In 1994 the story of a woman who spilled coffee on herself and became a millionaire turned into a national punchline, sitcom parody, and political talking point. Her name was Stella Liebeck, and the documented reality is entirely different from the joke. In this episode we look past the caricature to the court records and medical facts of a 79-year-old woman nearly killed by a 49-cent cup of coffee, and the corporate response that pushed the case into court.

We reconstruct the morning of February 27, 1992 in Albuquerque: the parked 1989 Ford Probe with no cup holders, the styrofoam cup wedged between her knees, and the cotton sweatpants that trapped near-boiling liquid against her skin. We cover the third-degree burns over six percent of her body, eight days in the hospital, skin grafts, and a weight loss that brought her to 83 pounds. Then we follow her modest $20,000 letter, the $800 counteroffer, the rejected settlements, and the trial that revealed a 180 to 190 degree holding mandate, more than 700 prior burn complaints, and the corporate math behind the jury’s verdict.

• Why burn experts testified that 190-degree liquid causes full-thickness burns in three seconds versus about 20 seconds at 160 degrees
• How the jury applied comparative negligence, assigning 80 percent of the fault to McDonald’s and 20 percent to Stella
• Why the $2.7 million punitive award equaled exactly two days of the company’s coffee revenue, and how the judge reduced it
• How the tort reform movement and consumer advocates each used the same case to argue opposite conclusions
• The toll on Stella’s final years and what her story says about the human reality behind viral headlines