Posted on 08/09/2002 9:15:52 AM PDT by ElkGroveDan
There is no better proof that jury was really, really mad, than the $65 million punitive damages award - 5x the special damages. Reviewing such jury verdicts is my day job.
Well then there must have something sealed and not available to the writer of this article!
IMHO!
Your comments make this all very interesting!
What the hell is going on!
Any idea whether there will be a transcript online or available to the public?
Yes indeed jurys are intelligent, fair, impartial and immune from knee-jerk emotional arguments based on the headlines of the day. That's why we all know that O.J. Simpson was not guilty --- because there are no stupid juries. So there just had to be more to it. Like when the greedy malicious McDonald executives conspired to scald people with coffee. < / sarcasm >
No there wasn't any "damning" evidence that hasn't come out. The Simon family was tried for being a "big business" and the plaintiffs lawyers said as much in their closing arguments. Fortunately it is NOT against the law to be a large successful business. I predict that this whole thing is going to be tossed out long before the November election.
Simon's case involved a commercial fraud dispute. IMO what most likely happened was the appearance of a "smoking gun" in the documentary evidence. That is usually the case when the punitive damages are so high. Juries do not like being lied to.
What puzzles me here, though, is why it wasn't settled if there was such documentary evidence. That smells like the defense attorneys. or the defendants, or both, got emotionally involved and failed to evaluate the risks. Simon's campaign incompetence indicates such cluelessness that I suspect, from the amazing punitive damages, his whole family is like that.
As for McDonald's coffee, I had one of those cases cross my desk. Worse, it involved a McDonald's in a Wal-Mart in my town whose layout I was personally familiar with. What happened in that case (rather ghastly third degree burns) was that the coffee stand seperate from, and out of sight of, the cash register where the staff was.
Normal coffee procedure in fast-food restaurants is for the coffee warming pot to be separate from the percalator. Coffee comes out of the percalator at about 190-205F and drops into a pot where the staff is. They let it cool for a few minutes, then take it to a warming stand in the customer area. Coffe in the warming pots is supposed to be served at 165-180F.
In this place the percalator was in the customer area and dropped directly into the warming pot. Customers could serve themselves coffee which was 25-30F higher in temperature than normal coffee, and the staff wouldn't know it. All the expert testimony was that this was a screwup beneath the standard of care for fast food restaurant coffee operations, and had been for thirty years.
We denied a summary judgment motion on that basis, the case settled, and the coffee stand in that McDonald's was moved into the kitchen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.