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last week i received a settlement letter for a class action lawsuit.

if you had some Sears cabinets from 2000, apparently the brackets were not working properly. The settlement allows you to receive some new brackets and if you would like someone to install them for you.  That is what the damaged party received. Guess what the lawyers received $17,000,000!!!  Apparently the lawyers got to take the money while we get the brackets!

if they just did two changes to our legal system, so many frivolous suits would go away.

1. if you lose, you pay for the other sides legal
2. limit the amount of discovery. in the US, discovery is not subject to proportinality (you can drag a case out forever with discovery requests).

They do both these things in the UK and there are way fewer lawsuits.

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[Break-In]

that is good

[DWTCVO]

From the Stella site you are partially correct.  It did get a jury settlement that was then negotiated out of court rather than go through the long appeal process, the actual settlement remains sealed.

Quote from the Stella site:  While Stella was awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, this amount was reduced by 20 percent (to $160,000) because the jury found her 20 percent at fault. Where did the rest of the $2.9 million figure in? She was awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages -- but the judge later reduced that amount to $480,000, or three times the "actual" damages that were awarded.
But...

The resulting $640,000 isn't the end either. Liebeck and McDonald's entered into secret settlement negotiations rather than go to appeal. The amount of the settlement is not known -- it's secret!
The plaintiffs were apparently able to document 700 cases of burns from McDonald's coffee over 10 years, or 70 burns per year. But that doesn't take into account how many cups are sold without incident. A McDonald's consultant pointed out the 700 cases in 10 years represents just 1 injury per 24 million cups sold! For every injury, no matter how severe, 23,999,999 people managed to drink their coffee without any injury whatever. Isn't that proof that the coffee is not "unreasonably dangerous"?
Even in the eyes of an obviously sympathetic jury, Stella was judged to be 20 percent at fault -- she did, after all, spill the coffee into her lap all by herself. The car was stopped, so she presumably was not bumped to cause the spill. Indeed she chose to hold the coffee cup between her knees instead of any number of safer locations as she opened it. Should she have taken more responsibility for her own actions?

And...

Here's the Kicker: Coffee is supposed to be served in the range of 185 degrees! The National Coffee Association recommends coffee be brewed at "between 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction" and drunk "immediately". If not drunk immediately, it should be "maintained at 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit." (Source: NCAUSA.) Exactly what, then, did McDonald's do wrong? Did it exhibit "willful, wanton, reckless or malicious conduct" -- the standard in New Mexico for awarding punitive damages?

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Thanks for the research Rjob749. Next time I'll know better!!!

McDonalds was determined to be reckless when they served Stella coffee so hot that when she spilled it on herself it melted the nylon clothing she was wearing.  That's the part of the lawsuit that didn't hit the media.  The coffee was so hot that the nylon clothing she was wearing melted into her skin and into her genitalia.  It took 7 surgeries to repair damage and remove the nylon.  As a consumer I should be relatively safe from the product that yes even if I spill it on my self (people in cars are known to spill things) that it shouldn't require 7 surgeries to repair the damage.