Adam Cox: Exactly. And, a high school student sus were being woken up in class. Was it dismissed?yeah. They suffered severe injuries in his left eardrum, I guess some kind of loud noise, it was dismissed. Yes.

[00:36:56] Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, there's very few actual real examples ' cause you don't, [00:37:00] unless you read into that, you're not gonna know.

[00:37:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. The headline makes it sound ridiculous. And

[00:37:04] Kyle Risi: that it was an actual lawsuit. Right.

[00:37:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:06] Kyle Risi: It's not, it's just a threat.

[00:37:08] Adam Cox: It's basically anyone right now just putting a Facebook post about anything online. Exactly.

[00:37:12] Kyle Risi: And of course. This also led us to Judith Haynes, who obviously had this heartbreaking story that was twisted and manipulated beyond recognition, only to be then used to further these NGOs agenda.

[00:37:24] Kyle Risi: But now I'm gonna tell you about Judith's successor because an elderly woman is just about to buy a McDonald's coffee, a cup of coffee that is going to change her life forever, but also going to set America off a very dangerous path.

[00:37:39] Kyle Risi: So Judith's story does eventually fade from public memory because the world's attention shifts to Stellar.

[00:37:47] Kyle Risi: The story that people heard was simple. An elderly woman was driving her car. She spilled McDonald's hot coffee in her lap and decided to sue for 2.9 million out of sheer agreed. And at the time this was a [00:38:00] non-story. It didn't even make headlines until the trial was over when the Associated Press picked it up.

[00:38:04] Kyle Risi: And that was the very article I read to you at the very beginning of the show do you know much about the Associated Press? No. So in the US the Associated Press or the AP for short is what they call it is like a non-for-profit news agency.

[00:38:16] Kyle Risi: It's a bit like the BBC in terms of reputation. It's known for being really objective, it's reliable. They're known for winning tons and tons of awards, like poll surprises, et cetera. And because of that AP articles are widely syndicated, which means that other publications will often use AP reporting as like the backbone of their story.

[00:38:34] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And they were pretty much the only publication to report on the story at the time. Nobody else showed up to court.

[00:38:40] Kyle Risi: So with everything we know about this period in history, the rife manipulation happening, let's reread that headline just one more time. So the original article was posted in August of 1994, and the headline was, woman Burned by Hot McDonald's Coffee gets $2.9 million.

[00:38:57] Kyle Risi: Hearing that headline, now, rather than being [00:39:00] outraged initially as you were, what do you think now?

[00:39:02] Adam Cox: I just think like it's just a load of bologna or there's more information that's been left out.

[00:39:08] Kyle Risi: It could be both. It doesn't have to be all. It could be like, a load of bologna and a lot of context that's been left out, I would say. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And the thing is though, that article I read to you in the beginning, that's not even the full article, and that's very important.

[00:39:21] Kyle Risi: That was only the very first few lines that I read to you. The AP have this tendency to write in what they call the inverted pyramid style.

[00:39:28] Adam Cox: So inverted pyramid makes you think start big at top and then go smaller to the bottom.

[00:39:32] Kyle Risi: 100% meaning, of course, the most important facts go at the very top.

[00:39:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah, supporting details, follow, and then the background kind of details come later on. And this way of writing means that there's no real narrative to the story. There is very often little emotional context. It's just kind of bullet point facts almost.

[00:39:47] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:39:48] Kyle Risi: Which feels weird to us today 'cause we're used to kind of stories telling an actual narrative. But back then this was super typical, especially for outlets committed to just a fact reporting.

[00:39:58] Kyle Risi: The upside of this [00:40:00] style is that editors can repurpose these stories from the AP and use them as the backbone of their own stories and in order to do that, they just need to like how many lines I've got like 30 lines that I need to fill.

[00:40:10] Kyle Risi: I know that if I just cut all the lines from the bottom, that's the least important information as it goes. And I'm just left with the solid facts at the top it makes editing super, super easy allowing you to create a shorter version without losing any of the main points.

[00:40:23] Kyle Risi: The downside to this is that it can create gaps where context just falls away,

[00:40:28] Kyle Risi: and this is very common, when every other publication picks up the AP story, they shorten it, they strip it down even further, so it can fit into 20 lines. Editing is easy because they can just cut from the bottom and they can do this with very little thought because the AP coverage is extremely trusted, right?

[00:40:43] Kyle Risi: That's what their reputation is built on, so they don't need to go and fact check and double check and triple check, et cetera. Sure. They can just go cut 20 lines. There's my story.

[00:40:51] Adam Cox: Okay. So what was the original article about this woman then? 'cause I'm just thinking they've obviously taken that. Okay. She got burnt.

[00:40:57] Adam Cox: She sued two $0.9 [00:41:00] million. But what, what was else was in that article?

[00:41:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so in the original article, which we'll get to in a little more detail later on, basically that's where they put all the information around the negligence that McDonald's was exhibiting and the dangers that they were putting the public at, and the calculated kind of, tactics that they were employing to maximize profits, but also the extent of her injuries,

[00:41:23] Adam Cox: because it makes me feel like, oh, did she crash? Or anything like that? And therefore, that's why she is, she needs that money for a medical treatment.

[00:41:30] Kyle Risi: 100%. She does need that money for her medical expenses. But you said crash, right? Mm-hmm. She wasn't even driving What? Mm-hmm.

[00:41:38] Kyle Risi: Again, that doesn't matter because when the story is repurposed, all that background info, the stuff that justifies this lawsuit in a human way is just cut. and it creates this perfect storm because from there, local TV channels, they pick up the news, which is very often the clip stories of the original article.

