The McDonalds in question was super-heating their coffee to well over 180 degrees F.   While coffee should be brewed at 205 degrees (no restaurant does that), it is ridiculous to serve a liquid to customers that is over 170 degrees; 150 to 160 is ideal.

The McDonalds service manual suggested keeping coffee at 180 to 190 degrees so that it would taste 'fresher' for longer (of course, it doesn't taste "fresher", the heat just hides the taste).   Despite numerous complaints from customers who burned their tongues, or spilled coffee on their hands causing 1st and 2nd degree burns, McD's continued to serve unreasonably hot coffee as a cost savings measure: they brewed fewer cups per day because they didn't have to throw out as many half pots of coffee, and customers who drink super hot coffee generally don't want refills.

Enter Ms. Liebeck.  She bought the coffee at the drive-thru, and her nephew parked so that she could add cream and sugar.  When she pulled off the lid, she spilled almost the entire contents of the cup into her lap.   The coffee was so hot, that it caused 3rd degree burns to her genitalia, resulting in multiple skin grafts, two years of medical care, and permanent damage to her ability to urinate.

Now, certainly, if you spill hot coffee on your lap you expect it will hurt.  You do NOT expect it to result in hospitilazation and permanent physical damage.   

That is why the jury found that Ms. Liebeck was 20% responsible, since she should have been more careful with a hot liquid, but McD's was 80% responsible, since no reasonable person would expect that spilling hot coffee on your lap would result in the type of injuries she suffered.  (In other words, if Ms. Liebeck had reasonably suspected that spilling the coffee would result in serious physical harm, then she probably would have been more careful or just not bought the coffee in the first place.  But, since her physical harm was unforeseeable, her lack of due care was considered only a 20% contributing factor).  The punitive damages (which were significantly reduced by the Judge) were becaue McD's had substantial warnings that their coffee was too hot, but kept serving it that way to save a few dollars per day.

Now, I'm not trying to change your mind on whether Ms. Liebeck deserved to even have her medical bills paid, but I'm hoping you can see that reasonable people can disagree over whether she deserved some type of compensation.   If reasonable people can disagree, then hopefully you can see that the jury verdict was based on the facts of the case and was not some crazy miscarriage of justice.   Certainly you can disagree with the verdict, but that doesn't mean the verdict was unreasonable.