Hot Coffee (film)

Hot Coffee is a 2011 documentary film by director Susan Saladoff published. The film was first aired on 24 January 2011 as part of the Sundance Film Festival premiere was on 27 June 2011 from the U.S. television channel HBO. The subject of the film is the American tort law ( tort law ), whose abuse in the form of frivolous claims ( unjustified damages claims) as well as the controversial approaches to tort reform.

Content

The film's title is an allusion to the process Liebeck v. McDonald 's Restaurants of 1994. Pensioner Stella Liebeck of New Mexico had claims for compensation and damages against the fast food chain McDonald's argued that because they had sustained by spilled coffee severe scalding. The jury awarded Stella Liebeck 2.7 million U.S. dollars in punitive damages. The case attracted much public attention, since Stella Liebeck had spilled the coffee in the car itself, and seemed to bear no relation to the cause of compensation awarded by the jury for damages. In the following example, the Stella Award was launched, the people "honors ", the court demanded damages in tort or at least curiously and partly received.

The film provides a total of four prior cases that are related to the much-discussed tort reform in the United States:

Key messages

Overall, the film points out that many civil actions for damages in public are shown to be unjustified ( frivolous ) and this is due to lack of information to the public for part of the facts. In the case of Stella Liebeck many about the compensation awarded by the jury damages in the millions remained in my memory, even though the actually negotiated the settlement amount was much lower and the pensioner still had them pay the legal fees. Furthermore, McDonald's has admitted by lowering the coffee holding temperature that the temperature was too high.

With regard to the capping of damages ( damage caps) leads the film on the example of Judge Diaz before, as the companies have an influence on an enterprise- friendly jurisdiction of the Supreme Courts of the states, and the example of disabled Colin Gourley is shown that the capping of diversity is the possible cases not fair.

The case of Jamie Leigh Jones eventually leads the effects of widespread in the U.S. contract clauses regarding mandatory arbitration ( compulsory arbitration ) in mind. By signing such a clause about an employee forfeits all civil remedy against the employer and agrees in the event of a dispute the appeal to an arbitration panel, which is, however, selected by the employer ( and de facto almost always rules in favor of the employer). The film points out that such a clause has been found in the United States widespread and evolved for example credit card or leases as standard without the customer aware of the importance of this clause are aware.