[00:41:55] Kyle Risi: Late night TV shows, they pick it up, they start making jokes about it, and the whole thing [00:42:00] just explodes across America. It becomes this ultimate proof of, look how crazy Americans have gotten.

[00:42:07] Kyle Risi: Even today, when you ask most people. What they remember of this, they will literally say, yeah, it was about some Karen who spilled coffee while driving and then had the audacity to sue McDonald's and make millions in a payday. But none of that was true.

[00:42:22] Kyle Risi: So here's what actually happened, okay?

[00:42:24] Kyle Risi: On the morning of Thursday, February the 27th, 1992, Christiano and his 79-year-old grandmother, Stella Beck, were driving home after dropping off Chris's uncle at the airport. Stella, had just moved to Albuquerque from Tucson, and she was planning on buying a home there so that she could be closer to her family after her husband had tragically died.

[00:42:44] Kyle Risi: And even at 79, Ella was incredibly active. Like she was really articulate. She was sharp. Literally just a week earlier, she was digging up a huge tree in her back garden.

[00:42:54] Kyle Risi: She's 79, she was 79. So she is also strong as well.

[00:42:57] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:57] Kyle Risi: On the way home, they decide to stop at McDonald's for [00:43:00] breakfast. Chris goes to the drive through, he pays for their meals. He hands Stella, a 49 cents cup of coffee, served in like a white styrofoam cup, 49 cents. I know imagine. Remember that world?

[00:43:11] Kyle Risi: And by the way, remember she gets $2.9 million, which is the equivalent of two days worth of coffee sales. 49 cents per cup. Bloody hell. That goes to show you how much coffee they're selling across the country.

[00:43:24] Kyle Risi: Stella then asks Chris to pull over in the parking lot so she can add cream and sugar to a coffee. 'cause that's how she liked it. Now, something very important here in 1992, cup holders in cars, they're just not a thing, Adam, but where do you put your cup? Exactly. They, you just don't, you don't have anywhere to put 'em. Especially in Chris's 1989 Ford probe, brand new cars in the early nineties. Were starting to have them, but most cars weren't brand new.

[00:43:48] Kyle Risi: Then they were like, toying with death, just there 100 drinking in a car without a cup holder.

[00:43:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Crazy. But also she's not drinking while she's driving. They are pulled over and still it is a passenger. [00:44:00] She places a cup of coffee between her thighs to kind of steady it while she's opening up the lid.

[00:44:04] Kyle Risi: As she lifts the lid on the far side, the entire cup tips over and dumps scolding hot coffee directly into her lap. Stella is wearing sweatpants, right?

[00:44:13] Kyle Risi: Meaning that the fabric instantly soaks up the coffee and is holding it against her skin. She obviously screams out in pain. She's burning as fast as she can.

[00:44:21] Kyle Risi: Bear in mind, she's 79 years old. She gets out of the car, she rips off her wet clothes. Chris scrambles to the boot. He grabs a bedsheet and wraps it around her to obviously protect grandma's kind of modesty, and then he helps her into the backseat.

[00:44:33] Kyle Risi: Stella's body is already going to shock at this point. Her temperature's plummeting. She starts to shake violently. She's becoming really nauseous.

[00:44:41] Kyle Risi: Oh my God.

[00:44:41] Kyle Risi: To the point that she's close to passing out from the pain.

[00:44:44] Adam Cox: Wow. That's a lot like, I mean, I've, you know, everyone's kind of burnt themself, but I guess this is a lot of hot liquid.

[00:44:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah. In a lot of sensitive areas. Yeah. Your inner thighs, Adam.

[00:44:54] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:44:54] Kyle Risi: Chris naturally races her to the nearest hospital, but it's been overwhelmed by patients from a pile up on the highway [00:45:00] earlier in that day, so they have to get back into the car and drive across town to another hospital. By the time that Stella is seen, 45 minutes has passed since she was first burned.

[00:45:10] Kyle Risi: Doctors said that because of her age, the level of shock that she was in and the severity of her burns, they genuinely thought that she was going to die.

[00:45:18] Adam Cox: What a way to go if that was the case

[00:45:21] Kyle Risi: in excruciating pain.

[00:45:22] Kyle Risi: Stella sustained second degree and third degree burns over 20% of her body, including her thighs, her buttocks, and her groin Adam, her burns were so bad that her labia had fused together.

[00:45:36] Adam Cox: Oh my. That hot.

[00:45:37] Kyle Risi: That is somebody's grandmother. Isn't that awful?

[00:45:40] Kyle Risi: That is terrible.

[00:45:42] Kyle Risi: It was so bad that they had to bring in skin specialists to remove the skin from her thighs and graft new skin over her burns, which was incredibly painful for her.

[00:45:50] Kyle Risi: In the end, Stella is left with permanent, horrific scarring, permanent disability.

[00:45:54] Kyle Risi: She has to spend eight days in hospital, but eventually she insists on discharging herself because she just [00:46:00] cannot afford the bills. Bloody how, what a system. Her insurance company did agree to pay 80% of the costs, but even then, she didn't have enough money for the 20%.

[00:46:08] Kyle Risi: I didn't say this before, but she had $10,000 saved up from the sale of her old house, which she was going to use as a down payment on a new one in Albuquerque so she could be close to her family.

[00:46:16] Kyle Risi: But even that was gone. It was all swallowed up by the medical bills and it still was not enough to cover them. So she had to discharge herself. She had no choice. Isn't that heartbreaking? That's your grandma.

