A short time ago, a Broward County, Florida jury awarded $800,000 to an 8-year-old for second-degree burns suffered in 2019 when a “dangerously hot” Chicken McNugget fell from a Happy Meal onto her leg while in a car seat.

Unsurprisingly, some of the extensive media coverage of the verdict against McDonald’s recalled the 1994 case of Stella Liebeck, the 81-year-old grandmother awarded nearly $3 million for serious burns incurred when her McDonald’s coffee – resting between her knees while in the passenger seat of a parked car -- spilled. A judge reduced the award to $460,000 and the parties later settled.

Following the Liebeck case – which now lives in legal lore and was even the subject of a documentary -- some others with coffee mishaps at the Golden Arches tried to replicate the octogenarian’s success.

In this piece for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I looked at how McDonald’s has fared in hot coffee cases since the Liebeck firestorm.

I hope you can check it out.

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/guest-columns/2023/07/25/olivia-caraballo-coffee-liebeck-mcnugget/stories/202307240011