Large companies are often forced to pay big amounts of money in order to protect their brands. This is because people can often find a lot of reasons to sue a company, even if it’s for something that you wouldn’t typically associate as being the company’s fault. As such, it’s important for these large businesses to have legal teams across the world that specialize in many different facets of law.
Unfortunately for the companies, they don’t always come out winning.
In fact, many of them end up paying large sums of money, often to multiple different entities. As an example, we’re going to show a few cases where top companies were forced to pay massive amounts due to lawsuits against them.
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McDonald’s
79-year-old Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, N.M., sued McDonald’s after they served her a cup of coffee that was far too hot. The coffee caused severe burns and McDonald’s was forced to pay $200,000 in compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages. This amount was ultimately reduced by the trial judged and it’s unclear how much Liebeck ended up receiving.
Since then, McDonald’s has used a combination of tactics to avoid getting sued over the temperature of their coffee. They’ve both lowered the temperature of their drinks and also placed warnings on the cups to ensure that they’re not liable to be sued.
Skechers
Most of us know Skechers as a popular footwear giant, but did you know that they’re not always experts when it comes to designing shoes? Despite grossing over $900 million in sales, the company created a shoe in 2015 known as the GOwalk 3 that would actually be a massive health risk to its consumers. Due to an allegedly defective design, the sole of the shoe would actually create a suction effect which made the shoe stick to the floor whenever the user walked. This would then require a massive amount of force to pull the shoe up off the floor to get it unstuck. This could cause falls and all kinds of accidents, making them an incredibly dangerous pair of shoes.
It’s unclear how much the GOwalk 3 cost Skechers in lawsuits, but it could have been extremely bad for Skechers. There are an estimated 800,000 patients admitted to hospitals a year due to falls and this can total around $50 billion a year in medical costs. Falls can also be the main cause of problems such as traumatic brain injuries which can create enormous lawsuits.
Apple
Back in 2016, Nokia sued Apple for infringing on one of its patents. They claimed that Apple relied on its patents that were related to software, video coding, chipsets, display, user interface and antenna for years dating all the way back to when the iPhone 3GS was released. The company settled for an undisclosed amount in May 2017, but Nokiamob reported that Apple may have ended up paying around $2 billion.
Despite the lawsuit, the companies agreed to move on together and agreed to work together to develop new and lucrative technologies in the future.
