Coffee Burn Cases – Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em

Everyone has heard about the original “hot coffee” case of Stella Liebeck against McDonalds.  Many people think they know what that case is about, but they probably know virtually nothing about the facts.  If you’re looking for an education on that particular case and the vitriol of “tort reform” that followed it, I urge you to watch http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/ but discussion of that movie is for a different day.

In North Carolina a case was recently taken to trial wherein a man sued Starbucks for burns he received when the lid of a coffee he’d gotten from Starbucks came off.  http://abc11.com/news/starbucks-not-liable-for-raleigh-police-officers-burns/713613/

Sadly for him the jury sided with Starbucks.

Let me first say that I’m not the world’s foremost expert on hot coffee or coffee burn cases.  But I have handled them before and the best advice you can get before making a claim against a coffee retailer is this:  Know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.

What I mean by the Kenny Rogers reference is that, like with any case, you have to know when you have a good argument and when you don’t.  To get deeper into the meaning of this advice though, consider this little nugget.  Dan Cox is considered by many to be the go-to expert on hot coffee or coffee burn cases, mostly for the defendants (the retailers) and in his book Hot Coffee he essentially says there are two types of coffee burn cases (and this is my summary of his statement, not a quote):  When the employee spills the coffee on the patron, they need to settle that case, but when the patron spills it on himself, the retailer may be beetter off fighting it. 

Is this gospel from on high?  Of course not.  But it is based on a rather detailed investigation of the many coffee cases across the nation.  For the most part, juries don’t seem to have much sympathy (with some exceptions) for people who spill coffee on themselves.  But they do have sympathy for people who have coffee spilled on them.  And when I think about it like that, it makes complete since.

I wonder if this case would have played out differently if the employee had spilled it.  If other cases are any predictor, it might have.  But that wasn’t the scenario he had…

Be careful with your coffee, and don’t get burned by it.