Hot Coffee Shows How Plaintiffs are Affected by Tort Reform

Have you ever wondered what happened to the woman who sued McDonald's after she spilled hot coffee on herself? You probably remember that she was just trying to get money, right? Or were her injuries so serious and life-threatening that she deserved the $2.1 million verdict she got?

Hot Coffee is a new documentary film that follows four families, including the infamous hot coffee plaintiff, Stella Liebeck, whose lives have been altered by their inability to access the court system. After learning of the severe burns Ms. Liebeck suffered, or about the woman who was kept out of the courts for four years after she was raped by her co-workers while working for a contractor in Iraq, you may change your mind about how you view our justice system.

Hot Coffee sets out to dispel the misperceptions about personal injury litigation and takes a closer look at why big businesses are fighting to keep injured plaintiffs out of the court system.

Beginning in the 1980s, businesses launched a war against injured plaintiffs by telling the public that too many frivolous lawsuits were being filed and that our juries were out-of-control in awarding plaintiffs verdicts. Since then, severely injured plaintiffs have continued to lose ground in the court system because of the lobbying efforts of pharmaceutical and insurance companies, among others. And these lobbying efforts have benefitted big corporations by keeping the court system from holding companies accountable for injuring consumers.

Legislators have continually passed laws aimed at keeping plaintiffs out of court and giving big business the tort reform for which they have pushed. Just recently in Texas, legislators passed a new tort reform bill that Governor Rick Perry signed into law. Texas House Bill 274 was dubbed the "loser pays" bill in which an injured plaintiff could potentially have to pay the defendant's attorney's fees, if he refuses a settlement and gets a verdict that is less than 80 percent of the settlement offer. The attorney's fees would be calculated from the date the plaintiff refused the settlement offer.

There is no doubt that because of this tort reform, a plaintiff injured at the hands of a large corporation would take an unfair settlement offer over having his day in court because he's worried that he would have to pay the corporation's attorney's fees.

Hot Coffee will be playing on HBO through July 28th. You can also order it via HBO On-Demand Service or preorder the DVD, which will be available in the fall. After you have watched the film, the makers of Hot Coffee ask you to consider the following questions:

1. If you'd heard of the McDonald's coffee case before viewing Hot Coffee, did watching the film change your mind about what you thought?
2. Did you learn anything new about torts or "tort reform"? What about "caps" on damages? How many mandatory arbitration clauses do you think you've agreed to in the last year?
3. What can you do to protect our civil justice system and change the misconceptions so many people have today?
4. What actions are you going to take about this issue right away? SUGGESTIONS: Write your representatives in Congress and in your state legislatures. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. There is pending federal legislation called the Arbitration Fairness Act, and many states are moving to pass restrictive caps every day. Your voice will make a difference.