Yeet the Rich
If a billionaire donates money to a good cause, does that make them a good person? Hosts Emily Walsh and Daniel Moss are two married millennials who learned about financial crises by living through them, and now they’re diving into the wild world of the uber rich. They discuss financial crimes, the breakdown of the American dream, and why funding a museum doesn’t necessarily make you a good person. They get into the old timey rich, like the Rockafeller family, and current events, like why you might not want to shop at Walmart. Each week they’ll dive into a new wealthy person, give you the rundown on their lives, whatever “good things” they’ve done in the past, and why they might be a bummer.
Yeet the Rich
McDonalds Hot Coffee Part One: Nothing Like the Taste of Hot Lava in the Morning
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This week we are talking about Stella Liebeck and the Mcdonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit. Almost everyone in America knows about the woman who received Millions after she was burned by a cup of Mcdonalds Coffee. But much of what we think is true about the case is exaggerated and misleading.
In this episode we talk about the actual circumstances of Stella's injury and her recovery after receiving third degree burns from the spilt coffee. We get into her attempt to reach out to McDonalds for help with her medical bills attempting to come to some sort of settlement outside of court. And then after being snubbed by the company finally turning to the legal system for compensation.
We get into the lawsuit and its final outcome of awarding Stella with $2.7 Million dollars in punitive damages. (Those damages were immediately decreased to less than 1/5th of the original sum) then we talk about how her story was sensationalized and turned into the butt of so many jokes. Also how her story was morphed into a tool to promote political change branding stellas case as the poster child for frivolous lawsuits and using it to push the idea of Tort reform making it harder and harder for average citizens to use the legal system to be compensated when wronged.
Sources:
“Hot Coffee” by Directed by Susan Saladoff (2011) (Rented from Youtube)
"The misunderstood McDonald’s Hot coffee Lawsuit ” Retro report PBS
"DisTort-ing the Law: Politics, Media, And The Litigation Crisis" By WIlliam Haltom and Michael McCann(2004)
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Don't be ashamed if you get confused when you talk to your friends or you watch the news. They try to tell you where it all went wrong. Now you don't need to or you just sing this song. Rich people stack in the dick. Rich people with big fat checks. Rich people to have in the bar. Rich people.
SPEAKER_02Hey everybody, and welcome to Eat the Rich. I am Emily Walsh and I'm here with my husband and co-host, Danny Motz. He was weird when I started. So I'm worried I screwed up something.
SPEAKER_01Sorry about that. Well, I just uh the camera wasn't on you when you started talking. It never is. I know. Because it's a man robot. It is a man robot. And uh I was just thinking about that initial edit setting up the uh this is some real inside baseball.
SPEAKER_02Yes, the 70 people on YouTube that are watching, they really care about quality. I know. Thank you for everyone tell a friend. I'm not ashamed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I love it. I think it's totally worth this level of work.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_02I mean, considering in five episodes, we've gone from 20 to 78.
SPEAKER_01Hey, that's good. There we go.
SPEAKER_02Turnover.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And we made Tacey sad, and they're all the right ways. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So she could have done that audio. I don't think she's watching. Tacey, let us know if you're watching. Yeah. Let us know if you're a person who knows us and you're watching. Because I'm not sure. I would say that'd be that'd be very interesting. Yeah. I do you want to hear the sweetest thing on Gazrine Earth?
SPEAKER_01Uh sure.
SPEAKER_02Uh so Katie couldn't fall asleep uh last weekend. I'm coming in hot from a bachelorette party where Never Gonna Die was real strong.
SPEAKER_01Two nights in a row. It's hard to pull it.
SPEAKER_02Two nights in a row past 2.38 a.m.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's hard to pull I'm never gonna die two nights in a row.
SPEAKER_02Two nights in a row. But so we were uh in Pennsylvania on our way, and Katie could not fall asleep. And sometimes she falls asleep to our podcast. Oh but she was sharing a room with Michelle, and I guess at one point Michelle woke up and you were just talking away about righteous in creation, and she was like, Can you please turn Danny off?
SPEAKER_01That's that's very sweet. It's very sweet and very funny, and I like all of it. Yeah, and uh the Lenore, whenever Buckley won't eat, we'll put on our bucket. Okay, we're happy for these listens. Gotta get them listens.
SPEAKER_02Happy for these listens.
SPEAKER_01Um let us know if anybody else is using us to fall asleep.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, let us know what what your listening circumstances tell us what you're up to.
SPEAKER_01You know, now that I think about it, because we're often so tired, it may kind of be, you know, gets no idea. Yeah, yeah. There's indignation, but it's like tired, smoldering indignation. I'm my whole thing.
SPEAKER_02So I forgot this episode is late.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I was like, but we're doing so good. It's light out. Yeah. Just late. But uh babies and beverages, where are you at?
SPEAKER_01Uh beverages, dose coffees, one baby.
SPEAKER_02That's not a beverage.
SPEAKER_01No. And a beer. Yeah, it's yeah, this will be my second beer, actually.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01I know. I know. It's been one of those days. But the baby is uh cute, but feisty. Feisty. Yeah, she's really thinking about learning how to walk.
SPEAKER_02Um just not solo beautifully all by herself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but but one hand, you know, strolling in a few.
SPEAKER_02She's a one-hander.
SPEAKER_01Incredible. Uh, and it's very cute. Uh I had a solo weekend with Frankster this weekend, and we got up into some hijinks, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes, not a lot of sleep.
SPEAKER_01Not a lot of sleep, a lot of hijinks. Yeah, um, which was fun. And then uh, you know, now this week, the the going down has been a fight for sure. She's bare knuckle boxing me in the in them streets.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, last night she said, I just won't. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But tonight, so far, I'd knock on wood, but it might be too loud and I may wake her up.
SPEAKER_02So I just tape tap it a tap on some wood.
SPEAKER_00So far, girls asleep.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_02Uh I had one and a half coffee. I did I did a mistake where we had to go, it was time to go for morning walk. And when it's time to go for morning walk, you kind of just gotta go. You gotta go. Uh, and so I left my coffee in the fridge thinking I was gonna get an out in the world coffee. Oh and then I didn't, and so now it's got home and I felt like garbage. Uh-huh. And then I drank some home coffee. So I meant like one and a half coffees, um, no beers, uh, and uh giant water coming out. Giant water working on a giant water. Yeah. Because maybe I'm dying. Yeah. But also maybe not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it could just be uh still backlash from Bachelorette party.
SPEAKER_02That's what I meant. Yeah. Because I was never gonna die, and now I'm yeah, you've got to pay the paper. My body was like, you're 40. It's really fun that you're fun, but you do have to pay the bill. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So here we are.
SPEAKER_02Here we are. My skin still looks great. So that's all that matters. Um this week is you're week, baby.
SPEAKER_01No, we have more Irish famine. Uh I actually have no idea whether anyone in this story is Irish. I should maybe know, but I don't.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_01There aren't any potatoes. Well, kind of. There's french fries, but they don't really uh they're not important to the story.
SPEAKER_02So well, then who cares?
SPEAKER_01Who cares? So this week we're starting to talk about the McDonald's hot coffee case.
SPEAKER_02The hot coffee case, the reason all your cups say caution.
SPEAKER_01Caution. The hot coffee or hot. Yeah, they're hot, hot, hot, hot coffee.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm I'm excited because I know that the things I know aren't factual.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Actually, that uh I feel like is a good place to start. What do you what do you think you know about uh the stellar name is Stella Liebeck, by the way. Wonderful. She was uh 79 when that happened.
SPEAKER_02I know that she was older than I didn't know she was 79. I knew she was older than like 60. I knew she was older. Um, I know that it was like severe burns because something was like wrong with the machine. So it was like very hot, um, and that there were severe burns, but I also know that in pop culture we were making fun of this person like they were uh just rude and stupid and didn't know copies how to do it.
SPEAKER_01Some people think that she poured the coffee on herself in order to sue McDonald's.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like I mean I don't know, but it sounds like maybe she did not do that.
SPEAKER_01She did not do that. Um, but also she did spill it on herself, but it was an accident.
SPEAKER_02She's 79 and it was really hot.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And uh like 1980s Ford Pintos or whatever car it was, which we'll get into, didn't did not have cup holders. Like there was a period in the in like in the 80s when cars started having cup holders, uh, and this one did not have one. Isn't it crazy? And fast food culture is the thing that brought cup holders to cars.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. But I think it's kind of like when older people are always like, why do you have to carry water everywhere? Like I think they drink coffee in the morning and whiskey at night and nothing throughout the entire day. Yeah, it seems because it's the idea also driving up until the 80s.
SPEAKER_01Such a like uh a big city country song coffee in the morning, whiskey at night.
SPEAKER_02Coffee in the morning, whiskey at night. I love my baby and I hold him tight. I uh what was I gonna say about McDonald's coffee? No, it's okay. I've just had another oh um I did I also I feel like this is true, but I'm not sure that this like kicked off uh a phenomenon of suing, but that is also just now how our country like makes laws.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_02Full disclosure, I did listen to an episode of the podcast You're wrong about about this incident. Oh yeah. It's been a few years. I definitely forget a lot of stuff, but I think I probably know more than the average bear. Sure. Uh because of that.
