"Frivilous" Lawsuits and Legal Myths
Big business and insurance companies are on a constant quest to discredit personal injury lawsuits and our 7th Amendment right to a trial by jury. The main tools for this task are exaggeration and fabrication. A well known example of exaggeration is the McDonalds hot coffee case. The plaitiff, Stella Liebeck, suffered third degree burns on her inner thighs and groin from coffee that was kept at dangerously high temperatures. The coffee is kept at such a high temperature to mask the poor quality of the coffee. McDonalds had record of 700 similar cases before Ms. Liebeck's case. McDonalds refused to pay her medical bills (approx. $20,000), and for that reason she sued. The $2.7 million punitive jury verdict (the equivalent of two days worth of coffee sales for McDonalds) was reduced to $480,000 after the verdict, and the case settled shortly thereafter for an undisclosed amount.
The spin machine in the media turned the verdict into an example of a runaway civil justice system. A website dedicated to exagerating and fabricating lawsuit recoveries was created to mock Ms. Liebeck's recovery. The Stella Awards is a self-proclaimed independant website that reports "opportunists and self-described victims vs. any available deep pockets and the U.S. Justice system." If the story on this site is not exaggerated, it is just made up. The site itself has proclaimed that many of the stories are false, but stop short of not printing them at all.
Here is an excellent cartoon defining "frivilous" lawsuits.
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