>Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants Stella Liebeck ordered coffee from McDonalds at a drive through with her grandson. They drove some distance away and parked, where she put the coffee between her legs to steady it while she opened it to put cream and sugar in, but instead she managed to dump the entire thing in her lap. It's not mentioned in any article about her, but I suspect she delayed dealing with the problem because older people often don't feel heat or cold as intensely as younger people, so they don't always recognise when they're being burned. This causes scalding involving elders to often be much worse than with younger people who'll immediately run for cold water and treatment. She initially demanded $20,000 from McDonalds to cover $10,000 in medical bills and the rest to cover "anticipated expenses" including her daughter being out of work (can't find an explanation for that one, was she a full time carer?). McDonalds said no and she lawyered up and demanded more and more money. In court her lawyer argued that serving very hot coffee was unreasonably dangerous and McDonalds should be required to serve it at a cooler temperature. They also pointed out that McDonalds had had ~700 scalding cases and settled for up to $500,000 (presumably in different cases where they'd actually caused the scalding). McDonalds argued that 700 cases is a lot in absolute terms, but not much compared to their overall volume of trade. They also argued that any food served over 130 F is a scalding risk and it's customers responsibility not to spill hot food/drink on themselves after it is given to them. The jury decided the warning label on the cup wasn't big enough (I guess she wasn't supposed to know hot coffee is hot) and awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages, and $2.7 million in punative damages to punish McDonalds for refusing to pay up. These were later reduced to $160,000 and $480,000 respectively. Eventually they settled for $600,000 (presumably in exchange for not appealing).