SPEAKER_01You you do you a lot of the things, one, are very uh in tune with like things that people think generally. Yeah. Uh some of them are much more extreme. You know, there was, and we'll get about it, get talk about more about it at the end of this episode because I'm I really hate this guy. There's a humorist that created a an award for like most frivolous lawsuit in America. Uh, and that there was like a weekly newsletter that he made money on, and he called it the Stella Liebeck Awards. Oh. About this woman, which is like, I hope he got sued because he deserves to be super sued. How and it wasn't a frivolous lawsuit, as we'll get into.
SPEAKER_02So how sad am I gonna be on a scale of one to ten if one is this woman heals completely, gets a beautiful pile of money, sure, gets to send 20 people to college and dies of old age in her bed, and ten is one point two million dead Irish people.
SPEAKER_01Well, that skews us pretty hard. Yeah, no. I think um it uh I think it's four to five. I think it's uh Stella does I made the ten pretty high. Yeah, ten was pretty high. That was that was tough. I I would have probably gone around five-ish to six, but okay, uh if it wasn't quite that skewed. Sure. Um, but I you know Stella Stella does okay uh with the you know, she wins ends up winning her lawsuit. It doesn't go as well as like the world thinks it does.
SPEAKER_02That's the other thing is the world thought she became like a millionaire.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thought she that she made like millions of dollars off this. Yeah, and pretty immediately she did not, and we'll kind of get into that. Um but uh I guess let's talk about yeah, let's talk about sources real quick. Uh there's a documentary on it started on an HBO, but uh I watched it on YouTube uh because it's not on Netflix anymore and it used to be on Netflix. It's called Hot Coffee, directed by Susan Saladoff in 2011. Um the focus of this doc is a lot more about the like changing landscape of civil law in the United States, which is a lot of what we're gonna talk about in this episode too, and and next episode. Um but Stella Lee Liebeck is one of the like primary examples of like uh how lawmakers kind of hijack public opinion and like morph stories in order to get a lot of people.
SPEAKER_02Are there lobbyists involved in this?
SPEAKER_01Yes, a lot of lobbyists, yes.
SPEAKER_02Um and like this is like I remember in high school, I didn't really know what a lobbyist was, and I was like, oh, I combined my knowledge from high school with like maybe an episode of West Wing, maybe maybe something, and I decided that lobbyists were the people they were called that because they had to hang out in the lobby to grab people on their way in. Oh, sure. To be like, hey, yeah, try to that might be how it happens, you know. I think it's because you lobby for your own.
SPEAKER_01I also think that that uh that schoolhouse rock uh like telling you about a I'm just a bill, they do have lobbyists in it, and they're like standing in the lobby and they're like, hey, I want to talk about it.
SPEAKER_02That's definitely why I think that's yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um uh but yeah, so the the it it goes into a lot of other stuff, and some of the stuff we'll get into this episode. I'm specifically gonna talk about the hot coffee case and Stella Liebeck and kind of the aftermath of all of that. Okay. But then we'll talk about how like this you you mentioned how like this case kind of set off a kind of rash of of lawsuits, and really um the as we'll find, the like concept of frivolous lawsuits in general is very overblown. Statistics are like skewed, and a lot of things are happening where like the there's there's one thing Reagan is involved uh in a big way, George Bush uh junior and senior are involved in a big way. Um, and they use statistics to be like the the number of lawsuits in America is ballooning, but it though that statistic that they use includes like this massive amount of asbestos lawsuits.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say, is it like wheelchairs, log ramps and shit that gets involved?
SPEAKER_01It's like we learned about asbestos and and started litigating it in the 80s, and it uh you know created these turns out took cases still like a lot of cases, and there were a lot of like class action lawsuits, so it's just this big number, and they were like, look, lawsuits are spiking, and they're all frivolous. And it's like, I these are just regular lawsuits.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it sounds like that whole like false reporting narrative where it's like it's less than one percent or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Like, I have no idea what it is, but it's not all. That's that's exactly. And the other thing is like m most frivolous lawsuits, you know what happens to them? They get thrown out.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say they're not winning these enormous piles of money crazily.
SPEAKER_01There's so many barriers of entry to get you from like I'm gonna sue someone to actually again didn't know.
SPEAKER_02I mean, this happened in the 90s.
SPEAKER_01The uh 80. No, 90s is right. Because I remember it vaguely. There's another one we'll talk about, uh, the the kind of precursor to this one, the one that everyone kind of pointed to before, is a psychic that lost their psychic powers. Oh, well, that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_02Because of a CAT scan. Should have seen that coming.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, but we'll get into why because the the Oh, because that's actually a lot of the jokes were were that yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I could run I could host an a late night television show in the 80s. Oh yeah. I mean, I couldn't because I'm a woman and they still don't let us do that, but I could have like comedically handled it. 100%.
SPEAKER_01And and like comedian comedians and late night hosts play a huge part in the like overblowing of this whole thing. They kind of they take it.
SPEAKER_02Which is so sad because it's like a 25-year-old joke writer who's like, I don't know, this.
SPEAKER_01And the the zeitgeist, like the the mass media was pushing this idea of this this woman uh getting millions from McDonald's because she spilled hot coffee on herself. And then it's just so it's such an easy little nugget to take and turn it into a joke. Uh, but if you look at all at it, you're like okay, this is not great. Yeah, no. This is bad. So, and we'll get into that. But the the the bigger picture that we're kind of talking about around all of this is uh is about a thing called tort law. Do you know anything about tort laws?
SPEAKER_02Only that they're annoying at every TV show where somebody goes to law school, you have to memorize a lot of them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, because there's a lot of different types of torts. We'll get into torts some this episode, but more we're really gonna talk about tort and tort reform a lot in the in the next episode. Uh I think this is gonna be a two-parter uh, you know, don't hold me to a four to eight. But uh but tort law is basically um things where like one party has harmed another party uh and it doesn't kind of rise to the occasion of criminal law. Okay. Um it's it's like, you know, uh uh Judge Juty type stuff? Judge Judy type stuff, but also like industrial uh liability law. So like the things where like a lot of the cases are the things that we've talked about already really are uh types of torts. So like the Radium Girls thing, the DuPont stuff, like the Henrietta Lacks lawsuits, those are all tort laws because they're they have to do with the fact that like our laws don't cover this, uh and you need to go to civil court to like get compensation for those things. Got it. Um so uh, you know, and the kind of the bigger the bigger picture of all of this is that because the way our government is structured and you know that we keep pushing this kind of idea of laissez-faire government and capitalism and all this stuff, uh like we can't put regulations in place because lobbyists and big big corporations in our whole business and and stopping all of that from happening. Uh, we can't do inspections, so we can't like have agencies that come in and make sure that you're following the meager laws that exist.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01So the only thing that we really have left is doing it in civil court. Right. Uh but uh because before the before Reagan, tort law really favored the the the litigant, the person suing, the plaintiff, um, and not really the big corporations or the other people. But then Reagan said, let me just say, I'm gonna I'm gonna get in there. And they were they worked like created this big public media campaign to kind of teach people that they were uh that there were way too many frivolous lawsuits, and all of those frivolous lawsuits were costing them money.
SPEAKER_02Well, also we've like, yeah, oh, the idea that the corporation has to put the cost somewhere.
SPEAKER_01The corporation has to put it somewhere, and it's obviously gonna put it on you, even though a lot of the things that they're getting sued for is stuff that they did wrong.
SPEAKER_02I that's interesting. Because I I there's definitely like a stigma, especially if you were born in the 80s, screw up in the 90s, against lawyers in general. Best best joke ever to be like, ugh, lawyers, am I right? But I I also have a deeply ingrained like uh morality about not suing anybody. Like we, I it's in my brain, and like when I broke my elbow at work, they there's like workers' comp, and then there's a say lawyer in the same office that's like, hey, on your way out, literally, on your way out, do you want to sue them too? And he like, I was like, I'm good. And he brought me in his office and explained all the different reasons and ways he we could sue. And I was like, I appreciate that. This is not a wrongful injury, it was an accident. I just need my like bills paid. And like, I do still believe that. I don't think I should have sued them, but it was right, I was so opposed to it that I was like, I had to kind of get home and think about it and be like, was I on a faulty piece of equipment? Like, did they ask me to do something like weird? And but then he also explained to me that, like, because of the way law works, uh, we were at a TV show in a building, and the building would be who I was suing, and I was like, I'm not gonna sue Siner Studios because I slipped on a box.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02But maybe I should have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but also that cardboard should have been taped down. It should have, but who's a number of other who's who's liable to I suit? Yeah, and I think that's the the the kind of like bigger picture about all of this stuff, this this like uh idea that frivolous lawsuits are so there's so many of them out there in the world. We're just been taught. Most people, yeah, exactly. Most people are not litigious in the way that like I think you know the media t says that we are.
SPEAKER_02It also sounds like so much paperwork. It's a lot of paperwork. It's so much like going to places and requesting things. Like it's like going to the DMV every day for 10 years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Just think of the the like DuPont thing where they just dumped, you know, a million documents on top of this man. Figure it out. And it took like a decade to do, and it's very expensive and it's very hard. And in a lot of cases, uh, if you're in a town that is like more pro, say McDonald's, you are going to get ostracized because of it. So it's like all of the things that the the like there's so many more barriers to entry to like winning one of these cases. And then also, you know, you the Stella Liebeck was awarded 2.7 million. Okay, but she did not get 2.7 million. The judge.
SPEAKER_02Yes, because I weirdly think I know how much she got.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02$63,000.
SPEAKER_01No, she actually did a little better than that.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So I wonder where that number because that was like a bird in there.
SPEAKER_01No, uh the So she got $160,000 for compensatory damage, which is the damage to pay for medical bills and legal, legal fees. So compensatory. And the and again, we'll talk more about it later, but the jury specifically like did the did the calculations and determined that she deserved $200,000 in compensatory, but they said that she uh was responsible for 20% of the injury because she spilled it on herself. So they reduced the compensatory damage based on that to 160 based on that. And then they awarded, sue them again! They awarded her 2.7 million uh in punitive damages uh because uh McDonald's like showed a real callousness and like yeah, they were just like, Yeah, I mean it's hot, hot stuff is hot, man. It's hot, what are you gonna do? And like there, there's a uh uh what do you call it? Not dissertation deposition with this guy that's like a quality manager slash safety manager, and he was like, Yeah, I guess I'm just glad that more burns haven't happened. This is 700's not so bad. And it was like the jury was like, nope. Um and the 2.7 million was calculated as two days of coffee revenues uh for McDonald's.
unknownJeez.
SPEAKER_01Because they sell one billion cups of coffee a year. Wow. So 2.7 million is just how much how much they probably not how much they profit, it's probably the the revenue, not the not the profit. But even still it feels like a pretty compared to the mass that is McDonald's. But news headlines, you know, lost their mind because they were like, oh, this woman basically got $2.9 million for spilling a cup of coffee on herself. Let's all spill, let's all get hit by a bunch of you know, third degree burns, and then was like permanently disfigured and had a hard time walking for the rest of her life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it sounds like they should give her money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they should give her money. Um the judge immediately, the judge on the so the jury awarded her 2.7, the judge immediately shrunk it down to 490 something thousand or 485.
SPEAKER_02The judge can do that?
SPEAKER_01I guess, yeah. That's malarkey. It is malarkey, yeah. Give it after all of this, uh, you know, one of the big laws that they that they push through, and they I don't think they were able to do it federally, they might have done it now. I have to kind of read more about that, but one of the big things they want to do is caps on damages. Uh like make a make a high cap for damages for, you know, uh mostly punitive and like pain and suffering. Uh but also really they want a cap on all damages. Yeah, of course. Um, and they weren't able to do that under Clinton. Uh and then they basically went to all of the states and created these like uh state laws that do.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's also like it's again, it's like what I knew then, even what I knew 10 years ago, what I know now. It's like judges are elected. So that's a conservative judge that was supported by somebody who wanted to stop suing corporations.
SPEAKER_01Part of all of this, part of the like the move because the judicial branch initially was thought to be nonpartisan as an idea. Like the whole idea was that it was not not a thing that was. meant to be supposed to be justice enthusiasts. Yeah, supposed to be people that just love the law and the constitution. Um but around in the 80s with Reagan and and with Bush and and all of you know Bush senior, Bush Jr. They really like were like, oh, it's cheap to buy judges in in like you know rural America and around the state. Like the the lower court judges and then they just stacked them.
SPEAKER_02They'll commit fraud for a free Big Mac a month.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You know, which also that's uh free Big Mac a month made me think of the uh do you remember the sign foot episode where Kramer spilled hot coffee on himself? Yes by sticking a whole cup of coffee down his pants?
SPEAKER_02They were gonna get money too and then he admitted or no that was something else. He had that lawyer friend.
SPEAKER_01Yeah he he uh had Jesse whatever his name is lawyer and then they they he was like you're gonna make a lot of money and then in court the you know hot coffee Joe Incorporation or whatever it was was like first we'll give you free coffee for the rest of your life and it was like sold. And that's what happened there. But it's it just like goes to kind of speak to how quickly this lady story kind of got insulated Also Kramer sued more than one company. Yeah sued a lot of companies yes that is definitely indicative of like where the culture was at and uh all of it is just kind of like insulting to this woman who likes to just a sweet old lady just a sweet old lady and she just wanted to put milk and sugar in her coffee is all she wanted to like we all do. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um I don't know why I'm so uh okay I I did some other sources what we'll we're gonna just get right into it. I'm just gonna read these sources out quick because I you know book report and all uh I watched another small documentary called The Misunderstanding of McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit on the retro report with PBS pretty quick and pithy little little uh little thing also on the YouTube uh and then I read the YouTube called Distorting the Law Politics Media and the Litigation Criteria did you choose it because of the pub I did not it I chose it because I was like I need a book about this hot coffee case and there aren't many. There's one that is a is a like leaflet to corporations on how to not get sued for having hot coffee.
SPEAKER_02Look at this sweet old lady spending money on that from getting any money.
SPEAKER_01Here's some tips. It's a pretty good book it is really uh mostly focused on how uh like the importance of tort law how tort law changed and was kind of morphed and how they used public opinion to like basically you know rob us of our ability to hold big corporations accounts the way it is the justice system. Yeah. Cool because as we said the all of the other avenues to justice uh are already gone. So they're already corrupting um so they uh the that book is the two two big examples that they use that the is the McDonald's talk coffee case and then also the tobacco uh cases as well which um you know uh like at the beginning of this podcast I was like I don't need to do tobacco everyone knows tobacco is evil but the way that they're evil is interesting and is used like the the things that they the ways that they sued and the ways because the tobacco industry funded a lot of this like changing our public opinion on suing companies. Yes uh and all all through these like this is kind of the beginning of those little like shadow grassroots groups and like groups that we mean the astroturf groups like the fake ones yeah what did I say you said shadow grassroots grassroots right that I meant astroturf shadow astroturf yeah yeah but those those like kind of groups of people writing laws that work in different states and then just we're kind of roving from state to state to create like citizens groups against uh frivolous laws.
SPEAKER_02What's it called a not a focus group but a study you get it a bunch of jerkismogurkes yeah that are a company that create they write laws and then the people just submit them for them. Think tank.
SPEAKER_01Think tank think tank. So uh the the book is good. It's pretty dry. There's there's some humor involved because they talk about like all of the um tort cases that are kind of blasted through media. So there's a bunch of like Ronald Reagan quotes that of just where he's talking about like a guy that got hit by a car while he was in a telephone booth and the guy sued the telephone company and was like can you believe this guy you know I could understand if he sued the driver but he sued the telephone company. But that telephone booth had been hit like 10 times. Oh god and uh so it was in like a dangerous intersection that maybe it should have been moved 10 feet over. It should have moved and then also because it had been hit so many times it was damaged so the latch on the door couldn't open so he was trapped inside and he probably would have gotten out but he lost his leg. So like you know the there's so many of these little like tort stories where they simplify to the point of absurdity and then they're like common sense says that's a bad idea and it's like you don't know the circumstance. Look at the receipts where who's who's aiming to benefit from it.
SPEAKER_02You get stuck in a phone booth my my problem with people that are against like being mad at corporations or whatever I'm like it's not your money. Yeah it's not your money. Yeah it's their money.
SPEAKER_01And actually it kind of is your money because they've been taking it from us for years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah and they're keeping it and we want some of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah um yeah yeah exactly so and that one of the one of the in the documentaries they were like nobody knows about tort law or civil law until they need it and then they get in there and they're like why isn't this easier why is this why I I just want people to pay for my medical bills because this That's the thing is most of them are just trying to like survive. Because uh Cell Liebeck and her family literally for like six months they just kept sending letters back and forth to McDonald's because the the medical bills were were going up and up she she required like skin grafts and was like in hospital in and out of the hospital for two years.
SPEAKER_02Oh my God.
