That's not exactly what happened.
The real story is that for years McDonalds customers had been injured by their too-hot coffee. Coffee that they served at 180-190 degrees F. Why so hot? Because it takes longer for someone to drink, meaning fewer free refills. Mrs. Liebeck was the passenger in a drive-thru, and when she attempted to remove the lid to add cream/sugar, the drink spilled. Her fault? Sure. But she was handed a dangerously hot cup of liquid which was known to McDonalds (through the admission and boasting of their QC manager) to be capable of severe injury. She had no expectation that she would be handling a near-boiling liquid. McDonald could also reasonably forsee customers wanting/needing to remove the lid to add other items to it.
The coffee was so hot, she required skin grafts over 6% of her body. Up to 16% of her body was burned by the liquid. She spent 2 years going through painful medical care and procedures as a result of McDonalds trying to serve a couple less cups of coffee each day. The jury awarded her $200k in medical and compensatory damages. The $2.7 million additional was punitive damages against McDonalds due to their knowing, admitting, and boasting about just how dangerous their actions were. The award was reduced by 20% - the percentage the jury felt that Mrs. Liebeck was liable for the situation. 80% of the liability went to McDonalds.
I dunno, in my world I'm rather pleased that a company who knew, and admitted that they knew, that their approach to reducing costs was injuring people - often severely - had to pay a significant price as a result. The campaign to smear her during and since is nothing more than large companies trying to disuade people from holding them accountable for their actions which can harm the public. Same way people get called 'conspiracy theorists' for showing any skepticism toward certain topics.
