A Mahopac woman is demanding $1 million from Starbucks for injuries she claims she incurred when hot tea she bought at the company”™s Ossining coffeehouse spilled on her.
Viviane Jones-Foradas accused Starbucks of negligence, in a complaint filed Dec. 23 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
Her complaint is reminiscent of the McDonald”™s hot coffee case that became a flash point for critics of frivolous litigation, on the one hand, and for consumer safety advocates, on the other hand.
In the McDonald”™s product liability litigation, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck spilled hot coffee on her lap when she removed the lid to add cream and sugar while sitting as a passenger in a parked car. She suffered third-degree burns, was hospitalized for eight days and underwent skin grafting.
Evidence in the 1994 trial established that McDonald”™s required stores to hold coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to produce third-degree burns in three seconds, and that the company had received more than 700 complaints from customers who had claimed they also had been scalded by hot coffee.
Liebeck tried to settle the case for $20,000, according to news accounts, but McDonald”™s offered $800. The jury awarded her nearly $3 million, but the trial judge later reduced the judgment to $640,000.
Jones-Foradas claims she was injured this past Aug. 20 at the Ossining store on South Highland Avenue. Her two-page complaint is short on details, merely alleging that a cup of hot tea spilled on her due to negligence by employees for “failing to double cup the tea or put a sleeve on the cup, and failing to properly affix the cup lid.”
She says she sustained “serious and permanent physical and psychological injury; has been rendered sick, sore, lame and disable; and has and will incur ”¦ charges for medical care.”
She demanded unspecified damages, but in a later filing she indicated that she had been treated at Phelps Memorial Hospital and she demanded $1 million.
The lawsuit was filed originally in Westchester Supreme Court on Oct. 15 and moved to federal court by Starbucks on Dec. 23.
Starbucks says in its answer to the complaint that whatever injury or damage Jones-Foradas may have sustained, it was caused or contributed to by her own “negligence or culpable conduct.”
Starbucks denied any negligence on its part and states that “alleged injuries were caused by the misuse, abuse, alteration and/or modification of the product after it left the control of Starbucks.”
Fishkill attorney Steven H. Cohen represents Jones-Foradas. Manhattan attorney George N. Tompkins III represents Starbucks.
So to be clear, she wants Starbucks to pay her a million dollars because she’s stupid and doesn’t know how to handle a beverage cup. She needs to have her forehead tattooed with a warning “do not serve me hot food or beveragesâ€.