SPEAKER_01To try to like you know repair her yeah old legs. So they were just like hey can you pay for our medical bills that's all and and so they were asking for maybe $10 to $20,000. Yeah it turned out McDonald's offered $800 and so then then after all of that they were like I think we're gonna sue you.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna sue you. We're gonna see you so thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much we're gonna sue you're just gonna take you to court um yeah so okay we talked some about tort law um uh okay so there are a couple of different types of courts torts there's intentional torts where someone purposefully does harm uh and I feel like most of the time this sort of thing happens in conjunction with a criminal case so like assault and battery can be a criminal case followed up by a civil case uh defamation trespassing all that kind of stuff uh there's negligent torts that happen by accident you know so uh you know carelessness or not moving the phone booth and not moving a bone booth uh while not using like malice or the legally mandated level of care. So like you know um so like you know car crashes uh that are like accidental car crashes like you know uh things that aren't you don't make it to like criminal neglect yeah um or manslaughter but they probably shouldn't have been fender benders and that kind of thing that's that's tort law with negligent torts. Slip and fall cases, you know, where like say there somebody mopped the floor and didn't put the sign out and somebody fell and hurt themselves that's that's a a negligent tort. Some medical malpractice cases uh mostly fall under this this category and then like strict liability torts. So these are the ones where like uh they're legally responsible regardless of intent. So whether or not like a big corporation that makes like a faulty piece of machinery that breaks and hurts people then they're legally liable whether or not they intended it, whether or not they did it maliciously. The maliciousness maybe will get them more punitive damages. But like even if it's you know like class class action lawsuits, all of that kind of stuff oftentimes falls under this like stuck strict liability lawsuit. So um yeah okay okay so let's go ahead and get into the Stella Liebeck story fully um so some headlines of the day uh woman burned by hot McDonald's coffee gets $2.9 million dollars from No she doesn't no she doesn't from the San Diego Tribune when Stella Liebeck fumbled her coffee cup she might as well have bought a winning lottery ticket this absurd judgment is stunning illustration of what is wrong with American civil justice system. Yeah um also like Jay Leno was just he loved this story he brought it up as a kind of recurring thing as it's saying basically like you know there were a bunch of jokes about her like spilling coffee and then suing and then making money and then he kept being like and she's back today for looking at herself in the mirror and uh not liking what she saw or something like he's just like keeps you know being like Stella's back in the news and it's like Stella's leave Stella alone leave her alone leave her alone pick a new target. As well as like a lot of other even like Steve Martin I'm like Steve Martin leave her alone buddy yeah um yeah yeah so yeah most people believe that Stella was actively driving her car drinking coffee and it spilled or like being reckless um and it was between her legs when she spilled or that she purposefully kind of spilled it on herself. So this is what really happened February 27th 1992 so it was the 90s Stella Liebeck 79 purchased a cup of coffee at the drive in window uh with a value meal in Albuquerque the Albuquerque McDonald's um she was not driving at the time of the accident it was her grandson Christopher um driving the car and after they received their full food and coffee they pulled into a parking spot to like so couldn't be more smooth the things as possible exactly let's get organized we will drive in the city they were like we're gonna organize the food he's gonna get his you know a couple of bites egg McMuffin out and get a couple of bites in um so Stella always drank her coffee with a little cream and sugar and so she was you know working on putting her cream and sugar in and uh I already mentioned so Christopher owned a 1989 Ford probe uh and there were no cup holders standard in that car at the time. So Stella chose to hold the cup of coffee between her legs while she took the lid off so she could grab it. And during that process the coffee just tipped over and spilled fully into her lap soaking into her clothes and the seat below. According to her daughter Stella was a very active woman before the accident you know she was able to drive and drive well she'd been working full time until about a week before the accident and she was a week before a week before and she was she just got her freedom. She just got her freedom from all that wage slavery just to be permanently disfigured by a massive corporation that was unwilling to pay her money.
SPEAKER_02Stella you got it so sad you know I'm mad and sad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and mad um makes sense and a little itchy so a little itchy so at the time McDonald's standard temperature for the coffee after brewing was held at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
SPEAKER_02That feels it's pretty hot I don't I'm gonna say it just before we even get any further I don't drink hot beverages.
SPEAKER_01No I don't do it.
SPEAKER_02No and seems like we're preventing a lot of burns I'm very safe if I do get burned I can pull the ice out of my coffee and put it on my hands exactly no I just don't like them. And even if I drink hot coffee I don't drink it till it is medium tip.
SPEAKER_01Like I don't like hot beverages yeah so this sounds even worse will occasionally betray betray the family in the winter time when I'm cold it's not a big deal. But I'm mostly uh winter Frankie will decide drinking cold cold coffee yeah she's the tiebreaker she's the tiebreaker we're already leaning very far cold coffee.
SPEAKER_02So far she's not a huge fan of hot things. No. And she tries to drink Maya's coffee so okay there we go.
SPEAKER_01I do not think we should give her coffee I d I don't give it to her she takes it. So this 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit and that's the holding temperature so it's brooded a little higher at like 200 something and then it sits in those like hot tanks tanks that they you know pour coffee out of and that holds it at 180 to 190 degrees.
SPEAKER_02Unless you're in Albuquerque where the humidity crank or actually it's a dry heat but it's a dry heat crank it up to which is why you pour some coffee on yourself cool down cool you down. Like 10 more years that'll be true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah sorry that's a real downer maybe we'll talk about global warming one day nope don't have it in me you guys know it's bad yeah I could read um Al Gore's book and then talk about it.
SPEAKER_02I don't want to do that you can talk to somebody else yeah fair I don't there's nothing I can do there's no happiness there's no joy for us there.
SPEAKER_01There's no joy for us there. Um so this this is directly from the company handbook so it's company policy to keep the hot coffee at that temperature. It's not like it's not an aberration uh that is just happening at the Albuquerque you know uh store and this is so it's about 30 degrees warmer than home brewing machines. So home brewing it's like 150 to 100 degrees which isn't a ton but it's also not nothing 30 degrees. Well and the the speed at which you get burnt like third degree burns uh is exponential as the coffee gets hotter.
SPEAKER_02So like it takes 15 seconds to get third degree burns with 180 to 1900 also she's almost 80 degrees so even if you were a young person and a very mobile person even if you were had the best reflexes on the planet you'd basically have to get out of the leap out of the car and pull your pants off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And she was wearing sweatpants at the time so it really soaked soaked up the coffee.
SPEAKER_02Stella Stella You're wearing your sweatpants you're getting your value meal she was just wearing her soft pants driving around with her grandson and then just get just a regular old day. No hard pants, no new friend Stella I don't like this for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So uh yeah but you know as the temperature goes down so like at home coffee you'd probably have to have that hot of coffee there for like I don't know a minute or something like that. So it just gives you more time to like you know process yeah get get out of the shock of the whole situation and kind of deal with it. But she was like buckled into a car seat and a 70 79 year old woman and wearing sweatpants. So very very tough. I'm upset um so she was clearly unable to clean to easily get out of the situation that she was in doctors later would say that she should have again you know taken her wet pants off immediately but uh she was in a lot of pain and did not think to do so.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I don't think you're always thinking the clearest ever when you're actively burning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and it's like you know just think of like getting splashed with a little bit of boiling water.
SPEAKER_02You're like how much that hurts.
SPEAKER_01It's a lot uh but then to be like a full cup of coffee that you cannot get away from also like not to be weird and not to be an even bigger bummer but if you're 79 years old unless she was like a very large woman her legs like we've seen an old person leg.
SPEAKER_02There's not a lot of like fat and muscle at the top that's like skin and bone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and she's she's a skinny lady she's a she's a little lady. Stella do you think that's what uh was it cat on a hot tin roof? What's the Rocky the stuff oh yeah I don't know it was Rocky.
SPEAKER_02Of course it was Tennessee Williams playing in your mind and not a very popular movie series from the 80s 90s and today.
SPEAKER_01No it's I know I I think I'm right because it was Adrian from Rocky. It's Adrian Oh you're right but I think Stella it's either uh cat on a hot and roof or the Marlon random brand I'm embarrassed.
SPEAKER_02Well no I was making it funny I thought it was really funny you're usually wrong about this kind of thing I am usually wrong about this kind of thing. I apologize you guys heard it here first I I hear you.
SPEAKER_01And then the other one is angry back. Yeah no you're right yeah it's okay you'll get them next time not on our child softball team don't do that champ don't touch me I'll fight you okay so Stella immediately began screaming in pain because hot and not not pleasant. So at first uh Christopher thought that it was just a normal everyday burn. She was screaming in pain. She eventually like kind of quieted down but was just kind of moaning a bit. Oh so once things settled down they continued uh continued their drive they were like okay we'll get you somewhere to get dry pants on and get this all sorted uh because again you know if you think about spilling like even a cup of coffee from your home on yourself yeah it burns you you know you you would expect to get red you know like a burn burn yeah um but you would not expect like the the level it's yeah more than bubbling baby the the pictures are I would not advise checking them out they're unpleasant I won't yeah I'm upset yeah yeah there's like skin graphs on the other side of her leg so pretty bad pretty bad so um pr very quickly Stella became nauseous and very pale Christopher worried that she might be in shock which she definitely was in shock yeah um and helped her out of the car helped her remove her wet sweatpants and then wrapped her in a sheet from uh that he had in the trunk and then immediately went to the nearest hospital where they determined that she had sustained severe third degree burns over 16% of her body and would require multiple skin grafts Stella um according to Stella because of her age doctors were worried that she wouldn't survive the injury so they were worried that the the the shock and the the le the pain infection and all that kind of stuff it that that she wouldn't make it.
SPEAKER_02She did end up making it would have been a very different case story.
SPEAKER_01Yes would have been I wonder just out of like what that would have yeah I I don't really know you know only from like watching the Lincoln lawyer and other things that like um to some extent you know more grievous like injury leading to a bigger lawsuit possibly but oftentimes the like if you don't have the person there who was injured it's harder to get to get any of those things into court and then through the But I'm saying if she died. Yeah that's that's what I mean. I I'm saying that if she died the lawsuit may never have happened. Because you don't think that her kids would have sued it would have tried probably yeah but I don't know if it would have made it all the way to all the way to court. I don't I don't really know it's and again that's that's just Lincoln lawyer knowledge but I but uh I feel like because they're I don't know not having the like present victim.
