Part of the McDonald's coffee story I hadn't heard

Again from Daily Kos, we find another reason punitive damages (and sometimes "outrageous" awards) are important.

Over the previous decade McDonald's had received over 700 complaints about its coffee scalding people, including babies. They had settled all lawsuits out of court, with some payments as high as $500,000. But McDonald's continued to serve its coffee 20 degrees hotter than any other major restaurant chain.

Stella Liebeck hadn't originally planned on going to a jury trial. She had asked for compensatory damages to pay for her skin grafts, but McDonald's offered only $800. By the end of the trial, however, the jury was convinced that she was entitled $200,000 compensatory damages for her medical costs, which they reduced by $40,000 because she was partially to blame for having spilled the coffee.

What got the attention, however, was the punitive damages of $2.7 million, equal at the time to 2 days worth of McDonalds's coffee sales. Remember, this decision was made in light of the fact that McDonald's had long known that its coffee, served 20 degrees hotter than the industry standard, had resulted in hundreds of presumably avoidable second and third degree burns. But even after all of that, the judge still reduced the punitive award to $480,000--a sizeable sum, but one awarded to an 81 year old plaintiff only because McDonald's was partially to blame for her suffering third degree burns throughout her groin because McDonalds persisted, despite knowing it had caused hundreds of scaldings, in serving coffee that it knew was extremely dangerous.

Businesses, by nature, only understand the language of money. Without an executive that has the power to do right at the expense of a little profit (and against the will of the shareholders), the only way to get big business to change is through large punitive awards.