Theme
3:40pm May 6, 2014

If you think you know anything about the “frivolous” lawsuit where the woman sued McDonald’s after spilling coffee on her lap…

I strongly recommend the documentary “Hot Coffee”.  I didn’t think the lawsuit was frivolous, but I still had no idea the extent of what had really gone on.  And I had no idea of what people have been doing to the rights of people to stand up to corporations in court.  I don’t have as idealistic ideas about the ‘justice’ system (civil or criminal) as the people who made the film, but I came out finding that basically everything I’ve ever been told about this stuff is a calculated lie on the part of corporations, basically a PR stunt to keep people from being able to hold them accountable when they hurt people.

(And yes, I know that frivolous lawsuits exist.  I knew someone who sued a travel agency because the temperature in their destination was hotter than the average temperature the agency had reported.  But most lawsuits that make the news as 'frivolous’ are not frivolous at all, and those lawsuits are then used to convince people to support measures that limit the rights of ordinary citizens when someone has done us harm.)

The film also got into mandatory arbitration clauses, which I didn’t even know existed.

One warning though, there’s a part with a parent of a developmentally disabled child, who talks about him in wholly tragic terms and says that he’ll “never get to be an adult”.  That part was extremely hard to watch.  There was also a rape case that was difficult to watch, although that was easier for me to watch because it was presented as injustice, while the stuff about the disabled boy was presented as just how things are.

Anyway it’s on Netflix and I’d strongly recommend it.