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Twenty years ago, Stella Leibeck sued McDonald's for third-degree burns she claims came from the restaurant's coffee splashing onto her lap. She was awarded $2.86 million, but a judge reduced it to $640,000, and ultimately she settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. But anyway, now another woman has tried to do the same thing, but this time it's totally backfired on her. Selena Edwards is accused of usingfake photos to sue McDonald's over coffee burnsshe supposedly got on her hands.
Edwards claimed that a cup of coffee she was handed through a drive-through window didn't have a secured lid, so the scalding coffee sloshed and gave her hands second-degree burns. And she had the photos to prove it! Except I guess she didn't.
Detectives say she copied the photos from a hospital website. Lady! Don't you know? If you SUE a major restaurant chain, they're going to do some snooping around to find out if your claim is legit!
Not only is she SO NOT winning that lawsuit dough, she's actually being prosecuted for fraud. This could cost her -- a lot.
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California Department of Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones says Edwards "attempted to make a profit from another person's pain and suffering, and for this she will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
Edwards faces 21 felony counts of insurance and workers' compensation fraud. Yowch!
Leibeck actually suffered when that coffee burned her two decades ago. I think we all learned a lot from that incident, but surprisingly, coffee temperatures haven't changed much since then. Fast food and coffee chains still sell coffee as hot as the stuff that burned Leibeck -- it's just that now we get a warning printed on our cups. It's a warning that protects restaurant chains from getting burned by lawsuits.
Whose responsibility is it to prevent coffee burns, a restaurant's or the consumer's?
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