Remember the McDonald hot coffee lawsuit from back in the 90’s? Some batty old lady spilled coffee in her lap, got burned, went to the hospital, went to a lawyer, went to trial, went to jury, and won! The verdict was something like $160,000 for medical expenses and $2.7 million (!) in punitive damages. Punitive means punishment; McDonald’s was punished for serving hot coffee.

Yesterday, a California judge dismissed a case against Starbuck’s for misrepresenting the size of their iced drinks because they contain, in addition to the drink, ice. Apparently the legal system runs hot and cold when it comes to frivolous lawsuits.

But wait! Lawyers have long argued that the McDonald Coffee Case was far from frivolous. It was a wake up cup err, call to the damaging practice of big business putting profits over safety. And the public has the efforts of the tireless lawyer people to thank for seeing that those danger-mongers pay for their negligence. Yeah, right.

I’m sure lawyers serve some purpose. Unfortunately the very visible fruits of their labors have been left out to rot. Over the last several months I, and some hundreds of thousands others, have gotten e-mails about settlements reached that protected my rights and punished companies that have taken advantage of me. I got about $12 from Barnes and Noble because somebody claimed they overcharged for e-books or some such thing. I can get $5 from Angie’s List because they might have taken money for ads from service providers, and I got two free tickets for one or several concerts that have no available seats from Ticketmaster for them being Ticketmaster. My “damages” come to a whopping not quite twenty bucks.

I would thank the lawyers who worked so diligently to get me my double sawbuck. I worked hard for my money and I didn’t appreciate those big, bad companies taking advantage of me. Of course it’s only right that they get some of the windfall. As near as I’ve been able to figure, those lawyers who worked on just these three cases made about $281 million.

I don’t know about you but if I ever figure out how to use that Ticketmaster free ticket voucher and can actually score two free tickets to something, I’m bringing a lawyer!

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?