Notable Personal Injury Cases

Over the years there have been millions of personal injury cases filed across the country. Sometimes a few come along that are newsworthy and the settlements for the injuries caused to these people have been large. The McDonald’s Coffee Case Just about anyone will know exactly what you’re talking about if you bring up the infamous McDonald’s coffee case. In that case, an 81-year-old woman was severely burned by scalding hot coffee she’d purchased at a McDonald’s drive thru. This poor woman suffered serious burns that required a week’s stay in the hospital and multiple skin grafts. After much thought, a jury awarded this woman $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages. However an appeal’s judge later reduced this verdict to $480,000. What you might not know about this case is that McDonald’s was well aware of the problems they had with their coffee being at least 20 degrees hotter than other restaurants. In addition, before this famous case, McDonald’s had settled out of court over 700 other cases of people being injured by the extreme temperature of their coffee. Despite all this, McDonald’s did nothing to resolve this issue, and a McDonald’s quality assurance expert even testified in court that while the corporation was well aware of the risk, they had no plans to reduce the temperature of their coffee or warn their customers about the high temperatures their coffee was served at and that serious injury could result. The University of Texas Hazing Case In 2005 a young man named Jack Phoummarath, died in a hazing accident at the University of Texas. According to the paperwork in this case, part of the hazing process at the Lambda Phi Epsilon fraternity involved binge drinking. Eighteen-year-old Jack died of acute blood alcohol poisoning and his parents filed a lawsuit against the University. This case settled out of court for $4.2 million dollars. The family is now working with the University to not only set up a scholarship in Jack Phoummarath’s name, but is also, along with the university, establishing a hazing/binge drinking educational program on campus.