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In 2007, a Washington, D.C. administrative judge by the name of Roy Pearson filed a lawsuit against a dry cleaning service that misplaced a pair of his pants. The lawsuit was for the staggering sum of $67 million, which Judge Pearson later graciously lowered to $54 million.

The case became a cause célèbre among tort reform organizations, offering it up as a perfect example as to why our court system was, as they put it, broken. Believe it or not, as ridiculous as that lawsuit was, we view it as a perfect example as to how our system works.

Of course there are frivolous lawsuits. They are filed every day. But bear in mind that the great majority of these lawsuits are rarely represented by legitimate attorneys, and they are very rarely even allowed to proceed. Many of them are filed by people who are mentally disturbed, and many of them are filed by people who have only the faintest idea as to how the system works. The only reason Judge Pearson’s case was allowed to actually see the light of day and get to a courtroom was because he was, after all, an administrative judge. He knew the rules, he knew how to frame his argument so that his request for such an insane amount of money seemed justifiable in a strictly legal sense, and he knew how to fill out the right paperwork.

But just because he knew how to follow the rules didn’t make his case anymore valid, and when he actually got his case in front of a judge, not only did he lose, but the judge ordered him to pay the legal bills of the dry cleaner that he sued. Again, since he knew the rules, he filed for an appeal, but again, since the case was ridiculous and overblown, the appeal was denied.

The only way that the tort reform argument that the “system is broken” would be proven true is if Judge Pearson had actually won. He did not. And since the judge that heard the original case ruled that the defendants legal bills must be paid for, the family that owned the dry cleaning service will be reimbursed for the amount of money that they had to pay their lawyers. And on top of that, Judge Pearson was released from his position. If that isn’t a sign that the system works, it’s hard to say what would.

Predictably, tort reform groups jumped on this case and milked it for all the publicity they could get. Rare cases like these are, after all, the reason that these organizations get up in the morning. By stoking public outrage (which in Roy Pearson’s case was completely justifiable,) groups like the ATRA hope to gain support for their ideas, which almost always involve restrictions to the access of everyday people to our court system, or artificial limits to the amount of damages that they can receive, whether those damages could be considered reasonable or not.

Tort reform groups don’t just limit themselves to the cases that are overblown. They also underemphasize the damages received by real victims and distort the reasoning behind their lawsuits.

Probably one of the most pilloried legal cases in the past twenty years was the case of Stella Leibeck, who sued McDonalds over what people perceived to be the spilling of a mere cup of coffee, but in actuality was a lawsuit over third degree burns, a week’s stay in the hospital, skin grafts, and the refusal of McDonalds to even help with the medical bills. But as far as the tort reform groups are concerned, this was the story of a woman who simply spilled a little coffee and got millions of dollars for it.

If you take the tort reform people at their word, it almost makes sense. People spill coffee on themselves all the time and are none the worse for it. Some of you reading this might have spilled coffee on yourselves today, yet nobody is presenting you with checks for millions.

But the facts of the case don’t bear out this narrative. For one thing, McDonalds made it a practice to heat their coffee about twenty degrees hotter than anyone else. The water was hotter, and the hotplates that kept the pots heated were more powerful. If you think twenty degrees in temperature doesn’t matter, try dipping a toe in the bathtub when it is filled with eighty degree water, and then try it with one hundred degree water. You’ll notice the difference.

It should also be mentioned that the McDonald’s Corporation knew perfectly well that their coffee was too hot. There had been hundreds of cases of people being scalded by hot coffee that were in fact settled financially by McDonald’s prior to Ms. Leibeck.

Ms. Leibeck’s did not simply stain her sweatpants with spilled coffee. She dumped 8 ounces of 185 degree liquid directly into her lap, which was hot enough to cause third degree burns. The coffee from your coffee maker at home isn’t nearly that hot. Nor is the coffee at Starbucks, or 7-11, or Dunkin Donuts, or Caribou Coffee.

What is important to note is that Ms. Leibeck did not immediately file suit against McDonald’s. She simply asked them to pay for the medical bills, which were quite substantive considering that she had to endure skin grafts and stay in the hospital for a week. McDonald’s refused to even consider helping her. It was only after being faced with tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills that Ms. Leibeck contacted an attorney.

After hearing the facts of the case, as well as hearing that McDonald’s knew full well that their coffee was too hot, the jury sided with Ms. Leibeck. This decision was not left in the hands of some broken and unfair “system,” but rather by twelve people picked at random from the populace. In other words, people like you or me.

She didn’t even get that supposed “million dollars” that the “million dollar coffee case” was supposed to be about. An appellate judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. And bear in mind that the punitive damages in this case, or in fact any other case, do not exist to simply make people rich. If you could have asked Ms. Leibeck, she probably would have rather not have been burned at all. But the point of punitive damages is to penalize a corporation in the only way that matters to them, which is in their pocketbooks.

Remember, there had been hundreds of incidents of coffee scaldings at McDonald’s, and they had simply settled them. They did some arithmetic and decided that it would be cheaper to just cut a check and have people sign a waiver rather than get new hotplates and lower the temperature of their coffee. Hitting them with punitive damages was simply a legal way of letting McDonald’s know that that practice was not going to be acceptable anymore. And it worked. McDonald’s coffee isn’t brewed and heated at 180 degrees anymore, and scaldings are rare, if not nonexistent. And it cost McDonald’s less than one days worth of profit from coffee.

Is that “frivolous?” Is that an “outrage?” Is that “ridiculous?” Or is it a citizen using our court system to both address her personal damages and to help rectify a situation that was dangerous to others? But the tort reform organizations don’t mention that. They say “What about that crazy judge, huh? That’s almost as bad as the woman with the million dollar coffee. You know what we need? Damage caps. Damage caps and restrictions on lawsuits. That should fix everything.”

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