Let's Go To Court! - 65: Cyberbullying & the Hot Cup of Coffee

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Thirteen-year-old Megan Meier was thrilled. She’d just logged onto MySpace, and found a message from a hot 16-year-old boy named Josh. Megan wasn’t allowed to spend much time online, but she and Josh quickly became friends. The pair bonded, but one day, Josh’s messages went from sweet to sour. Then, Kristin tells us a story that everyone has heard before. Back in the early 90’s, a woman went through the drive thru at McDonald’s. She ordered a coffee. She put the coffee between her legs and drove off down the road. As she sped off, the coffee spilled. It hurt. So what did she do? She sued McDonald’s for millions of dollars. This story has been hailed as an example of America’s many frivolous lawsuits. But reality isn’t quite so outrageous. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: “Scalded by coffee, then news media,” New York Times Retro Report “A matter of degree: How a jury decided that a coffee spill is worth $2.9 million,” Wall Street Journal by Andrea Gerlin “Hot Coffee” documentary “Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants” Wikipedia entry In this episode, Brandi pulled from: ‘”My Space’ hoax ends with suicide of Dardenne Prairie teen” by Steve Pokin, St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Pokin Around: The story of Megan Meier’s suicide” by Steve Pokin, Springfield News-Leader “Judge Acquits Lori Drew in Cyberbullying Case, Overrules Jury” by Kim Zetter, wired.com “United States v. Drew” wikipedia.org    

One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Caruso. I'm Brandi Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll talk about a cup of hot coffee. And I'll be talking about cyberbullying. So, I've come to a realization, Kristen, after listening to the most recent episode.

What's that? There's a reason that I like Kristen Caruso so much. Why? It's because I can go kristin caruso oh my god now now i wish i could remember more words but he says his name in like every song for those of you that don't know that would be jason derulo who usually does that I wish I could remember more words. But he says his name in like every song. For those of you that don't know, that would be Jason Derulo. Who usually does that. Now I'm going to think of that every time I say your name. Great.

Maybe I'll always sing your name to you. How about that? Change it back. I made a terrible mistake. I did not anticipate. But it sounded vaguely like Jason Derulo.

No, my sister and I talked today and I think my grandma's really going to love it that I've taken Norman's last name. Finally, after five plus years of marriage. It only took me five years to make this decision. Yeah, before I was kind of loosey-goosey. But you know, there's studies about that.

Yeah. That people think that if you don't change your last name to your husband's, then that means you're less committed to the marriage. Yeah. And it's true because I've had i put out the door this whole time all right let's jump on in here okay last episode we had a 47 minute intro i know it was too much ridiculous too much it was me being sad and i'm sorry and it was ironically right after we got a tweet about how we don't

do a bunch of bullshit at the beginning, we just get into the episode. Yeah. So we're very sorry about that. We should just shut up. Okay. Jump into it. Jump into it. Okay.

Right off the bat, most of this information, i.e. like the entire first portion of it, comes from an article by Steve Poken. Sorry. For the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I know it's pronounced Poken because he has a column called Poken Around. No!

Good for you, Stephen. Embrace it. Megan Meyer was beyond excited. She'd logged on to her MySpace page to find a friend request from a boy. Mom, mom, mom, look at him, Tina Meyer recalls her daughter saying. Yeah, he's cute, Tina told her daughter. Do you know who he is? No, but look at him.

He's hot. Please, please can i add him his name was josh evans he was 16 years old and he was hot are you allowed to say that this is um that's directly from the article that was not an opinion of mine okay i've actually not seen a picture of Josh Evans. Okay, but Steven Poken. Steven Poken. Thanks, Josh Evans is hot. Kristen.

I couldn't help it. I almost missed it. But then you had that look on your face over there. You know what the look was? The look was like, was that so immature that she's gonna pretend i didn't say it um yes well sorry i'm glad this is finally directed at you because it's almost always directed at me really yeah you feel like you're the immature one yes oh i i feel like it's a real toss-up oh good oh good i'm glad it's less as we're both both weighing in here so his name was josh evans he was 16 years old and he

was super hot and her mom said yeah go ahead and add him how old is megan she is 13. Okay. Not feeling that age difference? I'm kind of weirded out, if I may. Weirded out by this whole thing. I don't feel like I ever asked my mom if someone was hot. Okay, so what we'll learn is that Megan's internet activity was very closely monitored. So she wasn't allowed to log on by herself. Her mom was always present with her. So that's the reason for that conversation. Okay, that's interesting to hear because I would think that if you were that concerned about... You wouldn't let her be friends with a 16-year-old boy?

Who she doesn't know. Yeah, that seems... Yeah, I would agree. That's like having the lifeguard at the pool and the lifeguard just lets everybody drown. Right? Right, yes. So for the next six weeks, Megan and Josh became acquainted.

They sent lots of messages and posts back and forth to each other, all in the virtual world of MySpace. Do you think I need to explain what MySpace is? We might have some younger listeners. Yeah, go ahead. So MySpace is a social media platform that predates Facebook. It was huge before Facebook died off when Facebook came along. Yeah, completely. Yeah.

It was set up more like journal style. Kind of, honestly, it was kind of like a mashup of what Facebook became and what Zynga used to be. If anybody out there still remembers Zynga. I loved Zynga. So did I. You know, the annoying thing about MySpace, and I think it led to the demise. You could like pick your page color and pick your font color and you could have a song play. You could have music play in the background.

As soon as somebody pulled it up, which was so annoying. Best part. What? Top friends. Oh, see, I never had a MySpace page. Oh man, I did. So you had your friends. I guess I wasn't one of your top friends then.

Must not have been. So you had your friends, but then you selected eight of them and made them your top friends and they were highlighted on your page. That seems mean. It is pretty mean. They're getting to know each other, sending all of these messages back and forth. Josh told Megan that he was born in Florida and had recently moved to O'Fallon, Missouri. O'Fallon is a suburb of St. Louis. Okay.

He said he was homeschooled. Brandi's giving us her trademark judgmental look. He also played the guitar and the drums. He told her he was from a broken home. When I was seven, my dad left me and my mom and my older brother and my newborn brother, three boys. God, I know, my poor mom. Yeah, she had such a hard time when we were younger finding work to pay for all of us after he left. That's just like a snippet from one of the messages that he sent her.

And they seemed to be clicking, getting along really well. clicking getting along really well megan as i mentioned was 13 years old and she lived in darden prairie dardan prairie i'm not sure d-a-r-d-e-n-n-e it's definitely french okay um then you want me to take over could you whip that one out for us Kristen? Buffet. Which is another suburb of St. Louis. Okay. She loved swimming, boating, fishing, dogs, rap music, and boys as any 13 year old girl does. But her life had not always been easy. She was was on the heavier side and for years had like been kind of teased about her size and that became very much her focus of like as she moved into her teenage years oh losing weight which is a horrible fucking shame because she was a super cute girl if she'd been ugly it would have been fine no i mean i mean yeah i think

that's so common for a 13 year old girl to feel that way you don't think at all about how you look it's only about what size clothes you fit into and it fucks little girls up like fucks grown women up yeah it becomes like the obsession absolutely and that's why we all have to get beach body or some dumb shit she was also diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and she had battled with depression from a very young age. As early as third grade, she had told her parents that she was contemplating suicide. Oh, no. And like since that day, her parents had put her in therapy and she had spent her entire

childhood and now adolescence in therapy which is okay now i feel terrible for comparing her mother to the lifeguard who yeah like goes off and eats some nachos um but good for them yeah for getting her help but here she was about to turn 14 and she was really kind of coming into her own she'd gotten a little taller she'd lost a little weight she was feeling very good about herself and here was really kind of coming into her own. She'd gotten a little taller. She'd lost a little weight. She was feeling very good about herself. And here was this boy on the internet who was paying attention to her and thought she was really cute. She had also just started at a new school. had tried to combat like the bullying and stuff that she got at school by becoming really good

friend or becoming friends with the more popular girls she thought that that would help but it kind of turned into like a false friendship and oh it backfired and didn't yeah well and so her parents pulled her out of that public school and she started at a private school in jarden Prairie and she joined the volleyball team and she was just really thriving but while all of this stuff was going on while things were really getting going for her and she was really as I mentioned like coming into her own and feeling good about herself things with her one of her best friends were kind of falling apart there was this girl that lived down the street from where they live four four houses away they had been best friends for a very long time but seventh grade hit and it was like every other week they were friends and not friends and fighting and you know i'm not talking to you

and you suck but now we're best friends again and she kind of decided that she was over it and she wasn't going to be friends with her anymore she didn't want a fickle friend like yeah it just wasn't something that she was willing to put up with't going to be friends with her anymore. She didn't want a fickle friend. Like, yeah, it just wasn't something that she was willing to put up with. She was going to be friends with people who really wanted to be her friend. And so it was hard because the families had been kind of close, you know, because the girls had been friends for so long and they lived so close to each other. So she kind of ended that friendship. Yeah. But Megan didn't really look back from that.

