The McDonald's Hot Coffee Case: What Really Happened to Stella Liebeck

By Michael Shemtoub, trial attorney, Beverly Law. Updated November 2026.

The case is usually told as a joke about a greedy customer and a giant payout. The trial record, as reported by the journalists and researchers who covered it, tells a different story. This page lays out the facts, the evidence the jury heard, the verdict and its reduction, the settlement, and the myths, with a source for each point.

Beverly Law is not affiliated with McDonald’s.

The spill: February 27, 1992, Albuquerque

On February 27, 1992, Stella Liebeck bought a 49-cent cup of coffee at the drive-through window of a McDonald’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Retro Report; Wall Street Journal, republished by the Tampa Bay Times). Her grandson was driving. He pulled over and parked so she could add cream and sugar (American Museum of Tort Law).

She held the cup between her knees and removed the lid. The coffee spilled into her lap. She was wearing sweatpants, which soaked up the coffee and held it against her skin (American Museum of Tort Law).

Her injuries

Liebeck suffered third-degree burns to her groin, inner thighs and buttocks (Public Citizen; Wall Street Journal). A third-degree burn destroys the full thickness of the skin. Published accounts disagree on what share of her body was burned, so we leave that figure out.

She spent about a week in the hospital. Public Citizen says eight days; the Wall Street Journal reported seven. Doctors removed the dead tissue (debridement) and grafted skin onto the wounds (Public Citizen). Her lawyer Ken Wagner later described trial photos showing where surgeons took skin from the sides of her legs to close the burns (Retro Report). Public Citizen reports she was scarred and disabled for more than two years.

What she asked for before suing

Liebeck first asked McDonald’s to cover her medical costs. McDonald’s offered $800 (Public Citizen; American Museum of Tort Law). Retro Report put her medical bills at about $10,000. In archival footage Retro Report aired in 2019, Liebeck said she wanted McDonald’s to bring the temperature down (Retro Report).

She was represented by Albuquerque lawyer Kenneth Wagner and Houston lawyer Reed Morgan, who had handled a 1986 hot-coffee claim against McDonald’s for a Houston woman with third-degree burns (American Museum of Tort Law; Wall Street Journal). The suit was filed in New Mexico state court in Albuquerque and claimed the coffee was “defective” because it was so hot.

There were two more chances to settle. Morgan told the Wall Street Journal he offered to drop the case for $300,000 and would have taken half that. Days before trial, Judge Robert Scott ordered a mediation. The mediator, a retired judge, recommended that McDonald’s settle for $225,000. McDonald’s declined (Wall Street Journal; Public Citizen).

The evidence at trial

The trial lasted seven days, according to the Wall Street Journal. These are the main points the jury heard, as reported by the Wall Street Journal’s reporter, who interviewed jurors afterward, and by Public Citizen.

McDonald’s own temperature standard. Before trial, McDonald’s produced its operations and training manual. It said coffee must be brewed at 195 to 205°F and held at 180 to 190°F for taste (Wall Street Journal).

Comparison with other restaurants. The law firm defending McDonald’s hired a law student to take the temperature of coffee at other Albuquerque restaurants. He found that none came within about 20 degrees of McDonald’s pour temperature, which was about 180°F. In Morgan’s earlier Houston case, his investigator measured coffee at 18 other restaurants and 20 McDonald’s locations; McDonald’s accounted for nine of the 12 hottest readings (Wall Street Journal). Liebeck’s lawyer Kenneth Wagner told the American Museum of Tort Law that most home coffee makers produce coffee at 135 to 150°F.

How fast that coffee burns. A scientist testifying for McDonald’s said any coffee hotter than 130°F could cause third-degree burns, so the exact temperature did not matter. A doctor testifying for Liebeck said a third-degree burn takes less than three seconds at 190°F and argued that a lower serving temperature would make a real difference (Wall Street Journal). For comparison, the American Burn Association’s scald table, which is based on studies of adult skin, shows water at 155°F can cause a third-degree burn in about one second (ABA scald guide). Our hot beverage temperature page has the full ABA and CPSC tables.

Prior burn reports. Company documents showed McDonald’s had received more than 700 reports of coffee burns from 1982 to 1992, some involving children and infants, and had settled scald claims for more than $500,000 in total (Public Citizen; Wall Street Journal).

The quality assurance manager’s testimony. Christopher Appleton, a McDonald’s quality assurance manager, testified that the company knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, that it had not asked burn researchers about the problem, that it had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns, and that it did not plan to change its coffee procedures. “There are more serious dangers in restaurants,” he told the jury (Wall Street Journal). According to Wagner, all the cup said was “contents hot” (American Museum of Tort Law).

The statistics defense. A human-factors engineer testifying for McDonald’s told the jury that coffee burns were statistically insignificant compared with the roughly one billion cups the company sold each year. Juror Betty Farnham said afterward: “There was a person behind every number, and I don’t think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that” (Wall Street Journal).

McDonald’s arguments about Liebeck. The company argued she contributed to her injuries by holding the cup between her legs and not taking off her clothes right away, and that her age made the burns worse because older skin is thinner (Wall Street Journal).

Before trial, Judge Scott refused to let Morgan show the jury photographs of other burn victims or call them as witnesses, though he allowed Morgan to mention those cases (Wall Street Journal).

The verdict: August 18, 1994

The jury of six men and six women returned its verdict on August 18, 1994 (NPR via Connecticut Public; Wall Street Journal). The jury foreman, Jerry Goens, told the Wall Street Journal that at the start he “wasn’t convinced as to why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill.”

