Hot Coffee and Urban Myth

In summer, while we were in Texas, I was discussing the state of the American justice system with Brett’s brother who is a personal injury lawyer. I held up the example of the woman who successfully sued McDonalds for serving her hot coffee, which burned her when she spilt it. Kevin was quite insistent that the case wasn’t as unreasonable as it sounded in the urban legend.

I’ve had it at the back of my mind since then, but didn’t think much more about it until last week when I got an email from a friend listing last year’s ‘Stella Awards.’ The awards are named after Stella Liebeck (the aforesaid coffee-burned lady.) We were all sitting around the office wringing our hands over the worthlessness of the American legal system when I remembered Kevin’s vehemence about the Stella case and decided to check out the claims.

It didn’t take me very long actually. Google popped it up within seconds: There is indeed a website dedicated to abuses of the legal system and it is called ‘The Stella Awards,” it even gives some very interesting background to the case of the spilt McDonalds coffee. However the awards listed in my email were total fabrications so I sent a smug little email about cross-checking facts you learn from the Internet.

However the real awards on the site, while less jaw-droppingly stupid, are no less bizarre. One does wander what has happened to the American Dream – the pioneer spirit of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps seems to have turned inward and become a greedy ideal where people (claim to) expect someone else to molly-coddle them through life by hanging warning notices on every potential accident or misfortune. It’s a shame because, in principal, the American system of government is a good one – and most Americans I’ve met personally have been fine individuals. It’s just as a nation that I think they’re really in trouble!

I also worry that most of our culture these days comes from across the Atlantic. Can we be far behind Uncle Sam? Is the same thing happening here but we just don’t have a Stella Awards website to underline it? Maybe that should be the goal of my next Googling.

In other news… Went to see Vanity Fair tonight which was good – but a little bit heavy. It was an engaging story but I couldn’t escape the feeling afterwards that I should be writing an essay of two-thousand words on the effects of social position on one’s aspirations in early-nineteenth century London society.

It was a nice break before the crazy week that is to come!