Hot Coffee (2011)

I had been skeptical about watching this movie for a while, and then today I finally decided to give it a chance. My intuition was telling me there was at least a 50% chance I'd get 10 minutes in and then turn it off out of boredom. NOPE! Not only is the coffee story much more interesting than I ever imagined, they tell at least a dozen other stories that turn out to be even more interesting. This documentary turned out not only to be fascinating and educational but also deadly important. I very rarely give a 10 rating for documentaries but this one particularly affected me. I found myself saying, "WTF, are you kidding me!" throughout. Most importantly though, I felt that the producers worked very hard to bring us these interviews and make this film. As far as I know, it's the only film ever made primarily about what's really going on with the so called "Jackpot Justice" system we've been repeatedly warned about by the media. I'm sure a lot of people will feel the film is biased, but I really had to think about that and my conclusion is that they fairly represented all sides of every case. I would say they even went out of their way to get all sides for us. After watching this I am convinced that juries should decide what is fair compensation for damages, not lobbyists, and sadly, it seems to be going the other way due to a very well orchestrated campaign to miss-educate and disenfranchise American citizens.

It took me a few minutes after watching this "documentary" to remember that my mother used to visit friends or have them over, and they were all serving each other tea which they made by boiling water (212 degrees Farenheit...or 22 to 32 degrees hotter than MacDonald's coffee), pouring it into a flimsy teacup and handing it to each other. If any of the ladies had fumbled the tea onto their lap right after the boil, it would have left even worse burns than the old lady in the documentary suffered. I guess that would have been the fault of whomever was serving tea that day! This film was a good example of a public relations effort by the Democrat National Committee or the Obama re-election campaign, but its inability to deal with contrary views (other than as being summarized in a smarmy manner and thrown away as a paper tiger) shows how weak the effort was.

The story of the New Mexico woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald's was widely viewed as the stuff of comedy, but it turns out that the story goes way beyond that. Using bumper sticker phrases like "tort reform" -- often conceived by the likes of Frank Luntz and Karl Rove -- the special interests sensationalized stories of "frivolous lawsuits" and convinced state legislatures to make it harder to sue, while also placing caps on damages, installing business-friendly judges, and often creating mandatory arbitration (signing away your right to sue).Susan Saladoff's documentary "Hot Coffee" looks at these issues. Saladoff organizes it like Michael Moore's documentaries (interviews with the subjects interspersed with cultural icons). Among other things, people often voted for tort reform without realizing that they were the ones getting screwed. Not only that, people often don't even know what a tort is.The point is that our justice system has gotten completely manipulated. See if you don't feel a chill run down your back while watching this.

Let's get a couple of facts out of the way that this "documentary" never bothered with. From a taste standpoint, coffee has to be brewed just off the boil, which means at 195 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can not find anyone serious about good coffee who will disagree with that. Secondly, when someone hands you a cup of hot coffee, it's your responsibility to deal with it, to avoid injuring yourself with it. If someone hands you a loaded gun, and you shot yourself in the face, who's fault is that?Yes, this woman screwed up, she dumped a cup of very hot coffee in her lap. How the hell is that McDonald's fault? Because they sold coffee that is hot? Hells, bells, their customers EXPECT hot coffee.My brother when he was two years old, pulled a freshly brewed cup of hot coffee my dad had just set down for a second onto to himself and was hospitalized with burns all over his body. Gosh I wish we could have thought of someone to sue, because we'd be rich forever. This stupid woman poured hot coffee all over herself and sued the pants off McDonalds. And won.And this STUPID PIECE OF PROPAGANDA tries to make us believe that's justice. It's not justice. It's a set of tragedies. This woman was burned beyond belief and spent months in pain for a mistake SHE made. That's the first tragedy, but there's only one person who could have prevented it. The second tragedy is that a court of law inexplicably gave this woman millions of dollars of OTHER people's money for making a mistake that none of those other people could have prevented.And yet this film tries to convince us that's justice.It's not justice. It's extortion.