Probably took her that long to find an attorney who would take the case. Statute of limitations must be three years and they filed right before it was to expire.
That's standard procedure. You do that because it creates the coldest evidence trail possible and makes it easier for you to load the system with evidence that you have and have been keeping that points to your favour, whilst the railroad has likely forgot all about it ever happening.
As for this, most ridiculous law suits have some basis that makes sense in some direction or other. The favourite ridiculous lawsuit is that McDonalds suit about spilled coffee, a law suit that had a lot more grounds for the suit then most. It was a very solid case, with a lot of reckless endangerment on the part of McDonalds. To sum it up, MickeyDs had been serving coffee on average some 30-40° hotter then anyone else for a variety of reasons. They had received notice of injury and problem out the wazoo on their coffee being too hot- some 260 complaints if I remember correctly.
If the woman had spilled coffee on her self and crashed the car- she didn't - MickeyD's woulda been off the hook. But that wasn't what happened. The woman spilled it- in a parking lot - and got third degree burns. Her driving with coffee in her lap was negligent, and nobody, not even that plaintiff, denied that. HOWEVER, MickeyD's contributory negligence because of the coffee temperature issue, the sheer number of serious complaints about the issue, regulatory advisories about the issue, and the fact that the injury was purely and solely caused by that coffee being too hot (normally, coffee being spilled on the lap is a YOWCH! not a third degree burn- the event was the plaintiffs fault, the injury the coffee's) meant that the burden of MickeyD's contributory negligence completely obliterated the plaintiffs on negligence.
