Hot McDonald’s Coffee and the Power Dynamic of SLAPP Suits
Article by Irisa Teng, TPT Staff Writer
In June of this year, 83-year-old Mable Childress bought a cup of coffee from a San Francisco McDonald’s and spilled it over herself. According to the National Public Radio, Childress subsequently filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s, with her attorney Dylan Hackett claiming that “workers were negligent for improperly securing Childress' coffee cup lid and that she continues to suffer from pain and emotional distress as a result of the incident,” pain of which coming from burns “on her stomach, groin and leg area and left scarring on her groin.”
This is not the first case against McDonald’s, and definitely not the most notable one. In 1994, the infamous Liebeck v. McDonald’s suit was filed, where a similarly aged 79-year-old Stella Liebeck sued McDonald’s for selling her coffee that was at a dangerously hot temperature. Most people may know the case as a crazy woman overreacting to unsatisfactory customer service, but according to a Retro Report by the New York Times, Liebeck acquired third-degree burns in her pelvic area, requiring multiple skin grafts and becoming “permanently disfigured.” While Liebeck sued with the intention of genuinely seeking reparations, her case is never brought up without being mentioned in tandem with frivolous litigation. This became such a hot topic that in 2011, the documentary Hot Coffee premiered discussing the Liebeck v. McDonald’s case and tort reform.
What is frivolous litigation, or tort reform? According to Colorado injury lawyer Mack Babcock, “a frivolous lawsuit is a lawsuit filed by an attorney who knowingly brings a case forward despite a lack of legal precedent, facts, or merit.”
A common type of frivolous litigation is a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” more commonly known as “SLAPP,” or a “SLAPP suit.” SLAPP suits are characterized by a (typically) powerful organization utilizing the overwhelming nature of the lawsuit process to dissuade (typically) ordinary people from exercising their First Amendment rights. SLAPP suits don’t aim to manufacture a court decision on a specific topic, rather, they weaponize the time-consuming aspect of legal battles to inconvenience people until they desist from speaking out against an organization, sometimes government-affiliated.
To combat SLAPP suits, states have adopted anti-SLAPP legislation. According to data from the Public Participation Project, on a scale from 1 to 100, directly proportional to the amount of anti-SLAPP law procedures, 19 states in the US currently have a sub score of at least 70 or higher. While the states are proactively combatting SLAPP suits, there has been no federal anti-SLAPP law.
In 2020, Devin Nunes, a former House Representative, sued the owners of two parody accounts about him and the platform they were on, then-known as Twitter, for defamation. The parody accounts had usernames such as “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow,” mocking the childhood he had on a farm. This case shares many similarities with a typical SLAPP suit, as Nunes, being a government official, sought to silence the satirical commentary that the general public had the right to make about him. Otherwise, the people would be losing their right to protest, which involves criticism.
A more obvious series of lawsuits similar to SLAPP suits, also known as “spamigation,” are the lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the early 2000s. Against unauthorized sharing of the music of its members, RIAA targeted anyone they found to be sharing files by filing lawsuits against them. Reported by The Register, notable examples include RIAA suing an “83 year old deceased woman in copyright violation” and a “twenty-three year old girl [for harboring] an MP3 file of her favorite TV show on her hard drive.” RIAA stopped filing these lawsuits in 2008.
So as the new case against McDonald’s slowly gains headlines, and as more people discover its similarities to the original hot coffee lawsuit, what will it be known as? Will it be known as a frivolous litigation, or the story of a woman seeking reparations? We won’t know until all the details of the case are revealed, and the next court hearing starts with the tap of its gavel.
Sources: