McDonalds Hot Coffee

Hot Coffee Documentary

1) What is ATRA? Who is apart of it? What is there objective?

ATRA stands for the American Tort Reform Association. It is formed from several hundreds of businesses, associations, and corporations (300+ large companies). According to the documentary, the objective of ATRA is they are looking to implement tort reform that would limit the liability of its members. They try to position themselves as “citizens against lawsuit abuse” but are actually carefully orchestrated campaigns from Washington Lobbyists and Corporations who fund them. In my opinion, they are lobbyists that want to change our civil justice system and limit its effectiveness for the “little guy”, by stacking the cards in their favor. This is accomplished by pushing their agenda of tort reform and legislation and positioning themselves as trying to increase fairness.

2) Who is the US Chamber of Commerce and what do they represent?

The documentary provided me a better understanding of what they are and I learned they are not a part of the government. It is a membership organization of businesses and is the nation’s largest lobbying group. It does not disclose who its funders are but some of its board members run the largest and most influential corporations in the country. A lot of big time executives are involved with the organization.

The documentary stated the Chamber of Commerce is a heavy hitting lobby group, with deep pockets. They utilize their deep pockets to influence all sorts of issues and campaigns, the documentary showed how they utilize money to influence who is elected to the courts. They went over the situation Justice Diaz encountered in Mississippi. In which he was targeted by the COC with attack advertisements and they aggressively funded his competitor for the Supreme Court Justice seat. This was in an effort to get pro-business judges (a lot of them republican) elected that would stack the courts in their favors, therefore facing less unfavorable outcomes. This strategy was used because if they weren’t winning with the current Judges in place, why not try changing the Judge. It also helped to provide significant funds to a Judges campaign, if they win, they may not be fully impartial during the next case.

3) Lastly, what did you think of the