Starbucks told the Washington Post in an email statement it plans to appeal the verdict.
“We sympathise with Mr Garcia, but we disagree with the jury’s decision that we were at fault for this incident and believe the damages awarded to be excessive,” the statement reads. “We have always been committed to the highest safety standards in our stores, including the handling of hot drinks.”
Medicine Ball hot tea – steamed lemonade, hot water, Jade Citrus Mint green tea, Peach Tranquility tea and honey – was originally an off-menu drink and was touted as a cure-all for cold and flu symptoms. Starbucks has since begun offering a similar drink called Honey Citrus Mint tea.
Attorneys for Garcia said the company had originally offered to settle but wanted confidentiality. “We said we would settle for $30m without confidentiality and only if Starbucks agreed to publicly apologise and promise to change policy to prevent this from happening again,” the attorneys said in their statement.
“We are proud of Michael for standing up for himself and having the courage to tell his story,” Garcia’s attorneys added.
There have been a number of high-profile lawsuits filed across the country related to injuries from hot beverages, with the most well-known one being the 1994 lawsuit filed against McDonald’s by Stella Liebeck. Liebeck suffered severe burns at age 79 when she spilled hot coffee on herself in the drive-through of an Albuquerque branch of the fast-food chain. A jury awarded Liebeck more than US$2m in punitive damages, which a judge later reduced; Liebeck and McDonald’s ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount under $600,000. McDonald’s was sued again in 2023 by an 85-year-old woman who said she suffered first and second-degree burns from a McDonald’s coffee while leaving a San Francisco drive-through.
Last year, a JetBlue passenger sued the airline after a crew member allegedly spilled a hot drink on her during a turbulent flight, causing what she described as “severe burns” on her chest, legs and arm.
Starbucks has also previously been the subject of hot-drink injury lawsuits. During a trial in which a jury awarded US$100,000 to a Florida woman who said she was permanently scarred after a lid fell off a Venti-size Starbucks cup and spilled 87C coffee into her lap, a Starbucks representative testified the company receives 80 complaints a month related to lid leaks and lids popping off, according to the law firm Morgan & Morgan. In 2017, a Colorado woman filed a lawsuit against the coffee giant, saying she suffered burns from an improperly secured cup of tea that was so hot it caused her clothes to melt and ultimately killed her dog, who had jumped into her lap when she began to scream in pain, causing the tea to spill on to him.
