Giant corporations would have us believe they're just like any other business. Over 90 percent of business enterprises are small. Their owners live in the communities their businesses serve. These kinds of businesses enrich the civic life of their communities. Small businesses are our engines of innovation and job creation.
Republicans think the tale symbolizes a legal system gone berserk.
I think the moral of that story is quite different. McDonalds, a planetary corporation with tens of thousands of branches, served an 81 year old woman coffee heated to 180-190 degree, far above the 140 degrees needed to make a perfectly good cup. She was hospitalized for 8 days and underwent skin graft operations for third degree burns. The jury was told that some 700 patrons over the past 10 years had burned themselves with this super heated coffee. Only after the jury verdict did fast food chains re-evaluate their practice of unnecessarily subjecting patrons to this potential injury.