Lieback vs. Mcdonald and Pearson vs Chungs Lawsuit

Lieback vs. McDonald and Pearson vs Chungs Lawsuit

Introduction

The two cases to be compared are the Stella Liebeck v. McDonald’s and Roy L. Pearson, Jr. v. Chung, et al have often been used to support call for tort reform in the U.S. Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants case is about product liability. McDonald was negligence in serving its coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C) and caused injury to the plaintiff by not having adequate warning on the cup of coffee. Differently, in Roy L. Pearson, Jr. v. Chung, et al., Pearson alleged several claims in his lawsuit. The first claim was the defendants misled him; they lost his pants but tried to replace the pants that were not his. The second claim was on the issue of signs posted outside the business, advertising "Same Day Service" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed", which Pearson claimed to be misleading.

What are the issues?

In the Lieback Vs. Mcdonald's case Major issues are :

1. The 180 degrees coffee caused full thickness or third degree burns to Liebeck’s skin. 6 percent of her body suffered the third degree burns and 16 percent suffered lesser. The incident caused her to be hospitalized for eight days followed by two years of medical treatment. She lost almost 20% of her bodyweight due to the incident. After having to go through skin grafting and debridement, it would not be entirely wrong to assume that Liebeck also suffered tremendous emotional trauma especially since accident happened at the age of 79.

2. Carelessness of Liebeck in handling the coffee cup also plays a major role in the accident. It would be totally understandable if the incident happened to a kid below 5 years of age. Liebeck who has lived for 79 years at the point of accident should have known better than to rush into putting cream and sugar into the hot coffee in the car right after she bought it. The cotton sweat pants that Liebeck was wearing could indicate that she was in no hurry to go anywhere.

3. Prior to Liebeck’s lawsuit against...