Coffee is HOT, you moron!

[Cinnamon_Girl]

I just gotta get this out of an otherwise funny thread. My apologies to Rayne Man for the unfortunate hijack.

@Jervoise

Let’s turn it around. Would you sell a woman a boiling kettle if you knew she was about to balance it on her lap? Would you sell her the kettle if you knew over 700 people had already complained to you that your kettles had burned them? Would you sell her the kettle if you knew some of these people had suffered third degree burns requiring skin grafts and hospitalisation?

(That is, if we pretend for a moment that coffee is served at boiling point, rather than prepared at boiling point–which was not the case, other than at MacDonald’s.)

Yes, the plaintiff was careless. That’s why damages were reduced by 20 per cent to take account of her contributory negligence. But it doesn’t take away the fact that MacDonald’s was also negligent and should never have been in the situation of selling a dangerous product to consumers after being told time and time again just how dangerous it was.

But that’s about all I have to say about that.

I would really like to know when it became my job to determine if you were brilliant enough to handle the hot coffee I just served you. Seriously, if I refused to sell you a cup of coffee because you just let the door strike you on the nose as you forgot to open it all the way before stepping through, you’d be pitting me for not just giving you what you sashayed so gracefully in for.

Really, I’m only the arbiter of your common sense (or lack thereof) after the fact. If you lack it, it’s your responsibility not to leave the safety of your bubble.

So, to answer your question: would I sell a woman a boiling kettle if you knew she was about to balance it on her lap?
Um, yeah, if I’m paid to sell boiling kettles.

Do I need to recommend that you don’t place that boiling kettle on your lap lest you get horribly burned?
Um, no. Your mama raised you, not me. If you didn’t catch that piece of wisdom, ain’t no way I can get you through life unscathed.

Would I continue to sell boiling kettles if I knew over 700 people had already complained that my kettles burned them?
You betcha if it was earning me a living. I might think that it’s a good thing the lot survived the boiling kettle disaster and take solace in the fact that they’ll never put a boiling kettle in their laps again. Maybe they’ll even teach their kids. Yay for humanity!

You like to think that McD’s was being irresponsible in selling a defective product. Hey, hot coffee is not defective, Einstein. It’s supposed to be that way. It’s no longer palatable to most when it’s cold. That’s why it’s served hot. Just like food. Too hot for you, maybe? Then ask for ice cubes in it. Cools it down fast.

You don’t like Colophon’s analogy? How about a simpler one?

When I get fries from McDonalds I consider myself lucky if they’re piping hot. It means they’re fresh. If they let them sit there under the stupid lamps, the fat congeals and they’re nasty. Yeah, I’ve burned my mouth about a hundred times on the damn things. Mostly, I just curse at myself and then go “ooooh fresh fries! Yum!” I don’t expect McD’s to warn me the fries are hot. They’re cooked at extremely hot temperatures that my tongue can’t handle. It stands to reason. It’s my own damn fault if I get burned due to my impatience. Even dimwits are responsible for their own behavior.

@Larry Mudd

It is about the flavour. At 190 degrees, you can’t tell it’s swill. You can’t really taste it at all. McDonald’s prime motive for maintaining that temperature was economic – if they served it at the usual temperature, they’d have to use a better class of bean.

WTF? This is just about the stupidest thing I’ve heard yet. McDonald’s does not cover up its choice of bean with the temperature of the coffee! Crap coffee is crap at any temperature but even more so at colder temps. Great coffee is not so great at colder temps. Science 101: Cooling is a natural tendency for something that no longer heated.

Coffee purveyors DO NOT purposely cool down their coffee to make it taste better. Even the best coffee does not taste its best after sitting around oxidizing. The flavor molecules begin to dissipate the moment its brewed thereby reducing its quality. If anything, McD’s heats their coffee so they don’t have to brew it as often. And, once again, because coffee is normally served HOT! Heating their coffee does make it worse, since you ruin food by continuing to cook something (even at lower temps) after it’s done cooking (or brewing). But their primary motive for ruining their coffee is covering up lousy flavor to begin with is seriously in tin foil hat land.

[Silver_Fire]

@Cinnamon Girl

I don’t expect McD’s to warn me the fries are hot.

Actually, some kid in the window once said, after handing my bag to me, “Careful, the fries are hot.” To which I replied, “HAHAHA! No kidding? Um, aren’t they supposed to be?” And then I ranted to my passenger about how dreadfully sad it is that they have to warn their customers that the fries are hot, because we’re all just so used to cold, nasty fries.

