An 84-year-old man in Mississippi is suing McDonald’s for gross negligence over super-hot coffee that he says left him with “horrific” third-degree burns.
Former oil worker Joseph Gentry, of Long Beach, Mississippi, was a “healthy, robust, retired gentleman” when he pulled up to a McDonald’s drive-through window on January 14, 2023, his lawyers claim.
But after his coffee cup accidentally spilled on his legs while being handed to him, he allegedly suffered “enormous pain and suffering” as well as “mental anguish” and required skin grafts.
The lawsuit, filed on March 19 by Gentry and his wife Beth, raises questions about whether McDonald’s has improved its safety practices since the famous and much-misunderstood ‘hot coffee lawsuit’ of 1994, when a 79-year-old woman sued the fast food giant over very similar injuries.
Back then, a jury ruled that McDonald’s had been grossly negligent in selling coffee at such scalding temperatures and awarded the woman damages, but her case was later touted as an example of excessive lawsuit culture in the U.S.
“As a direct and foreseeable result of these burns, Mr Gentry suffered severe and chronic physical pain, had to undergo extensive medical treatment, incurred extensive bills and incidental expenses, and is permanently scarred and disfigured,” reads Gentry’s lawsuit, which was first reported by the Mississippi Sun Herald. (Warning: links contain graphic photos of injuries.)
It claims that the coffee cup’s lid popped off while it was being passed to Gentry due to known “design defects” and demands unspecified damages from both McDonald’s and its franchisee, Ten D Enterprises.
McDonald’s, along with Ten D’s owner Bill Descher, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is far from the first time fast food joints have been sued over the temperature of their products. McDonald’s was hit with coffee lawsuits in 2012 and 2023, plus a similar suit over a burning-hot Chicken McNugget, while Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, and Chick-fil-A have also faced legal action.
During the 1994 case — formally known as Liebeck v McDonald’s, after its plaintiff Stella Liebeck — the jury heard that McDonald’s required its franchisees to keep coffee at up to 190F, and that this temperature could cause third-degree burns within three seconds.
The trial also uncovered that the company had received more than 700 reports of coffee burns between 1982 and 1992, and had settled out of court with some of the injured people, but had declined to change its procedures.
The jury ultimately awarded Liebeck $160,000 in compensation and imposed another $2.7 million in punitive damages against McDonald’s, which the judge reduced to $480,000.