Things were really looking up for her. And the best part of her day was coming home, having her mom log her onto MySpace and seeing the messages that she had sent from Josh. It completely changed her outlook on herself. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. What, Kristen? I put it together. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. What, Kristen? I put it together. Oh, no.

Yeah. She finally had a boy that was interested in her and liked her for her. But Tina, Megan's mom, started to think things were a little bit odd. Josh never asked for Megan's phone number. They never talked on the phone. And when Megan asked for Josh's, he said he didn't have a cell phone. Okay, well, okay. I made a face at that, but in this time period, that's not crazy.

So I'm really giving you the exact. Well, you told me MySpace. It's 2006. Yeah. So, yeah. So he said he didn't have a cell phone and he said that his mother had a cell phone but they didn't yet have a landline where they were at because they just relocated to o'fallon remember from florida everyone had a landline in 2006 what

if you just moved from florida you just haven't gotten it set up yet? No. Okay, Neve Schulman. Do you think you know what's going on here? That show, I love the premise, but it's stupid as fuck. I mean, it is stupid as fuck, but I enjoy it. Yeah, I'm going to call in these two skinny hipsters because I can't use Google. Yeah, come on. All right, guys, get to Googling. Hmm, I would love All right, guys. Get to Googling. Hmm.

I would love that job, though. Oh, oh, you say that you're in this relationship with a supermodel, but they don't have FaceTime. They don't have a webcam. They don't have anything. Okay. Anyway. Continue. Anyway.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were having an intimate relationship with that man. For the record, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were having an intimate relationship with that man. For the record, I'm definitely not. Well, she thinks she is. I mean, they've talked a lot on MySpace. We text all the time. It's weird. His camera is broken on his phone. He can't FaceTime. Oh, Brandi, this is tough. This is devastating. His voice is way more high-pitched than I thought it would be.

Does it sound like me? Tina's, like, starting to get, like, kind of a weird vibe. She thinks something's maybe going on here. It's a little bit odd, but she's like, what's the harm in it? They're just talking on MySpace. It's making Megan feel good about herself. It is what it is. And then on Sunday, October 15th, 2006, Megan got a weird message from Josh.

It said, I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you're not very nice to your friends. And Megan was like shocked by this and she was like frantic this boy was talking at this boy that she yeah was completely emotionally invested in yeah was talking about cutting off their only form of communication yeah and she messaged back and was like what are you talking about? Megan's mom like made her get off of MySpace that day without getting a response back, which probably was devastating. You know, there were tears that day. Yeah. So the reason that Megan's activity was monitored so closely on the Internet was because she had gotten into a little bit of trouble with it before she and her friend. The friend who's now posing as a dude.

Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, that's what I figured out like 10 minutes ago. So she and this friend, the girl down the street that she had been best friends with, they had started fake myspace account one one time and then no kidding tina had found out about it and she found out that they weren't even allowed to have one until they were 14 by the myspace rules yes and so it had just become kind of a thing like okay they shut it down at that point when she became like when she was about to turn 14 they let her start up another account but it was going to be very heavily monitored right so she sends back this message to josh that night and he doesn't she has to get off before he responds yeah the whole next

day monday october 16th it's like already like kind of a dreary day. It's cold. It's rainy. And she's like found herself in like an emo music video because all she can think of is what is going on with this boy that I thought was super into me. Like this came out of nowhere. Brandy, give us the song. It's 2006. It's a sad day. What song was she listening to? I don't know. What song do you think she's listening to oh oh boy i'm thinking some dashboard confessional definitely some dashboard confessional yep absolutely speaking of we're going to dashboard confessional this summer uh yeah 100 yeah yes boulevardia you meet we'll be there. Yes. And I gotta say, I am selfish.

I am wrong. I am right. I swear I'm right. I swear I knew it all along. And I am right. Okay, we gotta stop. This is like the second episode in a row where we've busted out. Maybe more than.

Might be. We're very sorry. Sincere apologies. Yes. But we couldn't not do the Humpty song last time. We actually did two songs last. We did? Yeah, because I accidentally quoted Eminem.

Well. If you'll recall. That's on you. I also had no choice there. At school that day, all Megan could think about was coming home and getting on facebook and seeing if josh had messaged her back so she makes it through school she gets home she begs her mom to let her get on and she's like that's fine you can get on real quick but you have to get right off because i have to take your sister to the orthodontist right and you're not allowed to be on while i'm not home oh boy

that rule's gonna be broken and so tina i'm guessing maybe that megan didn't even have the password that maybe oh had it okay okay so she could not log on without tina that makes sense yeah and so tina logs her on and megan is sitting there and tina is running late to get the sister to the orthodontist. She's running around the house and she's, as she's running out the door, she tells Megan to log off. And Megan's like, I will mom, just let me finish up one thing. I'll log off here in a second. And so Tina ran out the door without verifying that Megan got off of MySpace. Right. But when she got to the orthodontist's office, she realized what she'd done. And she called and said, Megan, did you sign off?

And Megan is hysterical. She's crying. She's so upset. And she said, no, mom, they're all being so mean to me. And Tina loses it. And she's like, you are not listening to me and she and tina loses it and she's like you are not listening to me megan sign off sign off now and so megan says she will and they get off the phone and 15 minutes go by and megan calls tina and this time she's she's sobbing she can't breathe and she's like they're posting bulletins about me, Mom.

Bulletin. So a bulletin is like a survey that people could post to their pages. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so they're titled like, Megan Meyer is a slut. Megan Meyer is fat. Like all of these terrible things. So she's just hysterically crying beyond,

like just beside herself. Yeah. And Tina is furious that she has stayed on the computer. And she's like, you need to get off of there. You don't need to be reading all of this stuff. Just get off. We'll deal with it when I get home.

And so she, when Tina gets home, she's pissed to find out that Megan is still on MySpace. Reading all of this okay but how could she not be exactly exactly and she was really shocked to see that megan was engaging with these people she was fighting with them she was using foul language back at them and so she physically pulled megan from the computer and logged her out. And she said, I am so aggravated at you for doing this, Megan. And with that, Megan ran from the room

and yelled, you're supposed to be my mom. You're supposed to be on my side. And then she ran and locked herself in her bedroom. and then she ran and locked herself in her bedroom. Did this girl kill herself? No. As Megan was running up to her bedroom, she also passed her dad on the stairway and she said he grabbed her and was like, what's going on?

What's wrong? And she told him that there were kids saying horrible stuff about her and that she didn't understand why. And he tried to console her and said, it's okay. It's her and that she didn't understand why. And he tried to console her and said, it's okay. It's all right. They don't know you. Obviously, if someone would say terrible things about you, they don't know you. And that's fine. You don't need to put any weight in what people you don't even know are saying about you.

But it did little to console her. And like I said, she ran up to her room and she locked herself in and then ron and tina were in the kitchen talking about what had going what had gone on about the myspace they talked about just disabling her page altogether reducing her access whatever 20 minutes went by and they were standing in the kitchen and all of a sudden tina froze she said that she just had this god-awful feeling that something had happened. No. She ran to Megan's bedroom. No, no, no. And Megan had hung herself in her closet. Oh.

Yep. Oh, God. It's horrible. Yeah. Horrible. Megan Meyer died the following day three weeks before her 14th birthday oh my god on the day that megan died ron her father opened up his daughter's myspace account and read through the messages that she had gotten, including what he believed was the final message, the one that pushed her over the edge.

So there's some question about this because some of the messages were able to be retrieved during an investigation and some of them were not. And this particular message was not able to be retrieved. So Ron is the only one other than Megan who is believed to have read this message. But it was from Josh and it said, Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You're a bad person and everybody hates you.

Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you. Oh. rest of your life the world would be a better place without you oh so megan's parents believed that is the last message that she received before she ran to her bedroom and made the decision to take her own life yeah um in the weeks after megan's death her parents saw grief counselors they went to parents after loss of suicide meetings they they got support and help um they also tried to reach out to josh evans to let him know the power of words but Mm-hmm. But... They had a tough time, didn't they? Oddly, his MySpace account had been deleted.

Mm-hmm. In the days after Megan's death, the Myers went down the street to comfort the family of the girl who had once been Megan's best friend. And they... The families came together and they said yes, even though they had had their ups and downs, ultimately the girls had been friends for a long time and Megan had valued their friendship. They also attended that girl's birthday party.

Though they had had to leave when it came time to be saying happy birthday because here was a girl that had been best friends with their daughter who was celebrating her 14th birthday. It was too hard. And Megan wasn't ever able to do that. They went to several celebrations that that family hosted. They even stored Christmas gifts for them so that the kids wouldn't find them, including a foosball table that was a surprise Christmas present. They stored it in their basement so that the kids of that family wouldn't find it. Yeah. And then six weeks after Megan's death on a Saturday morning, a different neighbor, we'll call this neighbor B. Okay.

At the time that this article was published the first neighbors were not named to protect their daughter okay and so we'll get to that but right now the first family is neighbor family a and this is neighbor family b okay so six weeks have gone by and the myers get a call from neighbor b and they didn't know neighbor B well at all. And she said, insisted really that they needed to meet that morning at a counselor's office in O'Fallon. She wouldn't give them any details, but Ron and Tina went. But Ron and Tina went. They brought their grief counselor and then a counselor from the middle school that Megan had attended was also present.

Oh, my God. Neighbor B lived down the street. She was a single mom with a daughter the same age as Megan. She informed the Myers that Josh Evans never existed. She told them that Josh Evans was created by adults. What? A family on their block. No. Yep.

What the fuck? These adults were none other than the mother of Megan's former best friend. I have goosebumps. Yes. You're kidding me. Nope. Her name is Lori Drew. The daughter had nothing to do with it?

I didn't say that. Okay. But it was created by... Mm-hmm. It was created by her mother. Fuck her mother yep these were the same holy shit i'm sorry i'm sorry i these were the same people that they had attended these celebrations for the same people they had consoled after the loss of their own daughter yeah yes So she this neighbor B, whose name has not been released, I don't know her name. Yeah. Said that this the Drew family, Lori Drew and her daughter had taken her daughter to school often and that they had let her in on this plan that they had where they created this phony MySpace account. And neighbor B's daughter even had the password to this MySpace account for Josh Evans.

And that lots of people had been encouraged to join in on the joke. You are kidding me. Mm-hmm. Yes, you are kidding me. No, I'm not kidding'm not kidding you sorry no i'm not kidding you yeah so according to neighbor b it had all been a plan to catch megan saying nasty things about the drew's daughter online they had some reason to believe that she was spreading rumors about her or something. And I was all, all a plan to catch her in that.

This had better end in that woman being in prison for a very long time. I mean, is this not so fucked up? Yes. It's fucking terrible. A grown ass woman. Yeah. Um, she needs to be done having kids.

No more kids for this woman. Yeah. On the night of Megan's death, while the ambulance was still at the Meyer home, Lori Drew had called the neighbor B family and was like, don't say anything about the MySpace account to anyone. And so that girl hadn't said anything for a while. And then the guilt of it just weighed on her until she finally told her mom. Good. Yeah. Yeah. And

it weighed on her so much. And then like she she kept battling with it because an adult had started it. So how wrong could it really be if this had been the work of an adult, someone that you're supposed to trust, someone that you're supposed to do what they do, do as they say. And so that's why she had waited so long to tell her mom. I understand that i completely understand it i 100 understand it i feel like especially because you and i were so obedient oh yeah as kids yeah we were not rebellious children at all well and but we've talked about this like there were times looking back that we totally should have questioned what was going on. Yeah. But because an adult, like, the time we babysat and that woman drank so many Zimas and then drove us home. Yeah, she told us she drank a bunch of Zimas and then she drove us home from babysitting. And it did not even occur to me to question her.

Yeah. And looking back, it's like, oh, my God. Yeah. So the Myers are obviously devastated. That's terrible. By this news. They immediately went home and they destroyed the foosball table that they were storing for them. They used an axe and a sledgehammer to destroy it. And then they gathered up all the pieces and dumped it into the Drew's driveway and spray painted Merry Christmas on it.

Really? Yes. I mean, I cannot believe that woman had the fucking balls to be like, oh, could you store, hey, buddy, we're friends. I mean, yeah. uh could you store but hey hey buddy we're friends i mean yeah yeah um tina meyer says the worst part about this is that the girls were very close obviously they went on vacations together yeah so laurie drew knew that megan battled with depression that she had battled with depression from a very young age that she was medicated for it yeah no this is this is fucked up beyond

comprehension yeah why any adult would do this to any child yes yeah it's the craziest thing ever so at the time that this article was released, they asked the Drew family for a statement and they refused to give one. And at this time, no criminal charges were being pursued. The only information that comes from Laurie Drew's point of view actually a a police report regarding the destroyed foosball table. OK, so. Wait, she called the police. Uh huh. She did.

This woman. She continues to surprise me. Yeah. Yes. If you bullied someone into killing themselves and the worst thing that happens to you is someone wrecks your foosball table. Yep. So yeah. So when they did that,

they made a police report and said that they, I think that they made like tire tracks through their yard and then destroyed, like did like up to a thousand dollars worth of damage between their yard and the foosball table. And so this is Lori Drew's official version as stated in the police report. Lay it on me. Are you ready?

Yes. Okay. So when they reached out to her for this article, she said, oh, you know, not everything is right in that police report. We tried to get some of that stuff amended and they won't let us. And so Mr. Poken here reached out to the police department and they said there is no record of anyone ever contacting the police department and attempting to alter the report. So. Well, and I'm sorry, but what what would be incorrect?

You'll see in a minute. Oh, OK. Yeah. She gives a lot of information. Oh, good. Yeah, she gives a lot of information in this police report. Oh, good, good. Okay. So the official statement from the police is that we stand by this report as written.

There was no supplement to it. What is in the report is what was told to us by the reporting party. Okay. The police report states, Lori Drew stated in the months leading up to the Meyer daughter's suicide, she instigated and monitored a MySpace account, which she created for the sole purpose of communicating with the Meyer's daughter. Lori said she, with the help of a temporary employee named Redacted, constructed a profile of a good looking male on MySpace in order to find out what Megan, the Myers daughter,

was saying online about her daughter. Lori explained the communication between the fake male profile and Megan was aimed at gaining Megan's confidence and finding out what Megan felt about her daughter and other people. Lori stated that she, her daughter, and the temporary employee all typed, read, and monitored the communication between the fake mail profile and Megan. According to Lori, somehow, other MySpace users were able to access the fake mail profile. Somehow? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And Megan soon found out that she had been duped.

Lori stated that she knew arguments had broken out between Megan and others on MySpace and that she felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide. But she did not feel as guilty because at the funeral, she found out that Megan had tried to commit suicide before. out that Megan had tried to commit suicide before. Okay. Can you believe all of that stuff is in an official police report? And so they got all that information and they let her just walk out the door? What law did she break? This is the most frustrating case ever.

Are you about... What are you about to say? So, the authorities in O'Fallon or Darden Prairie or whichever city this took place in continue to investigate this. But they did not have a charge to fit the crime. I mean, yeah. It's not illegal to create a fake persona online. It's not illegal to create a fake persona online. It's not illegal to bully someone. It's not illegal to lie.

Yeah, the authorities said. In an everyday situation. Yeah, the authorities said, I don't know that anybody can sit down and say, this is why this young girl took her life. Yeah, because it's like it's not like that michelle carter case you did yep where she i mean she really talked him through the suicide yeah whereas that's that's not what happened here so no at that time no charges were filed against laurie drew they just could not find a charge

to match the situation and so this article came out it made international news um steve pokin says it he had no idea but that this became the biggest story of his career. Yeah, I can see why. It was translated into different languages all across the globe. It's so horrifying and so frustrating. He also said that the lead up to this article coming out was the most difficult time of his entire career as a journalist because he had to tell Tina no on two things. And it was the hardest thing to do when so like two days before the article came out he met with Tina Meyer to get a picture of Megan for the article right um and to have her do like a final like glance over it and get you know he wanted her

approval on printing the article because it's such a personal story obviously that's interesting usually you don't usually don't do that no and so she she asked him two things she asked him to have her to have megan's picture retouched because she thought that megan wouldn't like the picture of herself and he told her no no yeah they don't do that and then he asked or she asked him to print laurie drew's name in the article and he told her no so he said that according to like the rules of journalism he actually should have printed her name There was no reason that she was protected. Uh-huh. But he personally felt the need to protect her daughter. Oh. Because it would have been very easy to find out who her daughter was and for her to receive the fallout of this going, making international news.

