Hacker News Reader

We're not going to have a rehash of the McDonald's coffee settlement argument here, are we?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages

She deserved way more than that for the way they tried to smear her afterward!

Seriously, the reporting on that was so terribly biased that many people still think it was a frivolous lawsuit.

It's honestly kind of chilling just how effective smear campaigns can be.

I don't think there's any reasonable person who could read the full medical description of the injuries sustained and think "yeah 2.7 mill was too much".

The result was wrong. And yes, I read the contra arguments put on and they were not convincing.

Your entire opinion is based on an expensive propaganda campaign. Is that who you want to be?

Stella Liebeck was awarded 2.7 million in punitive damages, that seems like a much more reasonable number than 1.4 billion.

It was considerably less on appeal and the mcdonalds lawyers didn't anatagonize the court every chance they got and it was literally 30 years ago and there was only one victim.

Just with inflation (6.4m) and number of victims (22?) you get a much larger number real quick.

6.4m * 22 = 140.8m, an entire order of magnitude less.

Sure, and the mcdonalds case was a famously low penalty amount.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com