[00:46:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm just shocked about how much like damage this has done.

[00:46:31] Kyle Risi: Exactly. All of that detail is left out of the retelling of this situation.

[00:46:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. 'cause it just makes it sound like, oh, she's, um, before you said that was in her lap, that she's just sipped it and like burnt her mouth kind of thing. Exactly. And you think like, well, everyone's done that

[00:46:44] Kyle Risi: Essentially, ' cause of the medical bills, she's left homeless. Mm-hmm. That $10,000 that she was hoping to use as a down payment has now gone medical bills and she's stuck with her daughter,

[00:46:54] Adam Cox: which Yeah.

[00:46:54] Adam Cox: The daughter's like, you know, get your own house.

[00:46:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:46:57] Adam Cox: I mean, I dunno what the relationship was like. No. But, [00:47:00] yeah, even still, that's not the plan. The whole idea was it's just been ruined. And she hasn't really still got the money.

[00:47:05] Kyle Risi: And remember, this is a woman who is seven, nine years old. Extremely independent, extremely active, really alert, like she now doesn't have anything. How awful for you to lose that independence? Yeah. At that age.

[00:47:17] Kyle Risi: At this point, Stella's daughter, Judy decides that she's going to reach out to McDonald's, not to sue them, but to ask them if they could review their coffee procedures and if they're willing to help with Stella's medical costs.

[00:47:27] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Her justification, Adam, is that she has insurance on her own home. If someone breaks her arm or hurts themselves while they're visiting, she would be expected to help out with any damages, right?

[00:47:36] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:47:37] Kyle Risi: In the letter, she requests that McDonald's send them their insurance details so they can seek assistance with $20,000 that Stella has now owed on her medical bills and to help her get back on her feet.

[00:47:47] Kyle Risi: All reasonable stuff, right? Yeah. There's nothing unreasonable about that.

[00:47:50] Adam Cox: that's a very conservative amount, really. Mm-hmm. And actually probably just all that she needs in order to get by and move on sort of thing.

[00:47:56] Kyle Risi: And to put yourself back in the position that you were in before this happened. Yeah. [00:48:00] Minus obviously the physical disability that she now has and the pain. Yeah.

[00:48:03] Kyle Risi: McDonald's writes back to her and say that the best they can do is offer her $800, which they felt was more than generous, considering that she was the one responsible for spilling the coffee into her own lap.

[00:48:12] Kyle Risi: Now. Stella's not disputing that. She 100% agrees. Her argument was that McDonald's, either company-wide or at that location was serving coffee at a dangerously hot temperature. Mm-hmm.

[00:48:24] Kyle Risi: Judy writes back. They ignore her completely. She tries one more time, just radio silence.

[00:48:29] Kyle Risi: Basically, McDonald's was standing by their belief that Stella was solely responsible for spilling the coffee on herself, but get this, they also argued that she was responsible because she did not remove her sweatpants fast enough.

[00:48:41] Adam Cox: I don't think that's any of their business. Exactly.

[00:48:45] Kyle Risi: Yes. That's a good way of putting, it's none of your business. They said basically if she'd removed them faster the burns wouldn't have been that bad. They also said that the only reason her injuries were so severe. Was because of her old skin, basically. God, if she had been [00:49:00] younger, they claimed her injuries would not have been so bad, like f old people. Right. And they're old skin. Yeah.

[00:49:06] Adam Cox: If you were young and hot, you would've been fine. Yeah. What a bunch of bums I feels like this family's been very reasonable. Could have been a whole lot worse, whatever. And they've, yeah. They're just being shafted.

[00:49:17] Kyle Risi: So they tell her that if she was not happy with the $800 that they offered her, then they are free to take them to court.

[00:49:24] Kyle Risi: And that's because McDonald's knew, particularly in New Mexico, that they'd never been a precedent where a jury had ruled in favor of a plaintiff in a product liability case. So they felt that they were confident that they were gonna win.

[00:49:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. But like they underestimated an old lady with a burnt crotch.

[00:49:40] Kyle Risi: That's somebody's grandma. Yeah.

[00:49:41] Adam Cox: What's the phrase? Um, hell have no thought theory like a woman scorned.

[00:49:46] Kyle Risi: Or scolded.

[00:49:47] Adam Cox: Or scolded. Yeah.

[00:49:48] Kyle Risi: I feel awful for her. And the thing is though, as you can see, I can feel myself getting angrier and angrier as we unravel the story a bit more, from just a summary in one sentence.

[00:49:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. You just think like of anyone's [00:50:00] mom or grandma that is our elderly, they're just not out to, probably, I don't know, get a quick rich,

[00:50:05] Kyle Risi: she's lived her life. Yeah. She's had her kids, she's been married, she's had a house. What is she looking to gain? She just wanna enjoy the rest of her retirement.

[00:50:12] Kyle Risi: She said that she's never sued anyone in her life. This was not a lottery ticket for her. This was essentially her last resort. Like she cannot live with her daughter for the rest of her life. It's not fair on Stella and it's not fair on her daughter.

[00:50:26] Kyle Risi: So Stella finds a lawyer, someone who'd actually handled a similar case six years earlier when a woman had also suffered a third degree burn from McDonald's coffee.

[00:50:34] Adam Cox: And did that person what?

[00:50:36] Kyle Risi: Well, the case never actually went to trial. They did settle out a court for $27,000. But honestly, that is more than what seller was hoping for.

[00:50:43] Kyle Risi: So she didn't want a fortune, but also she didn't wanna be a burden. And that was enough for her to not be a burden.

