REC 440 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: American Tort Reform Association, Tort Reform, Tretinoin
Document Summary
Case 1: stella lieback vs. mcdonalds case. Hot coffee documentary notes: 79 year old woman sued mcdonalds because their coffee gave her third degree burns on her legs, lieback worked full time up until a week before the incident, lieback wasn"t driving, her grandson was. Media changed/distorted this fact by making the public believe that. Lieback was driving while handling her coffee: lieback burned so bad they didn"t think she would live, civil court system doesn"t normally make it in the top 20% of cases. Judicial system does see normal people normally because cases are too low . In the judicial system you cannot wine and dine the jury like you can in civil courts: jury assigned 20% blame on lieback and 80% blame on mcdonalds. Mcdonalds knew about the possibility of the coffee burning someone to a serve degree and was not going to change their ways until they had to shell out a lot of money.
