Woman Burned by Starbucks Coffee Gets $100,000

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 11:52AM EST · Published May 19, 6:35AM EDT

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Woman Burned by Starbucks Coffee Gets $100,000 — © Thinkstock

Joanne Mogavero got a cup of coffee at a Starbucks. The lid was not put on correctly. Coffee poured out and scalded her. She was just awarded $100,000 for the incident by a jury in Duval County, which surrounds the city of Jacksonville.

According to the New York Post: “The 43-year-old mom was at a Starbucks drive-thru in July 2014 when she ordered the Venti Pike’s Place coffee, her lawyer said.” The coffee was 190 degrees and scarred one area of her body on which it was spilled. The sum paid included $15,492.14 and $85,000 for “pain and suffering.”

This is not the first time the customer of a fast-food chain has been burned and then awarded damages. According to the Consumer Attorneys of California:

In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck bought a cup of takeout coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Albuquerque and spilled it on her lap. She sued McDonald’s and a jury awarded her nearly $3 million in punitive damages for the burns she suffered.

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The Liebeck case became a legendary example of how a customer could sue a restaurant, and it continues to be the most famous example of these kinds of incidents.

That case was not the only one filed against McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD). There have been a number of others against it and Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX), including one filed against Starbucks by a police officer in North Carolina in 2012. The jury ruled against him. Starbucks comments about the incident, according to the L.A. Times: “We are pleased with the jury’s decision as we believe our partners [employees] did nothing wrong. The safety of our customers and partners will continue to be our top priority.”

Starbucks was not as fortunate this time.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.