A California delivery driver named Michael Garcia will get $50 million after a jury decided Starbucks was to blame for burns he got when hot tea spilled on him. The accident happened in February 2020 when Garcia was at a Starbucks drive-through in Los Angeles County. The case has made big news, but Starbucks says they will fight the decision.
Garcia got badly hurt when a Starbucks worker handed him a very hot venti tea in a tray. The cup tipped over and spilled all over his lap. The hot tea burned him really badly, and he had to get skin grafts. These are painful operations where doctors take skin from one part of the body and put it on the burned areas. Garcia will have scars forever from what happened.
The jury said Starbucks did not put the tea cup safely in the tray. They thought this was careless and that’s why they told Starbucks to pay so much money. This kind of case is called a negligence lawsuit. This means someone didn’t do what they should have done to keep others safe.
Starbucks doesn’t agree with the jury. They feel sorry that Garcia got hurt but don’t think they did anything wrong. They also think $50 million is way too much money for this accident. A person who works for Starbucks said they will appeal, which means they will ask another court to look at the case again. The company says their workers follow safety rules when they serve hot drinks.
This isn’t the first time a restaurant has been sued over hot drinks. Back in 1992, a woman named Stella Liebeck sued McDonald’s after their coffee burned her. She got about $3 million at first, but later the amount was lowered to less than $600,000. That case was all over the news and made people talk about how hot restaurants should make their drinks.
Not everyone wins these kinds of cases. In another lawsuit from the 1990s, a child spilled McDonald’s coffee on himself in Iowa. The jury said McDonald’s wasn’t to blame for that accident.
This big win for Garcia might change how coffee shops give people hot drinks. They might start using stronger cups or lids. They might train workers better on how to hand drinks to customers safely. They might even put bigger warning labels on cups.
For now, Michael Garcia has won his case. But we won’t know for sure what will happen until Starbucks finishes their appeal. This could take months or even years to settle completely. Whatever happens, this case shows that selling very hot drinks can be risky for big companies like Starbucks.