That's very interesting. Mm-hmm. Hmm. What do you think about that? making international news. That's very interesting. What do you think about that, journalist? I don't agree with that decision. You would have printed her name? I mean, if you're going by the rule, the rule is you don't print sexual assault victims' names. And just off the top of my head, I feel like that's really the only, the only rule, um, when it comes to who you name and who you don't name. I, I, I totally get where he's coming from. And I know that I'm sure there were times when I

bent rules like that just because I was worried about somebody. Yeah. I don't agree with him though. So what happens now? No charges are filed. The Druze end up moving away because people were like plastering their neighborhood with signs.

Oh, yeah. People knew. Oh, people knew who they were. Yes. The Tina and Ron Meyer ended up getting divorced. It was not something that they could. Yeah. They made it through, which is super common after the loss of a child, under crazy circumstances like yes as tina blamed

herself horribly well and good god we i might cut the part where i called her a bad lifeguard yeah that's really terrible um and so the they thought about taking you know civil action against them filing a civil lawsuit against them. And they decided that that wasn't worth their time. They weren't going to waste their time doing that. Instead, Tina devoted her kind of diverted her focus to making steps, taking steps to make sure that if somebody did this again, it would break a law. That is that is so smart. I love that. Yeah. Because yeah. What are you,

what are you really going to get from these people? Yeah. Best case scenario, you get, you know, yeah. $10,000. I don't know. I don't know that you get anything. Yeah. And so that she started, um, a foundation in her daughter's name and really worked on and is still working on to this day, you know, getting the word out about what happened, about cyberbullying and try to get some legislation made and that would make this a crime. So that's where it ended in St. Louis. But as I said, this made international news. Right. And so in California, some lawyers

read this article, looked into this thing, and were like, no, this is a fucking crime. As in it's an existing crime? It is. Hold on. Hold on.

Let me think. Okay. Okay. So on this MySpace page, you said they put up surveys and lies about her and all that. So libel? Nope. Okay. Fraud?

Kind of. Okay. libel nope um okay uh fraud kind of okay they said that it was a breach of the myspace terms of service you're kidding me nope and so in may of 2008 lori drew was indicted in federal court in California on four charges relating to the violation of the terms of service agreement for MySpace. That's amazing. It was able to be filed in

California because MySpace is located in California. Rest in peace. So here she is thinking she's gotten off scot-free and all of a sudden she's indicted on four felonies four felony counts oh my god i love it you cannot talk fast enough i want to know everything it it's it's kind of complicated. Yeah.

And it sucks. It's boring. But basically they said by her pretending to be somebody else when she agreed to that MySpace agreement, that meant that she violated it. Right. And so it went to trial. Oh. To a jury trial. Oh yeah.

And yeah, the jury had the option of convicting her on these four counts, these four felony counts or convicting her on a lesser count of a misdemeanor on all four of these charges at the trial the unnamed temporary employee was granted immunity and testified uh-huh and said that it wasn't laurie drew at all who agreed who signed the agreement for myspace and did the initial setting up of the page it was her MySpace and did the initial setting up of the page. It was her husband.

No, it was the temporary employee. It was the temporary employee that did it. And it wasn't Lori drew at all, even though it had been Lori Drew's idea. She had been, no, do it.

No, no. So she was the one who broke the contract and now she has immunity and no. Oh, I'm going to flip a table. You're going to flip a table? I hate this. The jury found her. They had better have found her guilty AF.

The jury found Lori Drew guilty on three of the four charges, but of the lesser misdemeanors. No! Not the felonies. And because of that, the defense filed a motion to get those overturned. to get those overturned. And their argument, yeah, their argument held some water. Is that the phrase?

Held water. Held water with the judge. So... I mean, I kind of get it in that they were just trying to get her on something. On something. And that can be hard to... So the... the judge said, the judge George Wu, he said that had they found her guilty on the felony charges, it would have been good. He would have sentenced her.

They would have moved on. Because the felony charges require more proof that she committed a crime. The wording on the misdemeanors is so much, is very vague. And so it opens it up to a lot of problems if they find her guilty on those. Basically, he said that it leaves it up to a website's owner to determine what is a crime if they if he allowed this conviction to stand on this. It criminalizes what would be a breach of breach of contract. OK. And so he overturned her convictions.

Because of the precedent that it could set? Mm-hmm. Oh. Yep. There's, like, the prosecutor and the judge, like, argued in court for 45 minutes about this motion. Wow. Wow. And Tina Meyer got up and left the courtroom in the middle of it.

She couldn't handle it. Ultimately, Laurie Drew was completely acquitted of any wrongdoing. was completely acquitted of any wrongdoing. All because there just simply wasn't a crime that fit what she did. They could not convict her of something on the books that fit what she did. Is that not devastating?

I don't even know what to say. Right? It's fucking terrible yeah i'm sorry i i don't know what it's terrible um megan's dad said that it didn't matter to him that the that the convictions were vacated because a jury found her guilty and that was the right decision. She would have faced like up to a year in prison. It wouldn't have been anything crazy. I see where he's coming from with that. He said it's enough for him.

Oh, well, I... I disagree. It would not have been enough for me. I admire that, that that's enough for him. But I do imagine that there would be some comfort in knowing that a jury of your peers was like, yeah, that lady did something terrible. Yep. So she's just out there living her best life. Got, yeah, got nothing, not even a slap on the wrist for it.

I mean, she made international news. She had to completely, like, relocate and try and, you know, have nobody knows who she is. Yeah, I'm sure she has a new name now. I'm sure she probably does. Yeah. Josh Evans. Yeah.

Probably. Yeah. That's the most frustrating case. That's the most infuriating case you've ever done. So infuriating. I hate gets away with. And so to my knowledge at this time, there has not been any legislation that has passed, but. Tina Meyer is still working on it.

I just think that would be so hard. So Missouri legislators did actually amend the harassment laws in their state to include penalties for bullying. Okay. And that was approved in May of 2008. But it's still, there's still a lot of gray area and stuff. Yeah. And so they're making advancements. But there was a bill introduced to Congress in 2009 that would set a federal definition for cyberbullying.

But it it didn't advance. Yeah. Turn down or whatever. So, oh, yep. That's the it's the worst case I've ever covered. Yeah. Yeah. It's so sad.

Yeah. So sad. Yeah. How, you know, what's funny. And I wish I had said this in the moment when you said the thing about, um, Josh saying, Oh, my dad left us when we were little, my poor mom raising three kids. I know 16 year old boy talks like that. Yeah. Well, and I think no kid that's an adult it is an adult it was an adult as it turns out yeah yeah well it was an adult and at the very least i hope her sock falls off her heel every time she takes a step and she has to walk with wadded up socks in her shoes for the rest of her life brandy keep it civil, okay?

I can't imagine going on with my life after doing this. And I hope every time she gets her shower to the exact right temperature and gets in, someone flushes a toilet and it goes scalding hot on her. I hope that every time she's in a public restroom, the automatic toilet flushes while she's down on it. Yeah. How about that? How about that? And she gets trapped in there for an hour. Yeah.

I hope that every time she orders an iced tea, it's like that tea I had in New Bern. And she poops in a Bed Bath & Beyond bag. That's what I hope. That is my hope for Lori Drew. Okay. Stamped it. Best wishes.

Yes, best wishes to you. Okay, I have to pee. Pee. Do it. That was amazing. Frustrating. Well, yeah, I mean, horrible, but amazing. Okay, you ready for this?

Yes. I think we should acknowledge right off the bat that you already know this story. Okay, but I don't know all the details. I don't. Oh, okay. Okay, good. Yes. I've not seen the documentary.

Okay. Sorry. Oh, hang on. Let me do something real quick. on let me do something real quick so like a million years ago someone and i wish i could figure out who hang on recommended this case to us and you can't give them a shout out now because you forgot wow it's like you know me so well oh oh look at this it. It's in my fucking face. You know what? Prepare to apologize. I will do no such thing.

So in March of, God, was this March of last year? Hang on. Yeah, because if it was March of this year, you would surely remember, Kristen, that was just a couple of weeks ago. Okay, maybe more than one person has reached out. Well, now I feel really silly. I know that someone like a year ago reached out and suggested we do this case on McDonald's hot coffee. Thank you, whoever you are. You are smart and beautiful slash handsome and we owe

everything to you and also more recently lou so thank you lou for who works with lisa yes i don't know if she wants me to give these kind of details sure thanks lou thanks lou yeah okay so let's start with you're also smart and funny and beautiful. I was going to say, poor Lou. I know. I gave that other person, mystery person, a big old shout out. And Kristen, are you waiting for your apology? Yeah.

I have nothing for you. Wow. Here we go. Everyone knows this story. In the early 90s, a woman pulled up to a McDonald's drive-thru. She ordered a cup of coffee, paid for it, took it, put it in between her knees, and drove down the road. As she was speeding along with the coffee between her legs, it spilled on her. She was outraged.

The coffee was hot. It didn't feel very good. Why did you say it like that? It didn't feel very good. She saw an opportunity. An opportunity to sue a major corporation and make a ton of money. And that's exactly what she did. No, it's not. This is the story that everyone knows. This is the story that everyone knows, but it's not true.

Brandy. She sued McDonald's for millions of dollars, all because they dared to serve her hot coffee hot. And are you ready for the craziest part of this whole story? Uh-huh. She won. She won her lawsuit. In other words, let me just lay this out. She basically hit the lottery with a frivolous lawsuit.

And you know what? Our court system is just clogged with all these frivolous, ridiculous lawsuits. It's so funny because the majority of people, this is what they know of this case. Yeah. And it's not true at all. Why do you think they think that way? I don't know. Because they don't know the details

and because it's gotten spun uh-huh yeah uh-huh so that's the story as everyone knows it as everyone knows it yeah and that's the story that i knew it's like embarrassing until i watched the documentary hot coffee which is about this and it's on Amazon Prime right now. When this happened in the early 90s, tons of media outlets reported on it. Comedians joked about it. Politicians rallied against it. There was even like a parody of this on Seinfeld. At the time, big corporations were banding together in favor of tort reform. In other words, like they wanted to change the civil justice system so that there would be a cap

on the amount of money you could get to win a lawsuit and it would basically be a little harder to get your day in court. Yeah. And man,

this case was the perfect example of how our justice system is clogged with these bullshit lawsuits, Brandy. No, it's not. Yes, it is is it's all about these money hungry people claiming to be victims they're not real victims the victims here

corporate america no yes yes okay so let's talk about the real story. Yes, let's. Please do it. Which has been called the most misunderstood lawsuit in American history. I mean. Yeah. What? No, I just think it's so interesting that, yes, people think that this is a crazy, frivolous lawsuit. And it's not. It's not at all. Okay, here we go.

Okay, I'm ready. It was February 27th, 1992. 79-year-old Stella Liebeck was in the car with her grandson. Stella was in the passenger seat. And they were going through the McDonald's drive-thru located at... Oh. You don't have to look this up. I want to.

It's just a McDonald's. I looked up the Burger King on this episode. I know. You don't have to look this up. I want to. It's just a McDonald's. I looked up the Burger King on this episode. I know. 5001 Gibson Boulevard, Southeast, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Got it. Got it. Waiting on it. Waiting on it. Here comes the McDonald's. Coming right at me. Boom. Uh-huh.

I see an arch. There we go. And a tree. They were getting some breakfast. Stella ordered a cup of coffee, and as soon as they paid, her grandson pulled into a parking spot so that Stella could add some cream and sugar to her coffee. So right off the bat, she wasn't the one driving. And when she had her cup of coffee, they pulled into a parking spot. The car was not in motion.

Okay. So they were driving a 1989 Ford Probe. And it didn't have cup holders. And all the surfaces were slanted. So she couldn't just set it on the dash. So Stella put the coffee between her knees. And she took the lid off. As she did that, the coffee spilled onto her lap.

And that sounds like, oh, geez, that sucks. No, this coffee was crazy hot. McDonald's required its franchisees to serve coffee at a temperature range between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. Yeah, that's... That's really fucking hot. Well said, yes. That's...

That's too fucking hot. Yeah, you can't drink it. No. You can't drink it. It's only a few degrees below boiling. Yeah. Yeah. for for our international listeners who are smartly using celsius yes it's between 82 and 88 degrees celsius so how for reference that's about 30 degrees hotter than what you would get out of like your

standard home coffee pot and it's fucking hot out of that yes yes and like 30 degrees hotter than what you would get out of like your standard home coffee pot and it's fucking hot out of that yes yes and like 30 degrees when we're talking about that's a lot yes yes holy shit so stella was wearing sweatpants and they acted like a sponge her entire lap and thighs were covered in coffee. She screamed. She was in terrible pain. She was in so much pain that she thought she might not live. Her grandson drove her straight to the hospital.

Have you seen the pictures? Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really bad. Are they available on the internet? Stella Liebeck. and you do an image image search how do you spell liebeck that's a great question i think it's l-i-e-b-e-c-k yeah that's right

yeah yeah horrible horrible she was horribly injured oh my gosh so an interesting thing they did in this documentary they had people like tell them the story because you know everyone thinks they know this story and then they showed them pictures of like okay you say it spilled on her and you know here's what it did and then people are like oh my god so hospital staff examined her and discovered that she'd been burned on about 16% of her body, and 6% of those burns were third-degree burns. Oh, my gosh.

She had to get skin grafting, and she stayed in the hospital for like eight days. She was all ready, just this tiny old woman. But during her stay, she lost 20 pounds. When she left the hospital, she weighed 83 pounds. Oh, my gosh. Once she got out of the hospital, Stella's daughter became her caregiver for three weeks. Stella was permanently disfigured and partially disabled for two years. I bet.

Yeah. These pictures are horrible. If you don't want to look them up, I don't blame them. They're gruesome. She'd retired from her job at a department store like a week before this happened. Now, all of a sudden, she had all these medical expenses, and it looked like she'd have even more for the rest of her life, you know, stuff that Medicare just wouldn't cover. Plus, her daughter had had to take time off work to be her caregiver. And all of that added up financially.

Stella was not the type to sue anybody. That wasn't her thing. She'd never done it before. Yeah. But one of her daughters and sons-in-law said, son-in-laws said, hey, McDonald's should really have to pay for these medical bills. So they wrote McDonald's a letter. And it basically

said, hey, we think there's something wrong with the temperature of the coffee at that particular location. Please look at it. Please get it fixed. We don't want this to happen again. Yeah. And please pay for these medical bills. Sure. So Stella and her family added up all of her medical expenses they kind of made a guess at what expenses they might incur in the future

and they took into account the time that her daughter took off work to care for her and they asked mcdonald's for twenty thousand dollars mcdon McDonald's said. No thanks. But we will pay you. $1,000. $800. Where did they come up with that amount?

Right? Oh my gosh. I want to say her medical bills up until that point were already $11,000. Yeah. They went back and forth. But McDonald's wouldn't budge. They didn't think they had anything to worry about they were like people love how hot we keep our coffee the look on your face yeah when i think of mcdonald's i'm like love how they burn my taste buds off um yeah i i don't understand the purpose of keeping the coffee that hot are you ready for it yeah they've got a reason okay and it's gonna make total sense

okay so here's the here's the deal when people go through a drive-thru to get coffee, they don't drink it right away. They wait until later. So you have to serve it to them when it's as hot as lava and it'll burn their faces off. Yeah. Otherwise, they'll get mad. No, that's wrong. Do they have separate coffee for when people drink it inside the restaurant? No. So I saw something else. By the way wikipedia page on this shout out i

mean very very good stuff yeah they said that they that in the investigation of this they mcdonald's found that that's not actually true people don't actually wait to get to their destination before not at all yeah which is like they're just burning their fucking mouths off in their car while they're driving right thank. Thank you very much, McDonald's. Yes. McDonald's. I don't like this. No, no, this is not great.

This is the episode of infuriating cases. It kind of is. Ooh. McDonald's stuck to their guns. But just out of curiosity, they had a law student from their legal team drive around town taking temperatures of all the local coffee, just like seeing, hey, are we really that much hotter than everybody else? Turns out, yes. Yeah. He went around testing all the coffee and found that everyone else's coffee was way cooler than McDonald's.

The only place that even came close was 20 degrees cooler. Oh my gosh. Yes. You know what I look for in a good cup of coffee? Huh? To be able to fucking drink it. I have been known. To rock a microphone?

I'm not internationally known no i've been known to like pour water in which i know that i've done like ice cubes yeah yeah because like i want to drink it now i don't want to wait 30 minutes to drink it well it cools down to you know not liquid magma yeah i didn't know I had to call ahead 30 minutes for you to, like, set it out on the counter for me. That's ridiculous. Yes. Where do they even get coffee makers that make their coffee that hot?

I think they have flames shooting up straight from hell. McDonald's wasn't too worried. There was no way they were going to pay for Stella's medical bills. You know, that was just ridiculous. It wasn't their fault, you know? No. Yep. They need to pay them.

Poor, innocent McDonald's. Sorry, Peanut is sighing this time. Peanut is upset with this case, too. Yeah, Yeah well this is a very upsetting episode. It is. It's a very special episode of Let's Go to Court. You'll be pissed at the end of it. They ought to be pissed right now. I know. At this point Stella realized that she needed to hire an attorney. So she hired Reed Morgan. Reed had actually had a client in the 80s who'd been burned by McDonald's coffee. So he came at this with guns blazing. He was like, forget $20,000.

We're suing you guys for gross negligence. Your coffee was unreasonably dangerous and defectively manufactured. Yes. I like that. But he said, we will settle for $90, Yes. I like that. But he said, we will settle for $90,000. Mm-hmm.

McDonald said, let's go to court. Well, they said no first. Oh. I'm so sorry. I feel like I faked... You gave me like a weak winker. I know I did.

I wasn't trying to fake you out, but I totally faked you out. So Reed kept working the case. Second episode in a row where I've said it by myself. I'm trying to do serious damage to your confidence. It's working. So Reed kept working the case. And the more he learned, the more confident he became.

He offered to settle again but this time he's like we'll settle for three hundred thousand dollars at this like wait we'll do the 90,000 can we go back to 20,000 so at this point judge robert scott intervened and said hey i'm sending you guys to mediation so they met with a mediator who was a retired judge and the judge looked things over and said, hey, I'm sending you guys to mediation. So they met with a mediator who was a retired judge, and the judge looked things over and said, yeah, McDonald's, you messed up here. Yeah, yeah. Your coffee is crazy hot.

I think a jury will say that you owe Stella $225,000. So my recommendation is that you pay that. Yeah. And McDonald's was like, no! No! Very good. You got it that time. They felt certain

that a jury would be on their side. No! Yes, show them those pictures and they'll be like, she is the CEO of McDonald's now! That's how this works.

No, see, now, listen to their side, okay? Stella contributed to her injuries. She was, you know, she put that cup between her knees. Does it say you can't do that? Well, I mean, they're not going to list everything

you can't do with it. Like, don't put it on your head. Don't put it, like, on your shoulder. Like a little parrot. She also contributed to her injuries by not immediately taking off her clothes. Oh, okay. She was supposed to strip naked in the McDonald's parking lot? In front of her grandson?

Yeah. The thing is, like, I'm sure that her grandson was plenty traumatized without her taking a close-up. Well, the thing I imagine is, I'm sure she did actually do that. But as we'll learn more later on in the trial about how quickly you can get a third-degree burn. I bet it's super fucking fast. Yeah, you'd basically have to roadrunner your way out of your sweatpants. And... My fucking lashes man um oh me too oh my beautiful long lashes they become quite a hazard today to keep my fucking eyes open

um no even if like once you get the burn inflicting liquid off, the skin continues to burn. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like, oh, I'm all better now. Yeah. Oopsies. That sucked for a second.

No, this is dumb. Okay. Let's move forward. Well, you're not McDonald's. No, no, no. You're not done. I guess they're not going to sponsor. You're going to, you're going to change your mind real quick here. Okay. What's not the coffee's fault

was not the coffee's fault. Stella's age was really a factor here because she, hold on, because she had old skin and old skin is thinner and more easily injured than young skin. Oh my gosh. That's their real argument. than Youngskin. Oh my gosh! That's their real argument? Well, these are all factors for why they thought a jury would be totally on their side.

No. Well, clearly you're the outlier. Brandy. So they went to trial. McDonald's was super confident and so was the general public. Everyone thought this trial was stupid yeah the media

latched onto this story and it spread like wildfire frivolous lawsuit yes the more it spread the less detailed it became people didn't hear about how badly stella was injured they didn't hear about well i repeated that line that's right they didn't hear about, well, I repeated that line in my statement. How badly she was injured. That's right. Or how badly she was injured. They didn't hear about the extent of her injuries and how bad they were. Or how much it just sucked to be injured where she was injured.

Are you guys getting this? I'm worried they're not getting it. If you're not getting it, look up the fucking pictures. Instead, they just heard about a woman who was suing a major restaurant for serving coffee exactly the way people like to drink it. Boiling fucking hot. To outsiders, she seemed money hungry and ridiculous. To outsiders, she seemed money-hungry and ridiculous. Even some members of the jury were like, why the hell are we here for this?

The jury foreman later said that he wasn't convinced as to why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill. Until he saw the pictures. Yeah. But on August 8, 1994, the trial got underway. In court, Reed had a fairly simple argument. The coffee that McDonald's serves is way too hot. Yeah. He put Stella on the stand.

And one of the questions he asked her was, have you ever sued anyone before? And she said no. Reed wanted to show that Stella was just a regular person. I don't want to sue them now. I just wanted them to pay for my medical bills. Right, right. She's just this, like, I assume sweet little old lady. Like, she didn't want to go to court over this. Then he showed the jury pictures of Stella's burns.

And then it became a battle of the expert witnesses. What are you doing over there? Do you want to describe what you just did? No, I sure don't. You guys, she's examining the ends of her hair. I was looking at the ends of my hair, and then it hit the mic, and I was like, I wonder if that makes a noise. That's legit what happened in my brain. That makes a noise.

That's legit what happened in my brain. So if you guys heard something weird, just know that Brandy is like so obsessed with her new hairdo. Shut up. Oh. Let's see here. Before I was rudely interrupted. Okay. So it's the battle of expert witnesses.

Did they make the jury taste liquid that is as hot as the McDonald's coffee was? It kind of makes you want to try it, though. I mean, not really. Not really, but yeah. But if you're on a jury. Yeah. So McDonald's brought a scientist to the stand who said that any coffee hotter than 130 degrees could cause third degree burns so in other words it didn't matter that mcdonald's coffee was way hotter than

that because you know anything over 130 it's gonna cause some trouble no yeah an expert for stella's side was like no temperature is. Yes. When something that's 190 degrees comes into contact with you, it takes about three seconds to create a third degree burn. Yeah, she could not have gotten her pants off in that amount of time. No! No, three seconds? Oh my gosh. Who could do that? Yeah. Especially not someone who's 79.

Oh, you're making a face. Oh, you know somebody. I'm saying if you really wanted to get your pants on. Oh, God. When something that's 180 degrees comes into contact with you, it takes about 12 seconds to create a third degree burn. Wow. So that 10 degrees makes. Right.

And so McDonald's coffee. Between 180 and 190. Yeah. So she had anywhere from three to 12. Some sources said 15 seconds to no time. No. But it would if they would just if McDonald's would have lowered their temperature, their coffee temperature to 160 degrees, it would take about 20 seconds to create a third degree burn. would take about 20 seconds to create a third degree burn so stella's legal team really jumped on this point and they were like if mcdonald's had lowered the temperature of their coffee to 160 that might have given stella enough time to get that coffee off of her skin instead she

only had 3 to 12 seconds ironically some of the most damaging testimony against McDonald's came from their own experts. Yep. Wow. Well, it came from their own quality control manager. So get this. Christopher Appleton testified, and he had to admit that McDonald's knew that its coffee had a history of causing serious burns. Yeah. So Stella's legal team pressed him, and they were like, okay, so this is an established problem. Yeah. So Stella's legal team pressed him and they were like,

okay, so this is an established problem. Are you going to warn customers that they might get burned by your coffee? Are you going to change the way you do it? Are you going to do anything differently? Nah. Exactly. Yeah, he was like, no. His exact quote is,

there are more serious dangers in restaurants. Which, like, dude, I bet there are, but that doesn't... Well, that's the... Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's the most ridiculous argument. Brandy, I'm only going to safeguard myself against the most dangerous things that's right

everything else i don't care it's fair game yep so i couldn't tell if this was taken from a deposition or if this was actually in court this was part of the hot coffee documentary one of stella's lawyers told christopher that from 1983 to 1992, according to McDonald's own records, they had received. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I'm so wet. Oh, God. Oh, no. It's like someone dumped a kiddie pool onto my shoulder.

