I have thought about canceling HBO since I got Netflix and don’t watch HBO much anymore. One of the reasons I don’t want to get rid of HBO is because every year they pick up some of the most interesting documentaries from Sundance. Hot Coffee was on my list of movies I wanted to see this year at Sundance but didn’t get a chance too. So I was excited to see it on HBO.
Hot Coffee is about our court system in the United States and Tort reform(not torte as in the cake). Now I have heard that term tort reform before but never knew what it meant. This movies starts with the most notorious case of “frivolous” lawsuits the spilled McDonalds coffee case. Director Susan Saladoff interviews the members of the family and lawyers of the victim. They talk about how the public is misinformed about the facts of the case. After showing pictures of the third degree burns and skin grafts that the lady received from the coffee it is clear that it is not a simple case of a little burn. When the lawyers were doing their investigation they learned that McDonalds used a practice of keeping the Coffee at a constant temperature of 180 degrees. An extremely dangerous and unnecessary temperature. So when it turned out that McDonalds was aware of the dangers of keeping the water that hot and did nothing to fix it the Jury decided that they were negligent and ordered them to pay $2.9 million(the amount of total sales McDonalds makes on coffee in a day) but was reduced to $480,000. After hearing all the facts it is hard to argue the final outcome. But in the 15 years since that happened you never hear the facts about how McDonalds was negligent.
Most tort reform supporters want to put a cap on how much money can be awarded to an individual that sues a company. The argument for tort reform is that these “frivolous” cases are clogging up the court system and costing millions of dollars. Of course it turns out that the biggest supporters of tort reform are the giant companies like McDonalds and the tobacco industry who don’t want to pay out large sums of money even they are at fault. Saladoff uses numerous examples of people being harmed and not being able to do anything to those responsible. One case where an OB/GYN missed a problem during a pregnancy that resulted in a child being born with developmental issues the parents sued for malpractice. After winning the case and being awarded almost $6 million by a Jury to help pay for years of therapy for the child they found out that tort reform had passed in their state and there was a cap on how much they could get. Now instead of having those responsible for his harm paying for his care they are on Medicaid. How does that save the tax payers money? The other thing it does is makes the Jury inconsequential. They Jury system is basic tenant of America and the movie makes the case that we should trust the Jury to come to the correct decision after seeing all the facts. If it is a frivolous lawsuit the jury will decide no politicians.
The movie was very eye opening. Like I said I never knew what tort reform was and from the way politicians talk about it, it does sound like a good thing. But seeing some of the consequences of the reform definitely makes me think otherwise. I love learning new things from documentaries and this definitely did that. What it did not do was give a balanced argument. As my co-worker will probably say just another one of those liberal documentaries as it does paint the Republicans as being in cahoots with big business and as being the bad guys. The movie was very one sided but effective. Rating B+
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