SPEAKER_02Yeah because we we saw it with the Radium girls cases is that like as the victims kind of uh died they were used as as evidence and and they talked about them but like they needing needing a a plaintiff that was that is I would be I mean it doesn't none of this matters because it's it's not real and hopefully nothing like this happens but it part of me thinks that she would have been a more sympathetic victim if she was dead not if she was dead but being dead would make her a sympathetic victim and if she had the right if her family had the right lawyer just because literally just like she just got a cup of coffee and now she's dead. Like that's like the sensationalism could have gone the other way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah but yeah I don't know. I just think you know the the tough thing about all of this is that the like machine to uh change public opinion was already well well in motion by the time we got to Stellar no it's all bad so uh hard to say hard to say um the documentary did show uh a few pictures of the burns and they were pretty bad pretty bad uh I I wouldn't advise looking at them um she would end up spending over a week in the hospital receiving intensive care but you're gonna hate this uh due to the mounting medical cost she ended up leaving the hospital earlier than recommended uh and then having to that she had to like drive back frequently for follow-up appointments even in the 90s she couldn't afford it that's right that's right what did she do for a job before she retired I don't actually have any I'd like to know what whatever it was it was too hard so she was a yeah she retired in 1992 I'm so mad about those retired in 1992 I bet she was a very sweet little sales lady yeah you know uh but you also like unless her grandson was told to do this you have to be a sweet lady if your grandson is taking you to McDonald's like is like grandma can we go have lunch like that's you're a nice lady I think they they like I'm not sure a hundred percent why they they took their they were taking their uncle to the airport or some kind of like they were taking his his uncle the the grandson's uncle to the airport. So I guess Stellison I don't know but uh yeah very sweet little lady if your grandson wants to hang out with you. And he seemed he was like he clearly loved his grandma and was real shook by the situation. Because it was like you know he didn't really do anything other than like hand her the cup of coffee. But like in the documentary they like pulled into the Albuquerque Albuquerque McDonald's they bought a cup of coffee and he like handed it to the reporter she was like just like this I pulled I pulled into this spot right here. And they handed it to her and then they talked about like the the incident, kind of everything that happened at it.
SPEAKER_02How old was he at that time? Like a teenager in his twenties?
SPEAKER_01Uh he was probably in his twenties, I think. Um 'cause he was probably in his forties when the documentary was happening and that it happened uh in 2011. So um so her recovery, full recovery would take up to like it would take over two years. Um she had a long-term disability, permanent scarring, put some disfigurement, had hard-time walking for the rest of her life, uh, and would require require ongoing medical treatment to to like keep up with infection and and stuff like that for you know for the rest of her rest of her life. Okay, so yeah. Yeah. Um so a lot more than just like uh So no full recovery. Not really. And and you know, she I think she lived another like I think she lived another ten years.
SPEAKER_02I mean my opinion of full recovery is if your life is unaffected by the case. Yeah, so definitely not full recovery by any means.
SPEAKER_01You know, and um wait, Stella, oh just type Stella.
SPEAKER_02Your AI doesn't know that you only know about one.
SPEAKER_01I know and the other one. Okay, so she died at 90 91. So she was 79, so she lived another 12 years, so um but was basically kind of haunted by this case for the rest of the year. She could watch television. The lawsuit took years, uh, and then after that she was kind of mocked for the for and she was just traveling probably to keep her family from medical debt. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I hate this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's it's pretty bad. Um and McDonald's, even at the time, had so much money. Yeah, McDonald's, you're terrible. You're the worst. Um The fact that we've done two different series about you, McDonald's, maybe lock it up. Maybe think about that. The make the Monopoly game is back. I wonder if it's still uh different new areas. Being read by the mob. Yeah, being read by the mob. Um those are fun apps if you haven't listened. Yeah, go check them out. Um okay, so as the extent of the injury, you know, they they figured out how long it was gonna take to recover, uh, they started talking about asking McDonald's to help pay for the medical expenses. Um initially, no intention whatsoever of doing down at a typewriter. We're just like getting out there, click ity clack, say, excuse me, Mr. McDonald's.
SPEAKER_02I wrote a strongly worded letter to Mr. McDonald at headquarters.
SPEAKER_01So the first letter happened two weeks after the incident, uh, and it was written to McDonald's management. And the Liebex uh at first were just like, hey, we just want to let you know the the this the This happened. This happened. The injury is pretty bad. We're worried that the machine that is brewing your coffee at this place is malfunctioning. Yeah. You should look at that. And then if it is not a malfunctioning machine, if this is your company policy, you should maybe think about that because we really, you know, uh this is a pretty grievous injury, and we think you should be you should care about that. Um and then after that they asked to just uh cover growing medical bills, which at the time of the like the within the first like month, it was up to like $10,000. So they were probably asking for roughly around $20,000. And again, after six months of writing back and forth, McDonald's responded by offering no more than $800.
SPEAKER_02Um, and just as a part-time job for a retired lady.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Writing these letters. Yeah. Um so Stella and her family eventually hired Ken R. Wagner and associates to represent them. There they met uh a man named S. Reed Morgan, a lawyer from Houston who had sued McDonald's in the late 1980s for a similar case involving scalding coffee and a burn.
SPEAKER_02So it's a pattern.
SPEAKER_01It's a pattern. So he quickly agreed to join the case, partially because during the first lawsuit, he like he noticed such a uh like a callous indifference to his his client. So it's uh so they they at first were just seeking settlements. They sought a settlement of 300,000, 200,000, both rejected by McDonald's. Uh so the case would continue to trial uh and be set for August of 1994. So it's already two years. Two years. It's taken two years to get to there.
SPEAKER_02Um and you're just like at family get-togethers, and people are like, Hey Stella, yeah, how's your legs? How's that? Yeah, like I don't and then you have that one drunk uncle that's like, yeah, you're so proud of. And you're like, I don't think so, George. Like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01But I wish I could be so lucky.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just spilled out a change in my life. I don't know what this mushmouth is.
SPEAKER_01I think it was probably too serious. There was nobody at family events spilling drinks on themselves just to be like, Oh god, I hope not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like the Christmas skit or something. Like, who am I? Grandma. Now I feel mean. I was making fun of the people being mean.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Pee in your pants is the coolest grandma. Yeah. Miles Davis. Miles Davis. I don't think actually, when was that movie?
SPEAKER_02The 90s. Yeah. But they don't smell coffee. No, no, they do.
SPEAKER_01Um okay, court case. Getting into the court. We're going right into court here. Wow. I know. This is the fastest you've ever moved. I know. Pew pew pew pew. So, unlike a lot of other cases of its kind, uh, there were few, very few like big disagreements in the facts of the case. So, McDonald's did not contest the fact that their coffee was very hot and that hot coffee could burn people. They were like, Yep, it's hot. You like that? It's nice or not. It's nice or not. Um, and Stella freely admitted that she did, in fact, spill the coffee on herself. So a lot of news, news articles and like, you know, TV shows and stuff like that were saying that like Stella is blaming McDonald's for the actual like spilling of the coffee, which she was not. She, you know, it wasn't so it wasn't a negligence case. It wasn't like uh they did something to the cup was false. She was like, why is this so this is a dangerous product that you're selling to people?
SPEAKER_02Stop it.
SPEAKER_01So Stella's lawyers sought to make a case based on the idea that the coffee served at such a hot temperature would be considered a defective product liability under the Uniform Commercial Code. Um, so during Discovery, Stella's lawyers uh found out that McDonald's had already had over 700 previous complaints about burns from hot beverages. And this was all from like internal McDonald's documentation. So like all of the complaints that got sent to McDonald's, they had a big spreadsheet, and they had like whether or not they did anything about it and how much the money, like how much money they gave the people if they gave them any money at all. Um so I also mentioned that the the doc showed this deposition with this like quality assurance manager. Uh and when asked about it, he was like, I cannot say that I'm surprised or not surprised. I'm just glad the numbers aren't higher. I'm really pleased that they are not more than that. Which is uh a really bold thing to say.
SPEAKER_02It's like, yeah, I feel like I'm doing pretty good.
SPEAKER_01Not bad.
SPEAKER_0270% of people who drink coffee don't get burned.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And that's I think that's the big thing. You know, McDonald's whole whole argument with this is that like we sell a billion coffees a year. Right. 700 over 10 years, not that bad. But it kind of fails to really take into account the like the people that are affected and the people.
SPEAKER_02Why does it have to be so hot though?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Just turn it down. And we'll so like there's a couple of reasons. One, the like industry standard at the time, like McDonald's. And this is one of the one of the like things that McDonald's would say is that like every other fast food place that you go to, they're keeping their coffee this hot. You know, you go to iHop, it's this hot. It's all uh it's all this hot. So like why are you picking on us about this? And it's like, well, because that woman got third-degree burns drinking.
SPEAKER_02Not at iHop. And also, if you guys have to pay a price and have to change your thing, the smaller fish may or may not also change.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it might also change. You're kind of the the like uh setting the bar. You're the bar, yeah. Um, and they said that like they're like, oh, people for the flavor reasons, people like it that hot. And also they're like, one of the main reasons people like McDonald's coffee is because you can, you know, take it home with you and it'll still be hot when you get home or to the office. And it's like, I this feels very much like uh a company seeking out the answer to a question that makes it easier for them.
SPEAKER_02The reason people like McDonald's coffee is because it's cheaper than most other coffee. Yeah. And they don't want to make their own coffee.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the claim, especially in the 90s, that it's because their coffee tastes the best. Is ridiculous. Is ridiculous. Um also Especially in the 90s.
SPEAKER_02Did we have better coffee then?