[00:50:48] Kyle Risi: Her lawyer files a lawsuit against McDonald's for gross negligence, for selling a product that was manufactured in a way that was unreasonably dangerous eventually.

[00:50:57] Kyle Risi: On August the eighth, 1994, the case [00:51:00] goes to trial. Both sides bring experts in to testify how hot liquid needs to be to cause a third or second degree burn.

[00:51:07] Kyle Risi: One expert claims that 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 70 degrees Celsius, it takes just 20 seconds of contact to cause a third degree burn. That doesn't seem that hot to me, does it?

[00:51:20] Adam Cox: The thing is that if you do accidentally get boiling water over you, tends to be like a little bit like a splash and for a second. But you've got that on your skin for 20 seconds. Mm. Yeah. That's gonna hurt.

[00:51:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's a good point. 'cause normally it is just a splash, right?

[00:51:33] Kyle Risi: At 180 degrees Fahrenheit. That's eight two degrees Celsius. It takes just 12 to 15 seconds to cause a third degree burn.

[00:51:40] Kyle Risi: At 190 degrees Fahrenheit, that's 90 degrees Celsius. It takes less than three seconds to cause a third degree burn.

[00:51:47] Kyle Risi: It's then revealed that McDonald's corporate policy was to service coffee between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 20 to 30 degrees hotter than any of their competitors.

[00:51:57] Adam Cox: That's why I boil the kettle at 85 [00:52:00] degrees so that by the time you drink it, it's below 80 degrees.

[00:52:03] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But take so much longer before I wanna drink it, like hours

[00:52:07] Adam Cox: that, that's not my problem.

[00:52:08] Kyle Risi: So get this, initially McDonald's said that the reason why they serve their coffee at that temperature between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit is to ensure maximum extraction of flavor.

[00:52:19] Kyle Risi: Now I get that, that's fine, but like it does not need to stay at their temperature. When it's handed over to the customer. Right. They can make a batch. They can maintain it as a safer temperature. Mm-hmm. Or even drop like a drop of cold water into it. Yeah. Bring down their temperature.

[00:52:31] Kyle Risi: Then Stella's lawyer shows the jury photos of Stella's injuries. And Adam, I promise you, they are horrific. I'm not gonna describe them. They are awful. If you wanna look them up, go ahead and look them up. You'll not like it. It genuinely looks like she has been savagely attacked by a bear. Oh my word. Mm.

[00:52:49] Kyle Risi: So much so that one of the juries, Jack Elliot, he goes home that night and he tells his daughters that you are never to drink coffee while driving in a car ever again. He's like [00:53:00] that. Is it just that's how severe these injuries are?

[00:53:03] Adam Cox: Yeah. For McDonald's not to take that seriously enough. And just any kind of sympathy on this. 'cause this isn't just someone that's got a little burn, then it's, this is horrendous.

[00:53:11] Kyle Risi: Maintain that thought there. cause you've landed on the money there. Think about the sympathy that you think that McDonald's should have for this woman. Mm-hmm

[00:53:19] Kyle Risi: Next they bring in McDonald's quality assurance manager to the stand. They ask him, why has McDonald's never consulted an expert about the safe serving temperature of their coffee? He literally laughs and he goes, why would we need to do that

[00:53:32] Kyle Risi: you ready for this Uhhuh? And the lawyer pulls out a stack of documents and says, because of these 700 other incidents where customers have brought complaints or attempted to sue you because they were burned by your company's coffee.

[00:53:45] Adam Cox: That's 700. This isn't like just now a couple of incidents. That is a lot for, surely for you to actually review your policies and processes and put something in place.

[00:53:54] Kyle Risi: Half a million dollars was paid out across all of those settlements and yet never did [00:54:00] McDonald's go. Maybe our coffee is too hot. Yeah.

[00:54:03] Kyle Risi: What do you think the manager's response was?

[00:54:06] Adam Cox: I'm guessing I'm not gonna like it.

[00:54:08] Kyle Risi: He says, 700 might seem a lot, but out of all the billions of cups of coffee we sell every year, those are really insignificant numbers. And get this, Adam, he says, I'm really extremely happy with those odds.

[00:54:22] Adam Cox: That what Dick? Those, I mean, yes, it is a very small number in the grand scheme of things, but that is still too high. For people to get burnt, and surely just dropping it down five degrees would probably reduce that. Mm-hmm. Way lower. And then you wouldn't be paying out any half a million dollars.

[00:54:38] Kyle Risi: It gets worse. It's then revealed that McDonald's had actually calculated how much money they would lose if they lowered their coffee temperature.

[00:54:45] Kyle Risi: Lower temperatures means customers would drink the coffee faster and therefore ask for a free refill, which is apparently a thing back then.

[00:54:52] Kyle Risi: They said that preventing these refills with hotter coffee would save more money by a factor of 100, and so it [00:55:00] was far more profitable to simply settle all those 700 cases. In short, protecting and maximizing profits was more important than protecting people.

[00:55:09] Adam Cox: Yeah, but these people have got some serious injuries. Mm-hmm.

[00:55:13] Kyle Risi: When asked if they would ever consider changing their policy, McDonald's said, there are more serious dangers in a McDonald's restaurant than the temperature of our coffee.

[00:55:21] Adam Cox: They're not budging on this, are they?

[00:55:23] Kyle Risi: They're not. That's the important bit, because throughout this trial, McDonald's was so arrogant, almost sociopathic. They generally did not think that they had done anything wrong. Meanwhile, the jury completely outraged because behind every single one of those statistics that McDonald's shrugged at was a real life person. That's someone's child. That's someone's grandmother. It's someone's mother.

