No wonder their drinks cost so much – Starbucks has to pay $300,000 for spilling hot coffee on a Manhattan woman’s foot.
A jury granted Alice Griffin the venti-sized award after she testified that injuries from the spill have left her unable to wear certain kind of shoes and boots.
“There are shoes I liked [that] I owned I just don’t wear . . . because of the discomfort,” Griffin testified. And while she can still use the treadmill at her gym, she can no longer enjoy her hobby of ballet dancing.
The scalding happened in February 2004, when Griffin, a lawyer working a temp job, said she stopped in at the Starbucks at West 49th Street and Seventh Avenue for her daily coffee – “decaf and a large. The largest they have.”
That morning, instead of placing her joe down on the counter, the barista pushed it towards her, knocking the loose-lidded cup over and sending it spilling towards the ground – and Griffin’s foot, she testified.
“I shrieked, ‘Ow,’ ” Griffin said. She said she looked down and saw her left foot was “steaming.”
She peeled off her sneaker because the estimated 200-degree liquid was still seeping through her sock and pantyhose and scalding the top of her foot.
“She was literally hopping around the store in pain, and nobody came to help her or apologized,” said her lawyer, Barney Anderson.
The clumsy employee gave Griffin a replacement cup, and she went on to work – but an hour later, she headed to the hospital.
Medical records show she had a second-degree burn that was two inches long. Griffin, 42, said the skin healed in a few weeks, but the burn left permanent nerve damage and she feels “numbness” and “tingling” every day.
The jury awarded her $300,000 for pain and suffering and $1,000 in medical fees this past March.
Starbucks argued their award should be tossed for lack of evidence, but in a decision made public yesterday, Justice Emily Jane Goodman disagreed.
Goodman ordered a hearing next month on the company’s argument that the award is “excessive,” an argument with which she is “inclined to agree.” A rep for Starbucks didn’t return a call. Griffin’s other lawyer, Martin Weiser, maintained the award was “fair.”
But Griffin’s verdict is a hill of beans compared to the country’s most infamous coffee scalding, a New Mexico woman who was awarded $2.9 million after burning herself in 1992 when she put a piping hot cup of McDonald’s coffee between her legs while she was driving.
The verdict was later reduced to $480,000.
Griffin refused comment as she darted out of her Greenwich Village apartment to go grocery shopping – wearing a pair of Champion sneakers.
Additional reporting by Jana Winter and Perry Chiaramonte