SPEAKER_01No, no, because there was a there was a change in McDonald's where they started brewing better coffee. McCafe. The the McCaffey when it turned into McCaffey, but before that it was just dirty brown water. Yeah. Uh with some, you know, you put a lot of. 200 degrees, exactly. Um and they poured it on old. And this this is not, I couldn't find any documentation that this is the reason, but this is something that kind of popped into my head and maybe was like a conspiracy thing that I read. But like, I feel like part of the reason they kept it so hot is because people sitting at the restaurant wouldn't be able to drink the coffee before they finished their food. And so they wouldn't come up for more refills. Uh, and brewed it that hot meant that like it could stay uh like in their tank longer. So it meant that they would have to brew less fresh coffee.
SPEAKER_02So like so, no good reasons.
SPEAKER_01I don't think you know, they're saying it's because people like hot coffee and they're saying it's because it tastes better if it's hot. And I just don't think that's true. Uh, I think it it has to do with the fact that like keeping it that hot saved the company.
SPEAKER_02Also, it can't taste better if it's that hot because you're not drinking it at that temperature. No, it would be. So, how would you know? It tastes amazing if you're willing to scald your throat.
SPEAKER_01If it can give you third-degree burns within 15 minutes, turns out it's too hot. Uh, you're not putting it in your mouth. No. And if you are, that's a bad idea. You crazy, girl. You crazy. Um that deposition, he really talked in a like a real matter-of-fact, kind of very indifferent way, and kind of like literally laughed during it.
SPEAKER_02The quality guy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the quality guy. Uh, and a lot like after the fact, um the the like the jurors, some jurors appeared on the documentary and and have have kind of talked to uh to media after the fact, and they were like, a lot of them pointed to this this guy's indifference and and like just the vibe that they were like not gonna do anything about it and or change at all, which is part of the motivation behind doing punitive damages at all, is to be like, hey, uh we've asked you nicely, you didn't uh you didn't do it, so now we have to like make it hurt. Uh and and also like make it hurt, but it's only two days of coffee revenue. So like I don't know. Um, Stella's lawyers also sought to show that like a reasonable per reasonable person would not expect coffee to be so much c hotter than coffee that they have at home. Like just average person would be like, okay, it's hot. I can tell it's hot, right? But I don't know it's 190 degrees. And why would I know that? That that can cause burns, like severe, severe burns, this level of burns.
SPEAKER_02Something I'm paying a dollar for that I'm candid if through a window into a vehicle that means kind of gives me a red patch on the skin. Right, exactly. And for that, like two hours you're like, oh, I'm an idiot. I smell my coffee.
SPEAKER_01And one of the they did focus a lot on how like coffee pots at home brew at like 150 to 157, meaning that like the coffee that people interact with most in their lives. Every day, every day is is much lower. And you can still get uh in and the the experts from McDonald's point out that you can get through degree burns from coffee at that temperature. It just takes a lot longer. You know, it takes a lot longer.
SPEAKER_02So you'd have to like pour it on your pants. And then sit there and scream.
SPEAKER_01Man, and just kind of let it cook. Uh and so it's like it's just it's not really the same. The the and and people aren't, they weren't, you know, the the cup lids did say hot hot hot, but it was very small.
SPEAKER_02And wasn't it like white on white? It was white on white.
SPEAKER_01So it was it was just pressed into the plastic. Yeah, for 79-year-old ladies. And it was this same exact size as the like decorative pressed beat colour on the outside. Uh so it's like not, you're like, look, we warned them. And like, nope.
SPEAKER_02And that's why it they did change the blind people who you use braille and other and it's not even written in braille. Yeah, so they're just smart blind people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So uh they did change it after this case to be much bolder. And so, I remember on the bottom. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Big hot is that what he said.
SPEAKER_01Big hot. Big hot. Big hot. Um so lastly, Stella's lawyers uh alleged that McDonald's displayed reckless indifference to customer safety, doing nothing to either reduce the heat or the coffee or warn customers of the dangers. So we talked about the lids. Um, Reed concluded in his arguments, noting that most of these injuries and cases uh for a corporation so big wouldn't make it back up to corporate management. Something small wouldn't make it to corporate management. It all gets kind of covered under their insurance department and gets chalked up as like cost of doing business. So any settlements, anything that happens. So if they wanted the head office to pay attention, they really needed to like think about punitive damages. And this is where he he noted, he was like, I don't know, just something food for thought. Yeah. Uh two days coffee, 2.7 million dollars. Uh I don't know where I got that number, but we're gonna do it. We're where I get that, yeah. Put that in your head. Um, one of so some of the jurors uh were actually fighting for like a week's worth of uh McDonald's coffee, like McDonald's coffee revenue, which it would have been like 9.5 billion. Yeah. Or millions. So they did like they cut that one down too. Yeah. This lady should have owned a book. It's just, and that's the thing I think that like it's hard for you know, like when talking about the tax code and when talking about these big settlements and stuff like that, it's it's a level of scale that the average person is like millions of dollars, yeah, but McDonald's just like sneezes, and that's a million dollars.
SPEAKER_02Also, that person is gonna have to pay their lawyer, they're gonna have to compensate for any. I mean, she was retired but lost wages, whatever it is. Like, they have to do a lot with that money.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And um, especially if it leads to permanent injury and changes in the way, like changing the way you have to like live the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_02Also, like the amount of lotions and potions that someone needs now a lot on her legs.
SPEAKER_01Millions of dollars of lotions and potions.
SPEAKER_02So many.
SPEAKER_01Um and she didn't even get it. Buckets of potions. Yeah. Um, but that you know, that's the that's the thing that it's like it's so easy to make a soundbite of it because it's like two million, dude, 2.7 million dollars seems crazy. But again, it's just like, and you know, the the taxes, everybody's like, oh, these really wealthy people are paying millions and billions of dollars in taxes.
SPEAKER_02I'm like, that's because they make so much money. That much, and a lot of them don't pay any taxes.
SPEAKER_01And they don't actually pay any, yeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna have to do an episode on the tax code at some point, and that's gonna drive me nuts.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm not gonna do that, but I'll be I'll listen to it. Yeah. That's too much for my my brain gets bready. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but we've ruined that. Yeah. That's over now. Yeah, we got rid of that. It's not which is why, you know, the there were I don't know if you remember back in the like uh nine eighties and late 80s and 90s, they were really pushing for this idea of a flat tax. Yeah. Which is just like everyone pays the same tax and there's no loopholes, which like is naive. There will there would be loopholes and funds and then uh nobody would would pay the same amount. But uh that flattening the tax is actually worse for the lower half of the economy. Yeah. Because you know, it's it's meant to be a scale. A scale, and uh it's also like the people that are super, super rich are like uh they're like 70% taxes, but it's uh it's usually only like 70% taxes on like after they've made two billion dollars.
SPEAKER_02Also, like the wealth in our country right now is a hockey stick. Like there are people up here and there are people way down here. Yeah, so the taxes should be the same shape.
SPEAKER_01That's right. There you go. Um, so the defense. We'll talk about the defense, even though I hate them. Uh the McDonald's defense focused on the idea that coffee spills happen all the time, and uh you should be able to do that. You're not special, Stella. You know, uh others to take responsibility no matter how grievous. It's a commonplace event, and that should result in commonplace response, is is what they how do you account for the medical bills though? Just pay the medical bills, just pay the medical bills, guys. Just pay the medical bills.
SPEAKER_02Always just pay the medical bill.
SPEAKER_01Because it all of this would go away if you just pay the medical bills.
SPEAKER_02And people would be like, wow, McDowell's is so great. Yeah. They pay this old lady's medical bills, even though she's a dumb lady. Let's go buy burgers. Like it would have worked out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, instead it went the other way. But then they spun it into a PR boon, anyways, because they're evil.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01Um they focused a lot uh heavily on individual responsibility, you know, just like you were saying, where ingrained in us is this idea that like we're reliant, we don't sue. We're you know, we take our own responsibility for this scalding, scalding hot coffee.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, to be fair, if somebody spilled hot coffee on me, I would take them for all their words.
SPEAKER_01Get them. Um so second, uh, they they had their own expert testimony showing that Miss Liebeck could have received the same level of burns, much cooler coffee. Uh, and that it they she they really tried to pin it on the fact that it was like, well, if she had just taken those pants off a little sooner, so it's kind of her fault. And it was like, she's a 79-year-old. She's old. And she was in shock, and her grandson assumed that it was just a little burn.
SPEAKER_02There was a lot of reasons. And it wasn't that she just didn't want to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think all of it, so this is and this is what we'll get into with like the reason why doing caps on benefits is a problem, and it's it's like mandatory minimums for for drug cases and stuff like that. It takes the power out of the like individuals, like the judges and the juries, and the people that are on the that that know the most that are experts in the case. Why did we listen all that stuff if there's a minimum and uh and it just like makes it flattens it all out and makes them not important to the whole story? And it's why like you hear these little these little anecdotes, these like common sense anecdotes, and it's like if somebody decided that McDonald's deserve to pay 2.7 million dollars, there's probably a reason behind it.
SPEAKER_02It's not just right, it's not just a jury of like uh because the jury is supposed to be of your peers of a cross-section of people. Yeah, 12 people in America who all have these ingrained ideas aren't gonna be like, let's give this old lady this money.