[00:55:41] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:42] Kyle Risi: So finally the jury, they deliver their verdict. They assign 20% of the blame to Stella. Fair enough. She spilled the damn coffee. Yeah. But they assign the remaining 80% of blame to McDonald's.

[00:55:53] Kyle Risi: They then award Stella $160,000 in compensatory damages. And because McDonald's contact was found to be willful, [00:56:00] reckless, and malicious, they award $2.7 million in punitive damages to Stella because that's how much revenue McDonald made for two days worth of coffee sales.

[00:56:11] Kyle Risi: So $2.7 million seems like a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, Adam, it's just a drop in the ocean. For them it's two days.

[00:56:17] Adam Cox: Why two days? Any reason that they settle on that

[00:56:19] Kyle Risi: or it's just what the jury came up with.

[00:56:21] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:56:22] Kyle Risi: And it's a big bloody number. It's too big for someone like Stella.

[00:56:26] Adam Cox: You alluded that maybe she didn't get all of that. Is this why it then puts a down on her case

[00:56:31] Kyle Risi: To a degree, I think it's a gross number that when it's reported, if they said she gets like $160,000, then it'd just probably be another headline that faded away into obscurity. But it's that big number.

[00:56:40] Adam Cox: It's barely even a headline. People go, oh yeah, well, something bad went happened, or whatever.

[00:56:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But even in this case, just like with Judith Hames, the system steps into check itself. 'cause after the trial, the judge reduces the punitive damages from 2.7 million to $480,000. He applies what they call triple damages. Basically [00:57:00] it's three times the amount of compensatory damages that she needs. In a nutshell, it equates to Stella's total medical expenses multiplied by three.

[00:57:06] Adam Cox: Okay?

[00:57:07] Kyle Risi: It's a safeguard, right? It's there to make sure people do not use a course for windfall payments that is baked into the system's part of how the American system works. Therefore, even further proving that, it's a myth that these frivolous lawsuits, are causing America to be blood dry, right?

[00:57:24] Kyle Risi: Because they have these different checks in place, yet another check. And even then, McDonald's, they continue to appeal. They keep fighting, and in the end, stellar settles for an undisclosed amount, which they know is far less than 480,000. But we never find out what that is because the condition of them ending the case was that she signed an NDA that prevented her from ever speaking publicly about this case ever again, even to defend herself when this blows up.

[00:57:49] Adam Cox: Interesting. So she just has to stay quiet and people go like, how dare you get 2.9 million or whatever. Mm-hmm. She's like, well I didn't, but it's a lie. Trying to say that a lie. Yeah. So it sounds like she [00:58:00] probably got more than 27,000 or whatever it was.

[00:58:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She got probably a decent amount and definitely, hopefully covered. All of her expenses, I think it's not about how much she got, it's about how much McDonald's should have been on the hook for. Because while $30,000 would've been more than enough money for someone like Stella, that wouldn't have been enough to change McDonald's practices. Yeah. They should have been sued for a hundred million, 200 million, whatever it would be.

[00:58:26] Kyle Risi: An amount that would make them change their practices. Because the whole point of the American government making it easier for ordinary citizens to sue businesses is the idea that the more people that sue them, the more incentive they'll be for these businesses to change their practices.

[00:58:41] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And 2.7 million is not even enough to get them to still wanna change, their temperature water. What would've been, if it was two years worth of sales, they probably would've changed their, their temperature. Right.

[00:58:50] Adam Cox: Yeah. And they probably would've got rid of their free refills or whatever, do you know what I mean? They would've changed something about how they coffee.

[00:58:56] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So they're fighting over pennies with ordinary [00:59:00] citizens that they have done harm to. It is disgusting.

[00:59:03] Adam Cox: Do you think they do that? I mean, I understand that they've got to, ensure that not everyone goes after them and they've gotta stay and stand strong. And I get that from a business perspective. You've gotta protect your reputation, this, that, and the money and everything. But, did, they put any changes in after this.

[00:59:18] Kyle Risi: They, there will be some changes that will gradually come out as time goes on, but right now there's no changes. They still are adamant that Stellar is the bad guy here. And that is how the Associated Press finally report on this case. They were the only press association there. And following this article, this is how the whole country comes to find out about Stellar Lebeck.

[00:59:38] Kyle Risi: And because America was already primed to be outraged by these types of stories. Naturally the story just explodes from there. Newspapers, they clip the story down to fit their available space, cutting the details about Stella's injuries, about McDonald's corporate callousness putting money ahead of people and they focus only on the crazy old woman who sues McDonald's and gets millions of dollars narrative.

[00:59:58] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:58] Kyle Risi: It's eventually picked up by [01:00:00] late night shows who mock her for literally months. It evolves from a headline joke to just a general reference. Like you'd just be out with your mates or something.

[01:00:08] Kyle Risi: You'd be like, oh, I'm so skin this month. You know, maybe I'll go to Starbucks and like spill some coffee and get a windfall. You know what I mean? Yeah. It becomes a reference. And TV storylines center on parodies of this story. like In Seinfeld for example, they do an entire episode where Kramer burns himself on hot coffee that he tries to smuggle into the cinema in his trousers.

[01:00:29] Adam Cox: Well, that's a mistake.

[01:00:30] Kyle Risi: Exactly. He obviously falls over and then he tries to sue and they make an entire show about it. It even features in an American country music song by Toby Keith, where the lyrics are plasma's getting bigger. Jesus getting smaller, spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars.