The jury found that McDonald’s had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct, which the Wall Street Journal described as the basis for the punitive award (Wall Street Journal).

The reduction and the settlement

After trial, Judge Scott denied McDonald’s request for a new trial and called the company’s conduct “callous” (Public Citizen). He then reduced the punitive award from $2.7 million to $480,000, while describing McDonald’s behavior as “willful, wanton, and reckless” (American Museum of Tort Law). A judge’s cut to a jury award is called a remittitur.

Both sides appealed. Before the appeals were decided, the parties settled out of court, and McDonald’s required that the terms stay confidential (Public Citizen). The American Museum of Tort Law and Retro Report both report the amount was under $500,000. Public Citizen’s sources date the settlement to December 1994.

In 2024, New York University law professor Catherine Sharkey told NPR that the judge’s reduction kept punitive damages within a single-digit ratio to compensatory damages, the kind of limit the U.S. Supreme Court later set (NPR via Connecticut Public).

The myths, and what the record shows

Myth: She was driving with coffee between her legs. She was a passenger, and the car was parked. Her grandson had pulled over so she could add cream and sugar (Tort Museum; Retro Report). Retro Report documented national TV commentators who said on air that she was driving.

Myth: It was a minor burn. She had third-degree burns to her groin, thighs and buttocks, about a week in the hospital, debridement and skin grafts (Public Citizen). The Wall Street Journal reported that jurors began taking the case more seriously once they learned of her hospital stay and skin grafts and saw the photographs.

Myth: She went straight to court for millions. She asked McDonald’s to pay her medical costs, and the company offered $800. Her lawyer later offered to settle for $300,000, and the mediator at a court-ordered session recommended $225,000. McDonald’s turned down both (Wall Street Journal).

Myth: She walked away with nearly $3 million. The judge reduced the total to $640,000, and the final settlement was reported to be under $500,000 (Tort Museum).

Myth: All coffee is that hot, and everyone knows coffee burns. The defense’s own survey found no Albuquerque restaurant within about 20 degrees of McDonald’s coffee (Wall Street Journal), and Liebeck’s lawyer said most home coffee makers brew at 135 to 150°F (Tort Museum). McDonald’s own witnesses testified that customers were not aware of how dangerous a spill at the company’s required temperature could be (Public Citizen).

Myth: The jury ignored her own fault. The jury did weigh it. It assigned her 20 percent of the responsibility and reduced her compensatory damages by that amount (Tort Museum).

Myth: This was a one-time freak accident. McDonald’s had received more than 700 reports of coffee burns from 1982 to 1992 (Public Citizen).

How the story spread

Retro Report traced how a 697-word Albuquerque Journal story shrank to 349 words on the AP wire and to as few as 48 words in some big-city papers. The case became a punch line on late-night TV and on Seinfeld, and lawmakers pushing limits on lawsuits in the mid-1990s cited it (Retro Report). Susan Saladoff’s 2011 documentary Hot Coffee retold the facts for a wider audience (Tort Museum).

Did anything change? In 2019, Retro Report reported that McDonald’s franchisee handbooks now call for coffee to be held and served ten degrees lower than before. We have not found a current serving temperature published by McDonald’s itself.

What the case means for a coffee burn claim today

Liebeck was decided under New Mexico law in 1994, so it is an example, not a rule for other states. Three questions it raised still come up in every hot drink case:

1. How hot was the drink, and why? Research published in the journal Burns reports that hot beverages are frequently served at 160°F to 185°F (Brown and Diller, 2008). A company’s own manuals and holding settings are evidence, as the McDonald’s manual was.
2. What did the business know? In Liebeck, the prior burn reports came out in discovery. A claim today asks for the same kind of records.
3. How much was the customer at fault? California and Washington reduce damages by the injured person’s share of fault with no cutoff (Li v. Yellow Cab; RCW 4.22.005). Texas bars recovery when the injured person is more than 50 percent responsible (CPRC § 33.001). Our page on recovering when you were partly at fault explains how insurers use this argument.

Punitive damages also follow state rules. California requires clear and convincing proof of malice, oppression or fraud (Civ. Code § 3294); Texas caps them (CPRC § 41.008); Washington generally does not allow them without a statute (Dailey v. North Coast Life). The side-by-side rules are on our burn injury law by state page.

A more recent coffee-shop burn case is the $50 million Los Angeles verdict against Starbucks in 2025, where the lawsuit blamed an employee for not wedging a hot tea firmly into a takeout tray (AP via Claims Journal). We compare the two on our Garcia v. Starbucks page. For drive-thru and restaurant spills generally, see scald burns and our Starbucks burn page.

Talk to a burn injury lawyer

McDonald’s offered Stella Liebeck $800 and argued the spill was her fault. If a business is telling you the same thing after a coffee or tea burn in California, Texas or Washington, call Beverly Law at (310) 552-6959 for a free consultation in English or Spanish. Texas cases are handled by the firm’s Texas-licensed attorneys, Joyce Ondich and John Efstathiou. You owe no fees or costs unless we win. More on these claims is on our burn injury lawyer page.

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Important: This page is general information, not legal or medical advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; talk to a lawyer about yours. Texas cases are handled by the firm’s Texas-licensed attorneys, Joyce Ondich and John Efstathiou. Last reviewed: November 6, 2026.