America's litigious life

"You can pay for the ticket and you can't sue me if we crash!" or so I was told by a friend when I protested wearing my seat belt for a three block drive. I am hardly trying to condone the heinous crime of not wearing a seat belt when I pause to say that I had not even thought about the legal implications.

I grew up in a culture where "suing" was a word kept sacred for large conglomerates and courtroom-based television series. It was a culture where consumerism was a strange idea, where returns were unheard of and redemptions were unthinkable.

If you impulsively decided that you didn't like the dress you just bought, you hid it in the back of your closet or gave it away as a gift. Return it? Implausible! Such was business.

If you were casually picking through your street corner fried rice and discovered a dead cockroach (true story), you showed the vendor the evidence and were happy with a new plate of rice. Sue for psychological damage? Impossible! Such was life.

It was then very strange to hear of real life stories that involved suing for what I believed to be the most incredible reasons. One of the more high-profile stories in circulation is the 1992 case of 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, who sued McDonald's because their coffee was too hot. For those who may not have heard of this, you need to know that you are in the minority, because anyone who's anyone has heard of this unbelievable but very true story. Liebeck suffered third-degree burns when 49-cent hot coffee bought at a McDonald's drive-through spilled onto her lap while driving. In the end she was awarded $2.9 million by a jury in New Mexico.

For the longest time, I thought the case was just an example of how ridiculous the legal system in America has become with all the hype about protecting consumers coming before basic levels of common sense. But the Liebeck case and the healthy dose of television drama that depicts suing as a new way of winning the lottery ends up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If people think there is room to sue about virtually everything and anything, then the system will be rigged to seem like it does happen. Firms have become excruciatingly careful about how to word warnings and where to include fine print, like hair dryers that have warning labels with, "Do not use while sleeping," just in case a sleepwalking consumer burns his or her scalp in the middle of the night.

Tort reform was a major objective of the Bush administration, with the 2004 Republican reform stating that the American litigation system was "broken" because ridiculous lawsuits were being taken to court, thereby propelling the cost of doing business in America.

However, what isn't well known is that 13 courts have seen cases where coffee has been claimed to be excessively dangerous, and only one of those courts did not throw the case out, leading to the Liebeck phenomenon.

The American courtroom is frivolous because it is made out to be so in the midst of cases that are talked about incessantly, those rare cases that end up becoming jackpots to Joe Average. Nobody ever talks about the thousands of cases that are thrown out of court every day. No one discusses the high cost of hiring a lawyer over a period of weeks, months or years with no real verification of obtaining any money.

If the legal system were portrayed the way it is, instead of the flamboyant way it is thought to be, then maybe companies wouldn't have to warn people not to style their hair while they're sleeping.

Reach columnist Sara Mamman at saramamman@thedaily.washington.edu.