There’s that old story that we all think we know so well: the woman who successfully sued McDonald’s for serving her coffee that was too hot. Her actions, which got a jury to rule in her favour to the tune of $2.7M seemed to be a shining example of a “frivolous lawsuit” that was making a mockery of the American legal system.

Well gang, turns out the story wasn’t that frivolous after all…but oddly it got waved as a flag of everything America needed to change about its courts. HOT COFFEE is a documentary that wants to set the record straight.

I’m one of those who has spent almost twenty years shaking his head at this little germ of pop culture. How was it possible that someone could successfully sue a chain for making their coffee too hot? How could a court of law say that clumsiness while driving was an accident worthy of punitive damages? Well right off the hop, HOT COFFEE wants to challenge our perceptions, and it does it by laying out the facts of the case…facts that next to nobody remembers (including me).

Understanding these details makes you rethink every snide remark ever made about the situation, and actually nudges you over to the side of the plaintiff – 79-year-old Stella Liebeck. But the coffee is just the drug they feed you. The true intention of HOT COFFEE is to make Americans think about their civil justice system, and whether the changes they’ve been convinced to vote for are a good idea.

While the film can get a tad bogged down in “legalese” at times, it’s an amazing look at what tort reform has done to the American legal system. At first it will shock viewers and anger them at how ‘the man’ has rigged the deck, until American viewers realize that they themselves rigged the deck for the man by voting through various proposals and endorsing candidates that pushed for them.

After the film was over, I ran into an American friend in the audience who mused “I can’t believe a theatre full of Canadians were so engaged by a film about American tort reform”. Fair point! Speaking for myself, I have to give director Susan Saladoff credit for turning a legal story into a human story. The way HOT COFFEE builds itself upon the tales of four families screwed over by a system that is supposed to protect them is what gives this movie its heart.

It’s not enough to anger an audience by pointing out that big business is out to get them. What HOT COFFEE understands is that it’s empathy that wins a crowd, and by bringing us closer to the unwitting victims of the system the film stokes our empathy, channels our anger, and perhaps does away with the spilled coffee jokes once and for all.

HOT COFFEE plays Hot Docs once more: Thursday May 5th – 12:30pm at The Lightbox