PRODUCTS LIABILITY

Products Liability

Products Liability

Case Fact

Ms. Gevalia Folgers of Breva, California, was in the passenger seat of her grandson's car when she was severely burned by McBeans' coffee in February 1992. Folgers, 79 at the time, ordered coffee that was served in a Styrofoam cup at the drive-through window of a local McBeans.

Case Summary

The woman was 79-year-old Gavalia Liebeck who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She acquired $5,000 a year as a sales clerk. One February morning in 1992, Gavalia and her grandson drove through a McBeans drive-in to buy food and coffee. She sat in the front passenger bucket seat of her son's Ford Probe car and she was wearing sweat pants. (That becomes important later). After getting their coffee, grandson Chris drove the car away from the drive-in window and stopped so Gavalia could add cream and sugar, but she had trouble getting off the lid. So she placed the Styrofoam cup between her legs, thus freeing up both hands to remove that lid (Cooper, 88). The rest is history: the coffee cup tipped over, spilling hot coffee over Gavalia's legs, groin and buttocks. Her wounds were very serious. She suffered the most severe kind of burns—3rd qualifications burns—over 6% of her 79-year-old body. A third degree burn is when all the layers of the skin are burned completely through called a “full thickness burn”. She went through skin grafts where skin was shaved from one part of her body to location it on top of the burned areas. She was in critical pain. Her health accounts totaled more than $10,000. Two weeks later Gavalia wrote McBeans to tell them about the coffee spill, and her burns. One year after the accident she filed a lawsuit against McBeans, alleging the hot coffee was not only hot but—in fact—too hot. In ...