Reviews, If the US loves anything, it loves a hot cup of joe in the morning and civil litigation. Good news then for the country’s ranks of attorneys that the twain shall meet. Often. And in court.

The great latte revolt of 2016

Two Californians are certain that Starbucks is making mugs out of them. Siera Strumlauf and Benjamin Robles have taken the monolithic coffee giant to court, claiming that the company systematically serves American customers lattes that are 25% too small – due to a fill-to line on the company’s milk jugs being lower than it should be. Starbucks says a “reasonable consumer” would not have been misled.

Earlier this month a district judge in San Francisco allowed some of the pair’s claims to go to federal court. Meaning that Strumlauf and Robles may soon be able to take this all the way to the top – of both the US courts system and their half-litre paper cups

The great ice-cube revolt, also of 2016

Starbucks again. This year’s other ’Bucks-based lawsuit is the claim of a Chicago woman, put forward in a 29-page legal complaint, that the firm deliberately puts too much ice in its iced lattes to offset the amount of coffee used. Stacey Pincus also pointed out that iced drinks should not be priced more than hot drinks as hot ones don’t contain ice (you can ask for less, says Starbucks). For black-coffee-no-sugar drinkers, she may be on to something here – we demand cheaper coffee than those selfish milk-drinkers. Or, we could just make it at home, in a cafetiere.

The world v Starbucks, various dates

Fact of life, they might be getting used to this kind of thing. Aside from for their coffee, Starbucks has previously been sued – usually unsuccessfully – for pretty mucheverything you can think of, including allegations of (drumroll) ageism, dwarfism, barring someone with a prosthetic leg from using the bathroom, and crushing a customer’s penis. And, of course, many times for scalding people with drinks that are too hot …

The hot coffee case, 1994

The story of a woman spilling a cup of McDonald’s coffee in her lap and being awarded millions of dollars in compensation became one of the default examples of how litigious a society the US had become. The case was even lampooned on the country’s biggest sitcom – when Cosmo Kramer accidentally settled a similar case in Seinfeld for unlimited free coffee.

But the story of 79-year-old widow Stella Liebeck was more than just a Lionel Hutzian-case of legal chicanery. The New Mexican suffered third-degree burns, required a skin graft and spent eight days in hospital, where she lost 20% of her body weight. The money she received in her civil trial, which was eventually settled for around $600,000 (McDonald’s had refused to settle for an initial $20,000), was used for a nurse to look after her until she died in 2004. 

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But people don’t remember the fact that a jury found McDonald’s 80% responsible for the incident. They remember someone being stupid enough to spill coffee on themselves, then winning the lottery. As Liebeck’s story spread, the more it became misunderstood and the more it was misinterpreted. It’s perhaps only in the last few years, with the HBO documentary Hot Coffee – a thriller about tort reform, somehow – that people have realised that the spilling ruined her life. Which is probably a bit worse than forgetting to ask for fewer ice-cubes in your iced soy latte.

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