[01:00:45] Kyle Risi: Interesting. Stella never thought she'd make a reference into a song.

[01:00:49] Kyle Risi: Hey, do you know what things can change for you no matter what age you are?

[01:00:52] Adam Cox: That's very true.

[01:00:53] Kyle Risi: And even today when you ask people about it, they'll say she spilled coffee while driving and then got millions of dollars. And there is this [01:01:00] amazing video on YouTube where people are interviewed in the streets like 20 years later, and they're asked like, what do they remember of the story?

[01:01:06] Kyle Risi: And they're like all the usual stuff. Like she wanted a payday and she sued because the coffee was too hot. Like, well, duh. And like she made a mockery of the justice system. And then they show them photos of her injuries and you can literally watch their face change adam, they're horrified. They just cannot believe the extent of her injuries.

[01:01:25] Adam Cox: Yeah. If it's not public knowledge then and they've been told or, influenced by the media. Then yeah, what what else? That's else to think.

[01:01:31] Kyle Risi: That's, but by this point, 20 years later, it was too late. The story become kind of another weapon, another tool used by these fake NGOs to push this talk reform narrative.

[01:01:40] Kyle Risi: New stations, radio shows, TV shows are all run with it. They run with bite-sized versions of it. They strip back the facts all designed just to create this outrage and it all, not one single journalist ever bothered to reach out to Stella for comment.

[01:01:56] Kyle Risi: All it would've taken is just one phone call or knocking on it [01:02:00] all, if they did, the world would've heard the truth. Right. They would've seen her struggling to stand up.

[01:02:04] Adam Cox: She wasn't allowed to say anything, wasn't she?

[01:02:07] Kyle Risi: Doesn't matter.

[01:02:07] Kyle Risi: Like they can go and speak to her family. It's her family that later come forward. They didn't sign no NDA?

[01:02:12] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay.

[01:02:13] Kyle Risi: But no one reached out. If someone called me up and I was Stella, I'd be like, lemme put you onto the phone to my daughter. ' cause she didn't sign the NDA.

[01:02:18] Adam Cox: She'll tell you everything. Yeah. I guess these news reporters, whatever, they're just copying other articles, like you say. Mm-hmm. So no one's bothering to fact check or anything like that?

[01:02:28] Kyle Risi: No. And it's a perfect storm because it all originated from that one story. The ap, which is renowned for it's non-biased and objective reporting. Yeah. They haven't done anything wrong. I'm not blaming them for it, but it's just, it's a perfect storm.

[01:02:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:02:41] Kyle Risi: Meanwhile, this story creates this insatiable appetite for more crazy lawsuit stories. And so the media scramble to find any example they can find. But there aren't many going around because actual ridiculous lawsuits either don't come of anything or they're thrown out of court.

[01:02:54] Kyle Risi: So the press starts to dress up mere threats to sue as examples of these crazy lawsuits, which is [01:03:00] mad because like I said earlier on, anyone can make a threat.

[01:03:03] Kyle Risi: They run with a story of a couple having dinner one night on their honeymoon when they're sat near the smoking area. They finished their dinner, everything is lovely. But then a few weeks later, they sue the restaurant for $1 million saying that the drifting smoke had upset their expected right to conjure happiness.

[01:03:19] Adam Cox: The smoke. The smoke. Did they, that must have been dismissed, right?

[01:03:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it. It's just a threat. It didn't come of anything.

[01:03:26] Adam Cox: I'm gonna threaten every company. Exactly.

[01:03:28] Kyle Risi: And then you go to the media and then people go, oh, this is another crazy lawsuit that's gonna outrage America. But it didn't come of anything. Yeah. Got thrown out.

[01:03:35] Kyle Risi: Another one tells of a convicted sex offender running away from police in Maine who decides to hide out in the woods for a few days. This is Maine in North America, and basically he loses a couple toes with frostbite and so he decides to sue lease for not catching him sooner.

[01:03:51] Adam Cox: That's so stupid.

[01:03:53] Kyle Risi: The important thing to understand here is that. These cases almost never actually make it to court, because of course they're ridiculous. No [01:04:00] serious lawyer wants to touch them. And so in the desperation to find crazy lawsuits, the media starts reporting on mere threats to Sue.

[01:04:05] Kyle Risi: And even this fact alone shows you, Adam, that the system is designed to weed out these chances. First, no lawyer wants to touch it, so check one, right? If they do, then a judge throws it out for being idiotic. Check two. And even then, if it does somehow make it to trial, the judge can limit the punitive damages to triple damages. just to make sure that people don't profit more than they're actually genuinely going to need,

[01:04:31] Kyle Risi: Check three so the system has this way of balancing itself out. The idea that people are successfully suing over the silliest things in America is just a myth. It doesn't exist.

[01:04:42] Kyle Risi: Obviously some cases are legitimate like Stellas and Judith Hames, but in their reporting, the media strip away all the humanity, all the important justifiable details and what you're left with is just a bad shit sounding story.

[01:04:55] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:04:56] Kyle Risi: Another good example of another genuine case that gets [01:05:00] twisted to sound dumb is that of a guy with a ladder.

[01:05:03] Kyle Risi: The version you hear is typically this idiot sets up a ladder over frozen manure, he slips and then he falls, and then he sues on millions and millions of dollars.

[01:05:10] Kyle Risi: But when you actually look at the details, you find out there's no manure. The guy was actually climbing up a ladder that was certified to hold a thousand pounds, it was even labeled as such. So his argument was that if the label says it can hold a thousand pounds and I'm like 180 pounds, then I expect it to hold at least 180 pounds. And because it didn't, he's now disabled. And so this is a very black and white product liability case at hand.