You can't even look. Oh, no. It's like someone dumped a kiddie pool onto my shoulder. You can't even look. Oh, no. You guys, Brandy's going to vomit everywhere. She can't even look at me. Look at my shoulder. It's glistening. Oh, God. So much sneeze.

Hey, maybe I got that sneeze out of my system, so I won't sneeze in your car. You better not fucking sneeze in my car! Should we tell... Do you remember last week when I started to sneeze and I said, oh no, and it came out so weird because I was saying, oh no, as I was... Yeah, you sneezed in my car again at the exact same spot. I don't do it on purpose, but the results are always hilarious.

I don't like sneezes. I know you don't. I especially don't like them in my confined car. My favorite is that since you know they're not under someone's control, you can't yell at them. No, I don't get mad. I mean, I can't get mad.

You can't control it. But you,, I don't get mad. I mean, I can't get mad. You can't control it. But you, like the battle that plays out on your face and in your body when it happens. I'm sorry. This is who I am, Kristen.

Thank you for finally apologizing for who you are. I've been waiting like 25 years for this. One of Stella's lawyers told Christopher that from 1983 to 1992, according to McDonald's own records, they had received more than 700 complaints from customers who'd been burned by their hot beverages. Holy shit. Did you just hear my stomach? That was your stomach?

That was my stomach. I thought there was an earthquake. you just hear my stomach that was your stomach that was my shit thought there was an earthquake you know you tried to warn me that we needed to start recording earlier because we were never going to get to lunch and uh episode over sorry guys i've got two pages left of the script and you're just gonna have to google it i recommend wikipedia so the lawyer said that doesn't surprise you does it no christopher said i can't say that i'm surprised or not surprised i'm really i'm kind of switzerland i'm really pleased that the number's not higher oh my gosh yeah, what do you think about that?

Okay, that's bad. That's bad, bad, real bad. Yeah, so he's trying to play it off. I think he doesn't work for McDonald's anymore. I don't know. You know, I should have looked him up, huh? I do feel for him. He's this corporate dude,

and, you know, you're trying not to fuck over your company, but your company's done the wrong thing. I mean, what are you going to do? Another expert witness for the defense said that when you look at how many cups of coffee McDonald's sells, the hot coffee burns aren't statistically significant. I don't care. I don't care if it's not statistically significant. One is significant. significant yeah and how

hard would it be yeah to just serve it at a slightly how many people okay how many people are specifically buying their coffee at mcdonald's because it's fucking 200 degrees zero yeah zero they're buying it there because they're already there getting a delicious McMuffin. I think you're right. Yeah, it is. No one goes to McDonald's for coffee. No one is going to McDonald's just specifically to get their amazing coffee. No.

That's never happened in the history of time. No! Tracy Jenks was one of the attorneys representing McDonald's. McMuffin sounds pretty good right now i had one today you did so what kind do you get do you get an egg mcmuffin you get sausage mcmuffin well i got the mcgriddle oh sorry i didn't mean to offend you um no i so i had a dental appointment this morning and i was like starving and so I just went through the drive-thru and I texted Kyla because you know she's the one with the baby yeah and she's like I'll just have an

iced tea and I was like bullshit so I got her an iced tea and I also got her a McGriddle and she freaking snarfed that thing because I always get a sausage McMuffin that sounds really good I think that's kind of what I wanted but I misordered so it's just an english muffin with sausage and cheese no egg or anything it's delicious well i don't want they make it with egg yeah why wouldn't you get the egg i don't want the egg damn it brandy get the egg not that i don't know how to order i know what i want kristin well clearly i don't know how to order so uh la la la tracy jenks was one of the attorneys representing McDonald's. And she said, look, Stella spilled this coffee on herself. And therefore, the responsibility for these injuries lies with her.

No, because if the coffee had not been 190 degrees, she would not have been injured to this extent. I agree. Yeah. No. been 190 degrees she would not have been injured to this extent i agree yeah no and it'd be another thing if she'd been like driving down the highway like for those listening that was me waving my hand around with my cup of coffee yes and you know what m what? McDonald's coffee isn't any hotter than what you'd get at any other fast food restaurant. This is an industry standard. No, it is not. The trial went on for about a week. In his closing argument, Reid asked that the jury punish McDonald's in a big way. Yeah. He said McDonald's sells about $1.35 million worth of coffee every day. So why not punish them for a day or two of sales? Well, and here's my question.

I wonder if the jury gets to hear what she was willing to take. Like she was fine with just cover my medical bills. Just give me $20,000. Like that's what she initially wanted. I feel like that shows that she's not money hungry. And I would have liked for the jury to have heard that i wonder if i wonder if they did because he did have her up on the stand and i feel like surely he did yeah surely because then if i were a jerk i'd be like fucking give her

all the money yeah like she tried she tried to just get yeah yeah she she tried to just get her medical bills and shit covered. Like, she did not come for blood. No, not at all. I bet that came up. I hope it did. The jury of six men and six women went into deliberation for four hours. There was a lot that they agreed on. They were shocked by how indifferent McDonald seemed about this whole issue. Before the trial, maybe a few of them thought this case seemed silly,

but after hearing about Stella's injuries and hearing all the testimony, they were on her side. So it's funny. There have been a lot of interviews with these jurors afterward. And that part that you reacted to where they were like, it's not statistically significant. They were just like, oh my God god you've got to be kidding me yeah that's this is not a number this is a person yeah it's happened to one person that's too many times yeah yes and like frankly it's just too easy to spill coffee

on yourself and what you've got three seconds yeah before you get a third degree burn, potentially? Ridiculous. They decided that even though McDonald's coffee cups did have a warning on them, the warning wasn't enough. It wasn't big enough, it wasn't significant enough, which I totally agree. Yeah, you assume something's going to be hot. You don't assume coffee is hot, you do not assume that it's

practically boiling. They argued back and forth for a while and eventually agreed that mcdonald's was 80 responsible for what happened and stella was 20 responsible okay because she was the one who spilled it technically they awarded her 160 000 in compensatory damages and 2..7 million in punitive damages. The jury thought it was fair and relatively modest considering how much money McDonald's makes. As soon as the verdict came out, local media picked up on the story. And then the Associated Press picked up the story. And from there, it went everywhere.

This story became international news. But as it spread. So, okay. The New York Times has gone back and done a retro report on what happened and what went wrong with this whole thing. And they talk about how one element is that as a story spreads, and this happens with all stories, the word count shrinks. Because people, you know, if you're not local to it, you don't care as much about all the details. So all of a sudden, all of this key context goes missing. So very few people got to read about how this was an ongoing issue at McDonald's.

And they didn't hear about how the jury reached their decision. They just heard about like, oh, some woman spills coffee and gets a million dollars. Yeah. Gets millions of dollars. Millions of dollars, yeah. That's exactly what happens. The judge ended up reducing the punitive damages to $650,000. Eventually, Stella settled with McDonald's.

Her settlement is confidential, but it is believed to be less than $500,000. Ugh! No, Stella! Yeah. I wanted her to get all the money. I wanted them to change it to Stella's. Instead of McDonald's.

Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah, it wasn't difficult. You didn't react like I thought you might. Oh, Stella's! Very good. Did you come up with that ahead of time somehow? Did you come up with that ahead of time somehow?

I'm just real quick-witted, Kristen. Weird, I never noticed before. But this wasn't the end. Around this time, like I said, there was a big push for big business. Holy shit. We need to feed her. She's breaking down. There was a push from big business for tort reform.

They wanted legislation that would put a cap on damages. And this McDonald's case was like their poster child. Which I hate. Yeah. This case was used as like the reason that we needed tort reform. So the hot coffee documentary gets way in depth on this. And it's this big political thing. It's like this really nasty thing. I'm not going to go too in depth, but i'm just going to tell you a little bit the american tort reform association

represented like 300 different huge businesses and one of the things they did was hire a pr firm the pr firm created all these websites for citizens against lawsuit abuse they had these websites billboards, radio commercials, and they were all meant to give the impression that there were a bunch of, like, everyday people who were fired up about tort reform and who, you know, wanted these frivolous lawsuits to stop. It was all PR bullshit.