SPEAKER_01And like half of the jurors, uh, you know, in interviews later, said that they went into it thinking this was a frivolous lawsuit. They were like, I assumed that this was gonna be nonsense. I was annoyed that I had to I had to I had to do this because it was like clearly this is not uh there's no case here. And then they saw this. And then they saw the pictures and they they listened to McDonald's just be like, nothing do about that. Yeah. And then they were like, nope, screw these guys. The this lady deserves deserves money, and McDonald's need to need to change their practices. So um, you know, it's just there are there's the the system that we have in place is set up to uh that that's what the jury is for. It's they're they're meant to become experts in the thing, and we should trust the system that we have in place. But instead, uh people have spent a lot of money telling us not to trust those people and not to trust judges, which and then also buying off judges and you know, juries at least theoretically you can't buy off, but you know, not in the same way. You have to be trickier about it, I guess. You have to commit crimes, you gotta commit crimes to do that uh instead of uh the crimes that you can't see because of Citizens United. So um, yeah, I don't know. I just you know, uh there's a reason the jury is a thing. There's a reason our legal system, though not perfect, uh a lot better than you know what we're turning it into.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's the other thing is like everybody who's like the fu the founding fathers wouldn't want to do X, Y, and Z. It's like we're not in that territory anymore. We we read the back of their book and we did something else. I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. I'll make it the same, I'll make it the same. And now it's not, it's bastardized in every way it can be. Yep. And also those 28-year-olds, some of those dudes who signed the Declaration of Independence, literally 25 years old. They're all white, they're all like from a certain breed of personality. Half of them are slave owners. And they had no idea what the world was gonna look like in 275 years. Why are we why did we listen to that?
SPEAKER_01It's meant to be a living document. It's why they were they they they wrote it with a uh a list of amendments. Caveat in order to do that. Yeah, yeah. That's just our little our little uh little rage, you know, divergence. I don't know. I'm tired. Yeah, so it was sleepy. Tired babies and beverages. So many bebbages, so many babies. Um so the third thing they they asked again was why pick on us? So this is the thing where they're like, these other corporations uh have everybody scalding the elderly.
SPEAKER_02Everyone is scalding the elderly.
SPEAKER_01Come on. Um I talked about that. They also talked about how scientifically advanced the cups were. They were like, We used highly insulated styrofoam cups and a on a lid with a tab that should make it easier to take the lid off without spilling it all over yourself.
SPEAKER_02All I remember about that tab is it made it more easy to spill because you'd pull it and the whole cup would jump into the stuff.
SPEAKER_01But they were like they were. Like we're actually we care the most about our customers, which is why we've made this incredibly why we won't help one old woman. Yeah. Um I wrote, People just like drinking hot lava. Yeah, that's all caps there. Super true. Um, they finished their argument by trying to paint Stella as this classic, highly litigious person, even though she'd never sued anyone in her entire 79-year-old life. Yeah. Did not want to sue McDonald's in the first place. Why? Because she retired.
SPEAKER_02She said, What should I do with my freedom? So I do, I should sue.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna sue. Um it's just a flesh wound. I'm just I just love losses. I'm just bored, honestly. Love it. So more murder she wrote, I didn't know what to do. So yeah, they they just finished their whole argument being, you know, starting to use, you know, painter in this trope of being uh uh like this being a frivolous lawsuit, even though we spent a lot of time being like, nope, it's not. So the trial lasted for about seven days. So seven days of of talking about you know the temperature of coffee, which again, there were no like big disagreements in facts. It was just like so like those seven days had to be real boring. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Also, like the jury, they must have been like, wow, you have to go back to jury duty, yeah, another day. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk about it? Oh, I can talk about it. Well, no, I think they could talk about like there's no there's no privacy. There's no because this is yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And then they're like hot coffee and they're like, Who cares? I don't know. Come back to work. Stop lying. I'm saying, yeah, get out of here. You're just at skee ball or something. I don't know what people did back then.
SPEAKER_02Back then.
SPEAKER_01That was alive back then. You were alive. Yeah. Um, so the deliberation, the jury deliberation, only lasted four hours. And they were like, you know, it's not the shortest deliberation, but also like, and I feel like a lot of it was basically like how much money should we give this lady? So this is where they uh talked about how much you know, compensatory damages and how much punitive damages. So again, uh Stella Liebeck was awarded 160,000 in compensatory damages and 2.7 million in punitive damages. Um they talked about the issue of fault, again, awarding Stella 20% fault and oh not awarding, that's the wrong word, but but assigning 20% fault to Stella and then 80% to McDonald's because like it was her fault, but the injuries wouldn't have been nearly as severe if the coffee wasn't as hot. So um, like, you know, and the damages wouldn't have been nearly as high. Like you wouldn't have needed, you know, you would have maybe just needed some burn cream, uh, and now we're doing talking skin graphs, which is you know, a whole whole new uh scale of bad. Um those internal records that I talked about before were a huge factor for the um and that that interview with that guy that was clearly not helpful at all, you know, PR trained in any way. Um but uh it was just like they clearly under they were their own documents and they had a clear history of like you know not really changing anything to protect their their consumers. Um and uh the jury just hoped that this large punitive damage would would act as a um you know a force to help McDonald's kind of change change and and fix, you know, fix their compu consumer safety problems. So the judge uh in that case, like in in so like all of these news articles that came out immediately afterwards, uh it was like that day or two days later that the the the trial judge reduced the punitive damages down to 480,000. So it never should have been million. Yeah, you should have even said those. It was just you know, uh news articles sensationalizing to sell more newspapers and uh, you know, pro say the point that they wanted to say about frivolous lawsuits. Uh, but you know, it she just wasn't ever gonna get the the the full amount, um, which is But that's they do that even with lawsuits that people are invested in.
SPEAKER_02Like the Sackler family, it's the headlines say five billion. I don't think they've paid anything yet.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Yeah. Uh and that's how the corporations like it. You know, they just like to play the victim to be like, oh, we had to pay $2.7 million to this lady that we almost burned to death. Yeah. How dare they? So um Stella's lawyer appealed to reduction but was denied. Instead of appealing again to a higher court, Liebeck and McDonald's eventually settled out of court for a confidential amount. I think she got a little bit more sure but it not millions by any means.
SPEAKER_02Maybe half mil, up from four six.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, up to up to four eighty, maybe up to five hundred, maybe.
SPEAKER_02Just to make it a nice little Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um to make the big check. Free coffee for life. Free coffee for life. Um so once the case was finally wrapped up, the media began having a field day with it just immediately. Uh, it made the perfect case to push for more tort reform. Um, and the only thing that made it imperfect was the fact that the suit wasn't actually frivolous, but journalists didn't really seem to care. It didn't matter.
SPEAKER_02It had all the fun little buzzwords.
SPEAKER_01So um incredibly fast the case began being discorded, distorted for the political game. Uh, a lot of articles written just about how this tricky old lady had stolen millions from McDonald's. Yeah. Uh and um She's a monster. She's a monster. And all of the this is where you know uh these these little changes in the story that happened over time. It was like a game of telephone that we were watching in real time where like Stella was in the passenger seat, uh, Stella was driving, Stella was like. I definitely always thought she was driving recklessly and you know not paying attention to the road, and then spilled it on, and then she spilled it on herself specifically to Sue. Uh in my head, my like uh idea was she was sitting in a McDonald's, so I I didn't I didn't even ingest the idea that she was.
SPEAKER_02What I got from whatever part of my brain was watching when I was six, and I mean I guess the trial was over when I was eight or nine, so I do remember like the the vibe of this. I remember when this happened, but in my head, she was driving, she was by herself, she put the cup between her legs to like turn. Yeah, like you know, you get your stuff, and then you're like, okay, I gotta get out here and then just like maybe squeeze because if it's styrofoam, like and then it's popped the lid off, and then yeah.
SPEAKER_01Nope. She was sitting in a park car. That's what I assume.
SPEAKER_02My mom used to drink a lot of drive-thru coffee. I've seen a lot of different ways you could spill yourself, but she never spalled it herself.
SPEAKER_01I got some some hot coffee spilled on me as a as a kid, but and not uh no no burns, so that was good. Well, there you go. You know.
SPEAKER_02Stop whitey.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Um the jury was all painted to be these like soft-hearted suckers. Like there's like a I don't remember what they called them. Uh I'll I'll remember it by the next episode, but it's just like something like Santa Claus jurors or something like that. Just want to give a gift to like this elderly old woman. Everyone does. Yeah. Give money to other people. That's right. That's what our country's built on. That's what it's all about. Uh, not you know, a whole jury built of the same people that are super uh, you know, self-interalized, like, you know, hate joy and help and you know, independence and thinking that corporations are our rich benefactors that we should love. Boo. Boo. Um so uh constant use of her story and likeness on late night, again, especially Jay Leno, uh, the Seinfeld episode based fully around this hot coffee thing, and then Kramer going on to get, you know, do multiple.
SPEAKER_02Why did he put it in his pants?
SPEAKER_01They were going to the movie theater. Uh they were told they were not allowed to have outside, you know, food or beverage, and he was like, We'll see if we can get around that. And then it was just in his pants, and he tripped while he was getting to his own.
SPEAKER_02I remember that he wanted coffee at the movie theater because you don't have coffee, like they don't serve coffee at theater.
SPEAKER_01Uh there's also a Toby Keith song, which like the daughter, Stella's daughter, is really understandably steamed about, but she likes steamed, was that a bunch? Not intentional, but the the fire in her eyes when talking about she was like, I like Toby Keith, but he wrote that song, American Ride, and I just never listened to his music ever again. It was about her? There's there's a a line in it that says Plasma's getting bigger, Jesus getting smaller, spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars.