[01:05:34] Adam Cox: So where did the manure come from And the frozen manure it,

[01:05:37] Kyle Risi: it again, it just gets distorted and twisted to make it sound ridiculous, right? Okay,

[01:05:42] Kyle Risi: so now you've got like this headline's like, haha, look at this guy suing because he slips on cowboy. There just was no cowboy. So the point is. In the middle of all of this media frenzy that's happening, this moral panic, the Republican party starts seeing this as an opportunity to start using this anger to win [01:06:00] public support during their 1994 midterms, promising that they're gonna crack down on these ridiculous lawsuits.

[01:06:06] Kyle Risi: with what they call the contract with America for Americans, and if it's passed, it'll do two major things. It's gonna place a cap on punitive damages in product liability cases, and also it would introduce the loser pays clause. Meaning if you sue a company and you lose, you have to pay all of their legal costs.

[01:06:27] Adam Cox: That's gonna discourage people from doing anything, I guess. Stupid.

[01:06:31] Kyle Risi: It's gonna discourage them from doing anything.

[01:06:33] Adam Cox: Yeah, even, yeah, even more so, because people feel like, well, I lost a leg, but I'm worried that I'm not gonna get anything.

[01:06:38] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Even if it's genuine, case where you can't work. You're gonna say to yourself, well that's bloody McDonald's. They've got the best lawyers in the world, if I lose, I've gotta pay all of their lawyer fees. Yeah, yeah.

[01:06:48] Kyle Risi: When you think about, who this hurts the most, it's not these giant corporations, it's poor people. It's ordinary people who would never be able to absorb those kind of costs.

[01:06:58] Kyle Risi: Basically, if this bill has [01:07:00] passed, the next stellar lie back will never have her day in court ever again.

[01:07:04] Adam Cox: And I guess it's like imminent, is it, or the next year that they're expecting it to happen?

[01:07:08] Kyle Risi: This is the midterms. So the Republicans are trying to win support. This is a real hot topic across America, and it's causing all this outrage. They're like, this is low hanging fruit. If we say that we are gonna tackle to make this harder for people to be able to sue, we'll get loads of backing. People will vote for Republicans and then yeah, we can get in power.

[01:07:28] Adam Cox: That's like fake news it's almost like Brexit in the sense that you were told something, people get angry about it, but actually it hasn't been thought through. People don't really know what's gonna happen and yeah, I feel sorry for the people that don't really understand the situation

[01:07:41] Kyle Risi: Exactly. They don't understand the consequences Yeah. Of what this means

[01:07:44] Adam Cox: because in three or four years time, if it does get passed and they end up needing something, they're gonna go, oh, that's what that system was put in place for.

[01:07:51] Kyle Risi: Eventually, when the midterms do come around, the Republicans do very, very well, and it's largely because of promises like this based on fabrications and [01:08:00] distortions. Yeah.

[01:08:01] Kyle Risi: They gain control of both the House and the Senate, and now they've got the numbers to get this bill reform in front of the president of the United States.

[01:08:09] Kyle Risi: Here's the nuts, so thing, the bill also needs kind of credibility, right? So they have to back up this bill with statistics. They look to a book that was written in the 1990s that was written to capitalize on the outrage that was already sweeping America around kind of frivolous lawsuits and was called the Litigation Explosion.

[01:08:30] Kyle Risi: And basically the book as all these other kind of anecdotal digests had, it just contained 272 short anecdotes about crazy lawsuits, obviously devoid of any context, mostly twisted facts, just like Stellas and Judith.

[01:08:44] Kyle Risi: And then in the book, it contained just six actual statistics. And guess what?

[01:08:49] Adam Cox: They weren't real. I.

[01:08:50] Kyle Risi: They were all misleading statistics, basically, claim that Americans pay $130 billion in punitive damages every year.

[01:08:58] Kyle Risi: But what it doesn't say is that that [01:09:00] number also includes payouts. Meaning that if someone steals your car and your insurance pays you out, that also counts towards that 130 billion. So it's not just punitive damages of cases that you've brought against the company. So it's really misleading.

[01:09:12] Kyle Risi: Another one states that Americans file 18 million lawsuits every year, which is technically true. But again, what it doesn't say is that this also includes stuff like custody claims, minor contractual disputes between you and your landlord, et cetera. And when you look closer, what you actually find is that only 7% of those 18 million cases are actually torts cases where someone is harmed and then decides to sue.

[01:09:34] Kyle Risi: So it's really misleading stuff. Right.

[01:09:36] Kyle Risi: They also make a huge deal about the amount of punitive damages that are being paid out across those 7% of the 18 million cases.

[01:09:44] Kyle Risi: But again, when you re-look at it, only 3% of to cases actual results in a punitive damage being paid out. So it's barely anything. And get this, in 1996, the average payout was only $38,000. It's not a lot really at all.

[01:09:59] Kyle Risi: [01:10:00] There's nothing there. When you dig into the statistics that are backing up this massive piece of legislation, none of it proves that lawsuits are out of control. It just proves that just regular activity is happening. Mm-hmm. As part of the legal framework that Americans have already set up for themselves.

[01:10:17] Kyle Risi: And also, remember, filing lawsuits in America is very heavily involved, which many Americans just don't have time for. And When you compare it to like other developed countries like the uk, Americas actually bring far fewer liability cases forward because of that very fact.

