Hot Coffee Documentary

I highly recommend a DVD documentary on tort reform, titled Hot Coffee.  The first 14 minutes of the DVD are essential classroom showing by anyone teaching tort reform, or, for that matter, by anyone teaching professional responsibility or trial advocacy.  It can be purchased at www.newvideo.com for $29.95.

Comments

[Mike Frisch]

Agree-- the documentary reveals that "tort reform" is nothing more than corporate welfare.

[Monroe Freedman]

Yes, and more than that, a fraud on the public. The documented facts of the hot coffee case, including the injuries to the plaintiff, are appalling.

[John Steele]

As a former plaintiffs' lawyer, I have a lot of respect for plaintiffs-side work and I believe in the power of the contingency fee lawyer to generate legal compliance. But there is an interesting response to that documentary and it might benefit students to see the other argument too. Ted Frank at Point of Law has spent a lot of time discussing that McDonald's case. At his blog you can even link to a presentation he did about it.

[John David Galt]

The "Hot Coffee" film is itself a fraud. For honest reviews of the movie and the case, see
http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/hot-coffee-documentary-hbo-reviewed/
and
http://abnormaluse.com/2011/01/stella-liebeck-mcdonalds-hot-coffee.html

[Monroe Freedman]

I have read these "honest reviews." They do not constitute rebuttals of the documentary. In substance, they simply argue with the findings of the jurors, who sat through the trial. Jurors comment in the documentary, and it's clear that they were conscientious in their verdict.

[Dan Abrams]

Professor Freedman: I am curious -- what are the professional responsibility issues implicated in the DVD? Obviously this is an interesting case that continues to be a lightning rod, relevant to substantive tort reform, contributory negligence and punitive damages, but I do not see the professional responsibility angle. Obviously the case was not frivolous.

[Monroe Freedman]

The hot coffee case has been extensively, and successfully, publicized by corporations who support tort reform as the paradigm of frivolous litigation. Indeed, one of the complaints in the "honest reviews" is that summary judgement wasn't awarded to the defendant because the case had no merit. But, as you say, the case was not frivolous. My students are assigned ten pages on frivolous arguments (ULE 91-100), which includes a section on the chilling effect on creative lawyering of sanctions for frivolous arguments. But nothing makes the point about what limiting "frivolous litigation" is about, as well as the Hot Coffee documentary.

[Ted Frank]

I don't argue with the findings of the jurors (though the jurors, by their own accounting, based their verdict on matters other than the evidence, by confusing the term "statistical significance" with something else). I argue with the legal conclusions of the judge who let the case get to a jury, and then let the jury decide punitive damages. The movie leaves out several facts and does not fairly represent, much less rebut, tort reformers' criticism of the case.