Starbucks Hit With $50 Million Jury Verdict After Disfiguring Man’s Penis With Scalding Hot Tea
Move over McDonald’s hot coffee! Remember that lawsuit? The victim didn’t even get $1 million for her burned pelvic region back in 1994, but another person whose genitals were burned by a scalding hot fast food beverage was awarded $50 MILLION yesterday thanks to a Los Angeles jury. The defendant is Starbucks (they’ve of course announced that they’re appealing the verdict), and a cup of their hot tea, which spilled out of a drink carrier, caused third-degree burns that permanently disfigured a drive-thru customer’s penis five years ago. The verdict came down yesterday, via Courthouse News:
An LA County jury on Friday ordered Starbucks to pay $50 million to a Postmates driver who dropped scalding hot tea on his lap, causing third-degree burns and permanently disfiguring his penis.
In 2020, Michael Garcia was picking up an order of three venti-sized “medicine balls” — secret menu items made from a mix of steamed lemonade and two different teas — from a drive-thru Starbucks window in South Los Angeles. One of the drinks, he said, was “negligently” unsecured in its cardboard drink carrier, causing it to spill in his lap shortly after he took the order inside the car. In his complaint, Garcia said he “suffered severe burns, disfigurement, and debilitating nerve damage to his genitals” as a result of the spill. He was taken to the emergency room by paramedics.
There’s a lot more information at the link, including tragic details on how the man’s penis now has less girth and less length (I wonder how they would’ve proved that in court?), and a statement from his attorney about the Starbucks surveillance footage that proved their case.
Here’s that surveillance footage (the spill doesn’t happen until the end of the video), and if you watch closely, you can see that the barista doesn’t secure one of the cups of tea into the carrier before handing it to the man. Per the lawyer, “the footage clearly showed the barista secure two of the cups in the caddie but not the third, causing it to spill less than two seconds after Garcia took it into the car”:
More via KCAL:
