Hot Coffee Essay Example

on to talk about how the trial against McDonald's uncovered about 700 other coffee burn incidents that just never made it to court.

To me, this meant that McDonald's had received complaints about all of these victims and just didn't care enough to do anything about it.

The franchise manual stated the holding temperature for coffee (back then) between 180-190 degrees! I found It surprising that McDonald's only offered Mrs.. Labeled $800 Initially before going to court. Once In court, McDonald's was found guilty of negligence and was forced to pay both compensatory and punitive damages. Mrs.

. Livable was awarded $160,000 in compensatory damages and $2. 7 million (before being settled confidentially between both parties) in punitive damages.

I believe that the punitive damages were deserved because of the high level of negligence from McDonald's.

However, I personally don't believe that Mrs.. Labeled needed that large of an amount. It Is an unrealistic thought I know, but I think that the punitive damages should've been able to be split up between all 700 previous burn victims that were recorded. From a deferent perspective however, Mrs.

. Livable was the only victim that fought her way to make her case in court so therefore she did the "hard work" to get that money. The second exhibit really spoke to me.

It dealt with caps on damages brought to court. The case that was associated with It was the Colon Gourmet case.

Colon Is an Identical twin that was born with and complications all over the world. It is very sad, but most of the time there is no way to prevent such a thing. In Colic's case

though, there was a way to prevent the devastating outcome. Colic's mother told the story of how it all started. She said that around her 36th week of pregnancy she started feeling a noticeable decrease in the amount of movement of the babies.

Naturally she became concerned and went to see her doctor.

Her doctor did a quick checkup and didn't perform any extra tests to make sure her conclusion was correct, but yet told Mrs.. , Gourmet that the twins were fine and their heartbeats sounded normal. As the days went by, the babies' movement kept decreasing. Mrs..

Gourmet knew something had to be wrong so she went in for an ultrasound. Once there, she was told that the twins were in one placenta instead of two individual ones, which was believed to be situation until then. Mrs..

Gourmet was then informed that the reason for the decreased movement from the babies was that one of the twins was taking all of the nutrients from the other which in turn, was basically killing that baby (Colon). She was told that she needed to deliver the babies as soon as possible or the weak baby would die.

The emergency time frame given to deliver the twin boys was ten minutes. However, the babies were not delivered until two hours later! Why? The delay was due to the absence of Mrs.. Grousers doctor. The first twin was born with no complications but the second twin, Colon Gourmet, was born with severe brain damages due to this delay.

His brain was deprived of oxygen for 8-10 minutes and all areas of his brain were affected. The Grousers

went on to file a suit against the doctor, arguing that she could've prevented the brain damage that Colon suffered at birth by arriving at the mime needed to deliver the babies and also by performing a stress test or an ultrasound at the time of Mrs.. Grousers initial moment concern. During trial, it was discovered that the doctor had had two other malpractice lawsuits in the past.

The jury in the case agreed that the doctor was at fault and awarded the Grousers $5. Million to cover the care expenses that Colon would need throughout his life. Here is the problem. One of the main ideas of tort reform was to put a cap on the amount of money a company had to liable to pay, This was true in the state of Nebraska at the time of the Gourmet case.

What did this mean? This meant that even though the Jury voted on the initial award of $5. 6 million, that amount wasn't actually going to get awarded because of the statewide cap on damages. Instead, the $5. 6 million was reduced by the court Judges to $1.

25 million. A good point was made during this exhibit that I definitely agreed with.

Why do Juries even get chosen if they don't even really have a say in a case's outcome due to law restrictions? A Jury is a random sample of our population, who better to choose the outcome of our situations! It sounds terrible to know that "the people" decided that the Grousers needed a certain mount a money but yet when the case was over, the Judges said "Oh thanks

for your input, but we can't actually award that much, sorry!. " That's how I saw it. Since Colon didn't receive the amount needed for his care, he was put on Medicaid. This program is paid for by taxpayers.