SPEAKER_02Nope.
SPEAKER_01And it's just like in Toby Keith, I didn't like you before we don't know like four song or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Waited ten years to get that cut in on an old lady. I can see why her daughter would be salty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because she's she's just like, when will it end? Because it it just it is such in our like 2008? Yep. Dude. 2008. Get over it. She's dead. But it it like uh just the the it's one of these cases that most of America kind of knows a little something about. Right. Which is insane because it's a little case that that didn't really have that big of an effect on on what happened at McDonald's. Like literally after this case happened, they like lowered the temperature of their coffee by 10 degrees, which is not nothing.
SPEAKER_02Not much though.
SPEAKER_01But not much, still 20 degrees above home coffee, and then made the like d the caution contents hot description on the the coffee cups bigger. And that's those are the two things that happened. Uh and this lady made got like half a million dollars and then spent half of that on her medical bills and doc and uh lawyer bills. So um, you know, it's crazy that this is the thing that all of us know about some of the things. It is weird that it's so permeant. Yeah. Um the other thing that I was gonna end with is that that thing I was talking about before, uh, which made just I'm just so mad about this. And it like, so the the the true Stella Awards um the is there's this guy that has like an online website slash column that's you saying true or truth. True, true Stella Awards. So the true Stella Awards because there were copycats, and uh the guy that like made this was like clearly uh you know uh copying is the truest form of flattery. And like I wouldn't be surprised if this guy made copycats of himself so that he could say that. Yeah. He was just a little like he called himself like a humorist and like columnist. Uh I don't trust anyone who calls himself a humorist. It was like a uh 199, like uh yeah. I guess stick to drawing one-a-day calendars, my guy. Exactly. And this became like a bathroom reader. Yeah, like the he he eventually like it was uh it was an online news thing, like a uh a circular circular, that's not a thing.
SPEAKER_02Um circular is where you get ads you don't want from the grocery store.
SPEAKER_01Oh, is that right? So it was not that's what it's called. It was not that. That's good to know. No, it was just uh like uh you could pay for him to send you a like weekly list of all of the craziest lawsuits that happened, and most of them were uh not either not real to kind of write them in a way to make it seem yeah, or they that he did the thing that Reagan did where he like simplified it to being humorous even though it was not uh or like and and the fact that it like they I mean the the the boldness of using like a woman's like lame uh as the name of your award is crazy. Um and then to publish a book about it uh is is the worst. The um the documentary did not mention this thing, but they did show the award. I'm pretty sure probably because they were either suing this person because screw that guy, uh, or they like didn't want to give him any more free publicity. So um I just like I'm so mad about it because it's like it's like the Darwin Awards, it's one of those kind of things. Uh it's and it's just about it's just more of these people jumping on the bandwagon and being like, people suing big companies just to make money. Yeah. Uh and it's like, no, like nobody's nobody's really going out to do that. And if they are, most of those people don't actually get to court.
SPEAKER_02Well, the lawyers don't take the case because it's not worth their time.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Like it doesn't get that far. Um, and like, you know, I do think that there's probably a fair amount of people that do these kind of uh uh like not based in fact lawsuits because they know that a lot of corporations will just settle out of court in order to not even worry about it. It's cheaper for them to just settle. So like there probably is a fair amount of that, but changing like the law to make uh you know to make it harder for average people, like the the percentage of these like big settlement cases is so low compared to like all of the things that are happening. Most of them are just like, you know, somebody got an offender bender or like you know, judge duty kind of stuff. That's just like little stuff that you know need to go to court for, but it's not um yeah. Or the the asbestos thing is really really frustrates me because the statistics where they're just like they picked a year that like it was the lowest amount of cases that they had in 10 years. Yeah. Uh and then picked the year that the peak of asbestos, asbestos litigation. And then they're like, Isn't this crazy? It's like 10 times as much lawsuits now.
SPEAKER_02You need more years in the bar graph. Yeah. Yeah. And you need an asterisk that says asbestos year. Yeah. Remember that?
SPEAKER_01Remember that, guys? So uh yeah, next episode, um, we'll we'll talk about other uh some um some other of these these types of lawsuits that they used. They like turned into oh, that's what I was gonna say. The book uh that is only sort of funny, but mostly written like a legal brief. There's so many citations, which again, good for you know, factuality, like it really uh got some facts, but made it very uh very stilted to read. Yeah, that's time consuming. Um I had to read it on my Kindle, which was crazy, not a thing I generally do. I didn't know that you did that with your eyes. I do sometimes. Yeah, no. Um, but they they called all of these like uh tort cases that people like you know turned into memes. They called them pop torts, which I think is funny. That's fun. Yeah. I'll give them that. Yeah. That's um that's fun. But we'll talk a lot more about that. We'll talk about um the other so like the they basically tried to put cap on caps on damages, they tried to like change the way that tort law works. And then after that, we'll talk about like contract law and things that a lot of jobs are doing in order to uh the end of the documentary is like uh there's this thing called forced arbitration, which means that if something happens when you're at work, uh instead of being able to take your employer to like a court actual court of law, you have to go to this arbitration thing, which like when you go to arbitration, the company gets to pick the the judge.
SPEAKER_02Of course they do. And that's like when you get assaulted at college and you have to go to student court and you're like, this isn't real. Let me go to the police.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's somebody that like for Halliburton, you know, they it was a woman that went into the the military but into private contractor military. She got sent to Afghanistan and then was sexually assaulted on the barracks, and then was like going to take Halliburton to court and then couldn't because they also like imprisoned her in uh in a container for like a week and before she got home. And um what's his name? Who's the comedian turned senator that we uh is no longer? Al Franken. Al Franken was uh a big push behind getting this woman like in front of Congress to kind of talk about all of this stuff. Oh um, but like because of the so there are a lot of other steps beyond like tort reform and changes like that that happened that make it even harder for like anyone to hold these bigger corporations account. I mean, uh all of these like common sense reforms that just make it harder for us, it makes it so much easier for us to lose all of our money to like get bled away to uh injury or to you know I mean most of the country is one emergency away from bankruptcy, like that's just what it is, and it's gotten worse than it was in the 90s, and man. Oh also, I learned so they um they pushed through a lot of like uh caps on damages for medical malpractice.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh, and the whole reason that they wanted to do that is because they're like, it costs too much to be a doctor, insurance premiums are way too high. Right. So we gotta put a cap on on maximum for for like damages like that. And then they did in a lot of states, like in Texas, because George Bush was governor of Texas, and when George George Bush basically ran for governor on Texas, specifically on like backing corporations in civil civil court and won a lot of things. And it's part of the reason why he became president is because this is the thing that people really wanted. Um, and so they they put caps on damages for medical malpractice, and then the insurance companies did not lower their premiums because they were like never said we had to. Why would we? Why would we? Tell me why I wouldn't. So they just made a lot more money because they were getting they were having to settle out of court a lot less and a lot lower. Uh, and so it was still more expensive, still very expensive to be a doctor.
SPEAKER_02Uh and people got less now people got less for medical malvara. I'm so mad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Brought up so many reasons to be mad in such a short amount of time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But compared to uh millions of dead Irish people.
SPEAKER_02Dead Irish people.
SPEAKER_01Where do you think we're at?
SPEAKER_02I now realize how insane that was. Uh and I will not be putting a number on it, but I am furious.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pretty, pretty angry. Because it this is one of those things that like um, you know, the older things that happen, the the kind of uh formational things that are like I'm so mad that that I'm so mad that Enron happened and it affected like how uh companies, you know, uh are able to like grow big fast, you know, based on nothing or or whatever. But this one feels like it can really affect like me and you. Like all of these these little things and it's happened so recently, and like all of the tort reform that is is probably still going on, and like these lobbyists, it's there's so many so many things that we are taught to think are for our benefit, you know, like the the mandatory minimum sentencing there like is is just a pipeline to get more people in prison, which yeah, so like you know, the right to work states generally means You can't have a union, you can't you can't have a union, and like uh it lowers the average income for people for everyone by like 10 to 20 percent. So like all of that stuff was was like, oh, don't don't worry, we're gonna get you into those plants, and then like it caused the plants to like take more advantage of people.
SPEAKER_02So like you know, it just like anything that we've done to allow companies lenience, they have used to take more money out of people's pockets.
SPEAKER_01And it's like it's so brazen and so uh incessant. It like they're like really motivated and really dedicated to uh changing public opinion to make us feel like we should be indebted to them, but we're the people making the stuff and buying the stuff and using the stuff.
SPEAKER_02We're the people making the stuff and buying the stuff and using it. It's not what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. No, I'm not making fun of you anything. No, no, no. I just have to have boats, you know. They have to have multiple boats. Um so yeah, I'm excited to hear the rest of the stuff next week.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, talk about old Ronnie Reagan. Do you still feel like it's a twofer? I think so, yeah.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_02Well we'll uh get back into it next week. And thank you guys for listening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for listening. Bye.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening, and a big thanks to Carcy Bland for the theme music. You can follow the podcast everywhere at Eathe Rich Pod. You can email us your suggestions for future episodes at eatherichpod at gmail. You can follow me at thefunnywalsh, and you can follow Danny at DMoss315. See you next week.