McDonald's sells itself as a happy place, but its history reads more like a legal thriller. Even the origin story is darker than the ads let on: the man known as McDonald's founder ran the real McDonald brothers out of business by opening a McDonald's across the street from their original restaurant. Here are three more stories that sound made up, and every one of them is true.
1. What really happened in the hot coffee lawsuit
McDonald's had been warned hundreds of times. Before Stella Liebeck was ever burned, more than 700 people had reported being scalded by McDonald's coffee, including children. The company kept serving it at 180 to 190 degrees anyway, 30 to 40 degrees hotter than coffee from most other restaurants.
In 1992, the 79-year-old was sitting in her grandson's car in Albuquerque when the coffee spilled into her lap. She was burned over 16% of her body, with third-degree burns on her thighs, groin and buttocks. She spent eight days in the hospital and needed skin grafts.
She asked McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her medical bills. McDonald's offered $800. A jury later awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages, roughly two days of McDonald's coffee sales. A judge cut that amount and the two sides settled privately, but by then the case was already a national punchline.
2. The Monopoly game you could never win
For 12 years, the biggest prizes in McDonald's Monopoly were handed out in secret. Jerome Jacobson, an ex-cop in charge of security for the company that ran the game, was stealing the winning pieces himself.
He smuggled them in a specially made vest and slipped them to friends, family and middlemen, who sold them to "winners" willing to kick back part of the prize. In total, more than $24 million in prizes went to people in on the scheme.
It unraveled after an anonymous tip to the FBI in 2000. Agents posed as McDonald's staff to film one fake $1 million winner celebrating, and he was arrested instead of paid. About 50 people were convicted, and Jacobson was sentenced to 37 months in prison.
3. The protest group McDonald's filled with spies
In the late 1980s, a tiny London activist group was handing out leaflets attacking McDonald's. McDonald's responded by hiring two private detective firms to infiltrate it, sending in at least seven undercover agents.
Neither firm knew about the other. At some meetings there were as many spies as real activists, and the spies were filing reports on each other. One undercover detective had an affair with one of the group's key activists, and agents took letters and even broke into the group's office.
Then came the twist. Three of the spies admitted under oath that they had handed out the very leaflets McDonald's was suing over. The libel case that followed became the longest trial in English history.