Yeah. But it worked. Mm-hmm. The public, and in particular, a lot of Republican politicians started to favor tort reform hot coffee gets way into this they talk about how george w bush ended up passing a lot of these reforms and it talks about the effect that those reforms had on everyday people according to stella's family the insane public fury over her lawsuit was really hard on her. I'm sure.

Yeah, I mean. Because nobody is getting the details. And even the big stuff, like, oh, she got millions of dollars. No, she didn't. No, she didn't. She didn't at all. She got mean letters from people. She was talked about like she was some greedy, awful person.

Stella passed away in 2004 when she was 91 years old. Wow. Thanks to the lawsuit, McDonald's coffee is now served 10 degrees cooler than it was before. I feel like that's not enough cooler. Yeah. And that's the horrifying real story. The real story.

The McDonald's coffee lawsuit. Ugh. Poor Stella. Yeah. No kidding. That tort reform stuff is super interesting to me because like

did you listen to Dr. Death podcast? I listened to a couple episodes. I didn't get all the way through. So they talk about tort reform and it because it was a really big thing in Texas, tort reform

for medical malpractice lawsuits. Right. Right. And they've capped it at like $250,000, which is fucking nothing. Yeah. And so lawyers won't even take medical malpractice suits in Texas because of it, basically. Who the fuck is that protecting? Okay. So it's interesting you bring up Texas becauseas because in hot coffee they talk about carl rove was really big

on this because of his own business interests and then of course he was paired up with george w bush you know he came up through texas yeah yeah so people who are in favor of it you know their their argument is sometimes that like oh it scares people out of the medical profession. Oh, we want doctors to be able to be doctors without these crazy. But $250,000. It's not even enough to cover your legal fees, really. And it's an arbitrary number that does not take into account how someone has been wrong yeah like seriously if you guys you guys if you like podcasts which you listen to ours so but this

is not it's not a comedy podcast dr death's not it's very good but it's about medical malpractice and people are were maimed by this doctor yeah and nothing they could And nothing they could do about it. There's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Yeah, I think tort reform from the way I understand it is just a scam. It's

it protects big business. It protects big business. Yeah. It doesn't protect everyday people. No. Oh, yeah. Oh,

we don't usually get this fired up on our podcast we are both angry and hungry hungry oh kind of gassy um you got show notes i got a show note i have nothing you go ahead so a lawsuit was filed today okay in texas uh-huh against the houston astros and clearly this woman does not listen to the podcast or she would know better what's what's going on this woman says that her finger was shattered by a t-shirt cannon at the astros game and she sued them for more than one million dollars okay what lawyer did she find right who hasn't looked up the case law yes you can't do that you can't do it yeah and the astros are like sorry lady like we're still gonna do the t-shirt canon obviously we can't talk about this lawsuit while it's going on

but uh don't worry fans t-shirt canon still coming right at you like yeah no you this is like so established trying to catch that t-shirt if it's shattering your finger okay well i will say i can't catch anything so i would probably be the one to shatter a finger but it'd be your own fucking fault you don't yeah yeah i mean that's just like there are certain risks you take when you go out in public, when you go to a baseball game. Yep. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

Yeah. I don't think we're really sorry. I don't think we are either. And if you have no idea what we're talking about, please reference episode. It was the one where Norman was on. I feel like it's episode 22, but let's see. How do you remember this stuff? It is episode 22. How do you remember this stuff it is episode 22 how do you

do this i don't know food lawsuits with the gaming historian episode 22 i don't know why that's in there kristin it's just in there stuck in that brain that's amazing to me that you can remember the number i legit have no idea why I can remember it. Okay. Okay. I'm as amazed as you are. And as impressed. Yeah, but clearly that woman has not listened to that episode and does not know the baseball rule.

Yeah. So. Gosh, we could have saved her some trouble. We sure could have. Watch. She'll take the stand in her own defense no this will get thrown out because it's so it's gonna get thrown out for sure yeah yeah it'll definitely get thrown out it's not gonna go all the way to the supreme court fun fact what that's the origin of that that episode yes it is yeah because oh my god oh my god i forgot um i do remember that norman was like like blown away that after the case went to the appellate court it then went to the supreme court He was shocked!

And he went over like, yeah, no, that's the natural progressions. You mean, after a small and a medium? Oh no! Oh shit. He's storming in here!

Yep. Okay, to be fair, I did not take one semester He's storming in here. Okay. To be fair, I did not take one semester of law school. I did not have one semester of criminal justice. So no, I did not know that. I learned something new. Sorry for getting excited about learning. We accept your apology.

Don't let it happen again i'm sorry for getting excited about learning uh two more quick things okay first someone asked us on instagram where the origin of podcast adjourns comes from podcast adjourn comes from and uh so this is what i told them and i'm fact checking with you okay that we just like accidentally said it at the end of the episode when we were trying to figure out how to end it right we were just like spitballing and like yeah and it was so brilliant we just kept it yeah that was episode one yeah and yeah and we like had not talked at all about how to end the

episode yeah we hadn't planned a lot of things we did not um yeah if you're just yeah i mean we've gotten considerably better than that i think well while you're saying that um we did get an email it was very nicely written a couple weeks ago from someone who was like hey i'm really enjoying the podcast your audio is terrible yeah she's like i'm trying to listen to some of your older episodes and uh man uh one one of you is way louder than the other and it's like so yeah um unfortunately there's nothing we can really do about those early episodes now but they're just little gems if you want to go back and we thought they were gems that's the funny thing we had no idea what we were doing and we had no idea what we were doing wrong but we had fun we sure had fun and we're still here

i hope we both have fun kristin's kristin's favorite saying hey thanks guys everybody that's gone out there and left us a rating or a review, we're well on our way to 2,000. I thought you said you had two things. I don't remember what the second thing was. I already forgot it. Okay. I'm sorry. I interrupted you.

I was hoping you weren't going to point it out. I was like, we talk about ratings and reviews on every episode. It couldn't have been this. No, it wasn't. There was something else, but it's gone now. Do you need, like, a moment? No, it's gone, Kristen. Oh, wow.

It's no longer in here instead you've got like a million other yeah no literally no clue what it was okay oh i remember oh okay okay a couple of people have reached out to us about stitcher our pot our episodes are taking a long time to show up on Stitcher. We have no control over it. It's very frustrating. We understand. Yeah. Unfortunately, they pull from our feed whenever they fucking feel like it. And so I don't. You know, I've been thinking about this because I've gotten frustrated, too. Sometimes the episodes don't. Yeah. I'm going to look into it more. Yeah. We'll do some. We'll do some research into this.

One thing I can tell you guys for sure. We upload every Wednesday. Yes. Every single Wednesday. We've never missed it. Watch now. We'll miss next week. But no, we never miss an upload. So if it's Wednesday and whatever, whatever one you're whatever app you're using isn't

on there like we we have uploaded it. So you can always go to using isn't on there. We have uploaded it. So you can always go to our website and listen there. It's kind of a pain in the ass. Don't say that. It's wonderful to go to our website. Okay. Our website is cute, but it is a pain in the ass to listen to the episode through our website. And then also I think it's always in iTunes right away if you listen through that.

And then I believe it's available through the Google Play Store as well. So good backups if you're having trouble with whatever podcast app you're using. And we will look into it on our end and see if there's anything we can do to help it. Yeah. So stop messaging us about it. No. I'm just kidding. Please send us all the messages.

We love them. Yeah, we do. we love them yeah we do we love them yes so make sure you find us on facebook instagram twitter myspace youtube zenga reddit um find us all of those places head on over to itunes leave us a rating leave us a review we're still working on that 2000 goal. Kristen thinks we're headed to 250. I'm focusing on 2000. Well, dream big, Brainy.

And then be sure to join us next week. When we'll be experts on two whole new topics. Podcast adjourned. And now for a note about our process. I read a bunch of stuff, then regurgitate it all back up in my very limited vocabulary. And I copy and paste from the best sources on the web, and sometimes Wikipedia. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts. For this episode, I got my info from the documentary Hot Coffee, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Retro Report, and Wikipedia. And I got my info from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Springfield News Leader, Wired.com, and Wikipedia.

For a full list of our sources, visit lgtcpodcast.com. Any errors are, of course, ours, but please don't take our word for it. Go read their stuff! Thank you.