It Just doesn't make sense to me why there would a law in place to not hold business/doctors/anyone accountable for their wrongdoing but instead push them onto the rest of the population with restricted rights as well. Another point that was made was about the statistics on insurance prices for damages law put in. The prices of healthcare liability insurance had gone instead of down, even though there was now a cap on how much money the medical professional could get sued for. Policymaking and tort reform was definitely brought used in a business profit making type of environment.

The third exhibit was about judicial elections and the prosecution of Oliver Ditz in the state of Mississippi.

Oliver Ditz was a Judge in the Mississippi Court of Appeals and was appointed to the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2000. He was not a business oriented Judge and this affected his election campaign GREATLY. His opponent was basically campaigning with millions of US Chamber of Commerce dollars. For some reason, I never knew that the US Chamber of Commerce was not part of the government. It is actually the largest lobbying group in the country.

Since the tort reform called for more business/corporate oriented laws, the US Chamber of Commerce figured it would be easier if they started to help elect Judges into courts that were business minded. What they would do is back them in their campaigns

both with publicity and with money...

Lots of money. Ditz surprisingly won against the tough campaigning from is opponent and the Chamber. That was not the end of the story though. As soon as he was elected to the Supreme Court, Ditz was indicted on federal charges of bribing. This led to a long trial, which kept him out of the courtroom for some time.

He was found not guilty but yet was indicted on a tax evasion charge Just three days after that.

He was acquitted from that charge and was free once again, but all of the court activity had Ditz off of the bench for three whole years. Unfortunately, once it was time for reelection, Ditz was not reelected. What I found interesting about this art of the film was how much everything is affected by selfish monetary desires. The courts are supposed to be a safe haven for everyone, but yet they were proved to be centered on money and what is better for whom.

Fortunately, Ditz was not actually imprisoned for something he didn't do. However, it is hard to believe how much of an effort the US Chamber of Commerce put in Just to take on one Judge with different views than what they wanted. The fourth and last exhibit presented was about mandatory arbitration and the case, Jamie Leigh Jones v. Hallucination in Texas. Jones as a 19 year old girl when she signed her employment contract with Hallucination. She soon decided that she wanted to be a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Hallucination made it possible for her to go overseas.

Jones was promised all female

barracks when she arrived. However, when she arrived in Iraq she realized she had been lied to. She was housed in a male only barrack. Jones emailed her Hallucination contact back in Texas and expressed her concerns about the broken promise that had been made to her. Four days after her arrival, Jones was drugged and brutally gang raped by the men in her barracks.

She sought medical help and a rape kit was sent to Hallucination. Oddly enough, some of the important pieces to the kit disappeared before it reached the company.

Jones was then taken and imprisoned in a shipping crate with armed guards. She was able to get a phone call out to her father in the United States and was rescued from her imprisonment. When she arrived back home in the US, she made an effort to file against Hallucination for the negligence on the rape and living conditions while abroad.

It didn't go very smoothly though. Jones had unknowingly signed a "mandatory arbitration clause" in her initial classical signing away your rights to ever bring a case against the company to court.

It is a very bias way for a company to settle an issue that has been brought up by an individual, in this case, Ms. Jones.

It was mentioned in the film that the arbitrator is hired by the company being accused. The arbitrator is most likely not ever going to see the individual bringing the claim but will be working with the company that hired them on a regular basis. Who do you think they will side with mostly? The company that hired them, obviously! The arbitrating

company wants their repeat business. It was also mentioned that consumers usually win 10% or less of all arbitration cases.

What a shockingly low number! In Jones' case, she fought the case for four years before actually being able to set foot inside a courtroom.

She created an association directed towards women that have suffered abuse because of the mandatory arbitration clauses. During one of the meetings she attended, it was argued that a mandatory arbitration clause is supposed to aid in helping provide a better work environment for employees. I believe Jones' incident as definitely an exception to that neural rule. There is no way that her brutal rape was related to her work duties at all!

To start off, she was put into a work environment that she was not told about whatsoever.

I feel that Hallucination Jeopardized her security and safety the moment they placed her in the living environment that they did. Overall, the cases were weaved into each topic extremely well. It had my attention the whole entire time! It also taught me to think about everything I hear and see happening around me. It is never good to settle for what you Just hear about something, always research and cake sure you're getting the full story.