75: The McDonald's Hot Coffee Case (Legal Urban Legends pt. 1)

Rebuttal

Rebmasel

True Crime

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) “I am astonished how successful these urban legends have been in influencing policy. . . .The people that created these stories did so with remarkable skill.” The Grazinski case, the Carson case, and the Walton case, to name a few. They've all been cited as true by a wide range of major media outlets, including CNN and U.S. News & World Report. There's just one problem: These cases don't exist. And neither do the people in them. No, AI didn't hallucinate them. Big corporations did... ...For more than 30 years, Stella Liebeck's lawsuit has been debated on talk shows, parodied in television commercials, mentioned in congressional debates, and is firmly lodged in the public consciousness. In U.S. popular culture, her case has come to symbolize greedy plaintiffs and lawyers who file frivolous lawsuits and win hugely excessive sums in a broken legal system. And that was exactly what the big corporations, and their powerful lobbyists, wanted you to think. Reb spills all of the real, true, and graphic details of Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants (1994). *** MERCH STORE IS LIVE! Shop Reb Masel and Rebuttal Pod merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://rebmasel.shop/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CLICK HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to PREORDER Reb's book: The Book They Throw At You—A Sarcastic Lawyer's Guide* To The Unholy Chaos of Our Legal System, *God No, Not Actual Legal Advice *** Follow @RebuttalPod on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Follow @Rebmasel on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! *** 00:00 - Intro / CONTENT WARNING. 00:15 - LEGAL URBAN LEGENDS. 02:43 - THE BAD GUYS AND YOU. 06:16 - Tort Law vs. Tort "Reform" 08:42 - CASE BEGINS: The McDonald's Hot Coffee Case 09:59 - THE INCIDENT. 12:03 - INJURIES AND PERMANENT DISFIGUREMENT. 14:21 - STELLA'S LETTERS TO MCDONALD'S. 19:17 - THE TRIAL: What the jury heard + Transcripts 32:27 - THE VERDICT. 37:25 - MCDONALD'S LEARNS NOTHING. 38:10 - JUSTICE FOR STELLA. 38:32 - Reb's Rebuttal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:25.9	Attention all passengers. The Uber ride for Mark and Jamal's romantic weekend will depart in four
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0:45.8	Trains on Uber. Content warning for this episode, I will be showing some pretty gnarly burns
0:51.7	that a very old woman suffered in the case that we were going to
0:56.0	talk about. She did survive them, but they were shown to the jury, so I'll be showing them to you.
1:01.3	Your discretion is advised. This case might sound familiar to you because most of America was
1:07.0	talking about it once upon a time and are still talking about it today.
1:12.6	This is why legal urban legends are helping the bad guys.
1:18.3	If you think you don't know any legal urban legends, trust me, you do.
1:23.4	Merv Grisinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel,
1:29.6	and went back to fix a cup of coffee.
1:31.7	You can guess what happened next.
	...

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