[01:10:31] Kyle Risi: If you wanna file a lawsuit, you are the one who has to go ahead and do all the paperwork. You've gotta deal with all the stress that comes with that. You've gotta pay all the legal finances upfront and then hopefully recover that from the other side.

[01:10:42] Kyle Risi: So far, fewer Americans actually bring these lawsuits in the first place, unlike other countries where we just send off an email, to a regulatory body and go, you deal with it. You deal with it. And they will.

[01:10:52] Kyle Risi: Luckily some people do have sense in this little history lesson, because when it gets to Bill Clinton's desk with those six [01:11:00] statistics he sees right through all of it, and he ultimately just vetoes the entire bill. Basically, he says,

[01:11:06] Kyle Risi: today I'm returning to Congress without my signature, the product liability legislation sent me this week.

[01:11:12] Kyle Risi: I take this step because I believe this bill tilts against American values and would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured by a defective product. And it goes on and on and on and on.

[01:11:23] Kyle Risi: And it talks about how it goes against our values. And actually we wanna protect our grandparents we wanna protect our kids. We wanna know that if we get into a a car and it crashes, it's not gonna explode on impact.

[01:11:34] Adam Cox: Yeah. And it's not our fault.

[01:11:35] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So he just completely vetoes the entire bill.

[01:11:39] Kyle Risi: That's good. It is. But the thing is though, it's only for a second.

[01:11:43] Kyle Risi: Those fake NGOs, they are just furious. So what they do is they start pouring in even more money into lobbying campaigns, pushing their agenda across every single state in the United States. So corrupt. And it's almost like a fact sheet, right? They send like the script off to all these different news [01:12:00] agencies and radio stations around the world.

[01:12:01] Kyle Risi: So someone will like grab these different clippets of these pictures essentially, and they'll overlay them and it's the exact same script. And this is all still going on today. It's a crazy situation when you think about it. You've got these big corporations fighting the little guys, instead of just stopping for a second and saying, Hey, you know what, maybe we should just stop being dicks. Maybe we should stop hurting our customers. Maybe just, maybe we should think about how to avoid doing harm in the future. But instead they just wanna save a few million.

[01:12:31] Adam Cox: It means, missing out on some money. Yeah. They're not gonna do that.

[01:12:35] Kyle Risi: It's so sick.

[01:12:36] Kyle Risi: So following all of this, Stella's life is just marked with severe physical suffering. She loses all of her independence and there was a significant decline in her quality of life that led straight up to her death in 2004.

[01:12:48] Kyle Risi: Many people only know Stella's story outside of the full context. Mm-hmm. Of what we've covered today, which is just so sad because she was bound by this NDA. They don't know everything that was going on around it. And yes, a lot of [01:13:00] people have told the story and debunk this as a myth,

[01:13:02] Kyle Risi: so it's really cool to take a really well known story and kind of. Plaster it against the context of what's been happening in the world at this time.

[01:13:10] Kyle Risi: Because outside this lawsuit, there was a bigger agenda at play about how a real human suffering was being used and twisted to serve a bigger corporate agenda.

[01:13:18] Kyle Risi: And if you wanna know a bit more, because of course this is the compendium, we only focus on this snapshot of a bigger story.

[01:13:24] Kyle Risi: You can check out this brilliant documentary, which I think is still available on YouTube. That's how I watched it. It's called Hot Coffee, and was released in 2011, directed by Susan Selloff. Who's like a former medical malpractice attorney.

[01:13:37] Kyle Risi: Basically, the documentary goes into deep about what happened to Stella, but also the broader implications of tort reform and consumer rights in the United States. So if paints a real rich kind of historical picture of where they came from and where it's going now, and honestly it's just brilliant. I definitely recommend you guys checking that out.

[01:13:54] Kyle Risi: But Adam, that is the real story of Stella Liebeck and how she was used as a PA [01:14:00] to push this narrative that American had become obsessed with suing each other.

[01:14:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. And still, but I guess, and not even learn from that. But it's a shame. It sounds like she still lived for quite a while afterwards then. If it was 1992, did you say It's early

[01:14:14] Kyle Risi: 1994 is when the trial ended. So she lived another 10. 10 years. 10 years, so she lived what, to

[01:14:18] Adam Cox: early nineties maybe.

[01:14:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Early nineties. Which has a good innings. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it's sad that those last 10 years of her life Mm, could have been better for her.

[01:14:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. She could have been more active. I don't know how that impacted her own mobility and things like that. And yeah, it feels like this story should have come out a lot sooner around the time in terms of her injuries. But, you know, McDonald's wanted to squash that.

[01:14:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I guess with channels like the internet and Reddit and Facebook and stuff like that, it is getting out there, but it's such an old story.

[01:14:47] Adam Cox: But I wonder how many other incidents like this. That are, that have been happening that people just don't know about, whether is someone actually been seriously hurt?

[01:14:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, Adam, do you wanna run the outro for this [01:15:00] week?

[01:15:00] Adam Cox: Yes, let's do it.

[01:15:01] Kyle Risi: And so that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things. We hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did,

[01:15:09] Adam Cox: and if today's episode sparks your curiosity, do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show.

[01:15:17] Kyle Risi: For our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget that next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon and is completely free to access.

[01:15:23] Adam Cox: And if you want, even more than join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next. We'd love for you to be part of our growing community.

[01:15:35] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday. Until then, remember, sometimes the hottest burns come from the coldest corporate responses. Ooh,

[01:15:44] Kyle Risi: see you next time.

[01:15:44] Kyle Risi: See ya. [01:16:00]