Did Liebeck deserve to win in the coffee case against McDonalds?

In the case Liebeck v. McDonalds, a 79 year old woman named Stella Liebeck was severely burned from a cup of hot coffee after spilling it in her waist area. Accompanying her was her grandson, Chris. When Chris pulled up to the curb and parked the car, Stella Libeck clumsily splilled the extremely hot cup of coffee while trying to put in cream. This sounds like something that Stella had control of the whole time, and it was her fault that she carelessly spilled. After McDonalds denied Libeck's demand of $20,000 for medical bills, which, however, was actually $10,000, she hired Texas Attorney Reed Morgan to take on McDonalds. So just how hot was this coffee that burned Ms. Liebeck?

After hearing McDonald's own quality assurance manager say that the coffee was usually 180-190 degrees, give and take a little, people started to question Mcdonalds. McDonalds then countered with the fact that people like their coffee hot and is requested by the consumers for the great tasting results, then questioned Ms. Liebeck', asking her if she really thought the 180 degree coffee was ready to drink. Since McDonalds lost the lawsuit against Stella Liebeck; McDonalds is now forced to warn their customers about the coffee temperature by labeling each individual cup with the words, caution hot.

In the end of it all Stella Liebeck was awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages based on its finding of reckless, malicious, or wanton conduct. When the jury heard that McDonalds income for coffee was around $1.34 million a day, they came to the conclusion that awarding Liebeck $2.7 million was reasonable. It went from Stella wanting $11,000 to her getting $2.7 million; in fact this trial will end all the other ones involving McDonald's coffee. What other ones are there? Before Stella's case, McDonalds had reported over 700 other people that have been victims of the extremely hot coffee. Many people look at this case as a frivolous lawsuit, meaning for Stella there was no chance of winning, but really she had a strong case that hundreds before her have tried to bring up. I believe that Stella Liebeck deserved to win this case, but any individual winning $2.7 million dollars has crossed the line, when really all she needed was around $11,000.