This comic appeared on January 5, 2010 in “The Flying McCoys.”
It’s 2010 yet eighteen years after a 79-year-old Stella Liebeck spilled coffee on herself in an McDonald’s parking lot in Alberquerque, NM, her infamous lawsuit still appears to be a joke. Got to say, seeing this makes me that more excited to debut Hot Coffee next year. The documentary film will reveal what really happened to Stella while exploring how and why this case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. Working on this film as an associate producer has opened my eyes in a lot of different ways and I can’t wait to see the discussion it will provoke among audiences in 2011.
Okay, this is a bit geeky of me to post, but also very exciting -my very first entry on IMDb!
I’ve been working so hard this year on various TV shows and documentary films, including Hot Coffee and another one called Pretty Old. I was wondering when this was going to show up and it finally did! Yeah!
Al Franken questioning a Halliburton/KBR attorney after the vote on his recent amendment prohibiting government contracts from being issued to companies that prevent their employees from suing their employers if they have been raped or assaulted at work.
Al still needs money to pay for that stupid recount. Get to it. (via Purns, joshruben)
I’m currently associate producing Hot Coffee, a soon-to-be feature documentary film that addresses this very issue of public access to the courts - something I’ve always believed was a fundamental right, but soon learned can just as easily be manipulated and signed away.
I wrote the following about this case, on our film’s blog but to recap the case Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is addressing involves a young women named Jamie Leigh Jones, an ex KBR/Halliburton employee who was drugged and brutally gang-raped by seven Halliburton contractors in Iraq in 2005.
However, Jamie, like many young 20-year-old-girls before her, did not read the fine print of her employee contract with KBR/Halliburton, which contained a clause that waived her rights to a jury trial if in the event criminal misconduct was committed. Private arbitration was her only option, which protected KBR/Halliburton from a potentially very public and expensive lawsuit, and with the company choosing the arbitrator.
To this day, Jones has waited more than four years for her day in court. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) estimated that at least 30 million workers have unknowingly signed employee contracts and waived their constitutional rights to have their civil rights claims resolved by a jury.
Our film crew interviewed Sen. Franken who is sponsoring an amendment to the arbitration act as well as Republican Congressman Ted Poe, who was instrumental in getting Jones out of Iraq. In addition, we took to the street to ask people about their understanding of mandatory arbitration.
As expected, the results were alarming.
Source: purns
Still from Pretty Old, the documentary film I’m producing. These ladies are inspirational in so many ways!