I hate McDonalds.

[Larry_Mudd]

@Cinnamon Girl

This is just about the stupidest thing I’ve heard yet. McDonald’s does not cover up its choice of bean with the temperature of the coffee! Crap coffee is crap at any temperature but even more so at colder temps.

Not anymore, they don’t. Crap coffee can be tasted at 165 degrees. At 185 degrees, it can be Folgers’ instant crystals, three-hour-old burnt crap, chicory and beetroot, or the very best arabica. It doesn’t matter. You can’t fucking taste it.

Seriously, do you remember pre-suit Micky’s coffee? If you drink your coffee black, you’ll remember that it didn’t taste like coffee. It tasted like burning. (If you’re a cake-maker, it probably doesn’t matter what the coffee tasted like, even after the adulterants brought it down to non-scalding temperatures.) It was simply too hot to taste. There was a sweet spot there, after it cooled enough to be sipped without pain, where it tasted like mediocre coffee. Then it rapidly began to taste like nothing so much as stale, burnt ass.

Then this celebrated coot burned her cooter, and voilà, some many months later, coffee started coming across the counter at normal temperature, and by god, even when it had cooled it tasted no worse than cold coffee should.

Far from being tin-foil-hattery, it’s common knowledge that high, high temperatures quickly disable your taste buds’ ability to detect “bitter,” Say you’re a huge corporation, pushing millions of cups of coffee per day. You know people don’t like bitter coffee. You can get low quality, bitter-tasting beans on the cheap, and spend a trivial amount of extra energy superheating it to the point that people can’t tell it’s bitter, or you can spend a not-so-trivial amount buying mellower beans. Whatchagonnado? Serving the swill too hot to taste is the most efficient way to serve the bottom line. It’s not so much a conspiracy theory as common mercenary sense.

The flavor molecules begin to dissipate the moment its brewed thereby reducing its quality. If anything, McD’s heats their coffee so they don’t have to brew it as often. And, once again, because coffee is normally served HOT! Heating their coffee does make it worse, since you ruin food by continuing to cook something (even at lower temps) after it’s done cooking (or brewing).

Not sure what you’re trying to say there. Point one: At 190°, it doesn’t matter what “flavour molecules” are present. You aren’t going to taste them. Point two: Caffeol, the wondrous substance which imparts flavour to coffee, is an extremely volatile oil, and keeping coffee near the boiling point only expedites its degradation. You’ve only got about a half-hour at best before the flavour’s out the window, and much less than that if it’s practically boiling in the carafe. Of course, if you can suck it down before it cools fifteen degrees, it doesn’t matter how much the taste has degraded, because it only tastes “hot.”

[Apos]

Do people STILL not understand this case?

The woman who spilled the coffee did not experience what people normally experience when you spill hot coffee on yourself. She had to have skin grafts to repair her legs. And why? Because McDonalds was heating their coffee from over 20 to 40 degrees more than almost anywhere else heats coffee: hot enough to literally melt flesh within seconds. This is not, NOT what anyone expects from a “hot” cup of coffee. They expect a potential spill to hurt and to suck and maybe to get first or even second degree burns and hence treat the coffee with extreme care. But they are not accustomed to having to treat the coffee as if it were volatile nitroglyercin. In short, the coffee McDonalds was selling was a radically different sort of “hot” than anyone had any knowledge of: and they refused to inform customers about this even after incident after incident where this merely “hot” coffee peeled the flesh off of people.

And to refresh people’s addled memories, here’s some things that McDonalds itself admitted to:

-Witnesses for McDonald’s admitted in court that consumers are unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at the McDonald’s required temperature

-McDonald’s admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not;

-McDonald’s witnesses testified that it did not intend to turn down the heat – As one witness put it: “No, there is no current plan to change the procedure that we’re using in that regard right now;”

-McDonald’s admitted that its coffee is “not fit for consumption” when sold because it causes severe scalds if spilled or drunk;

http://www.centerjd.org/free/mythbusters-free/MB_mcdonalds.htm

There’s burns, and then there’s BURNS. The jury award in the coffee case was a no-brainer. McDonalds knowingly breached implied warranty: a legal concept they knew perfectly well, when it sold coffee that was deliberately engineered to be up to 40 degrees hotter than anyone is used to coffee being. Had they lowered the temperature even TEN degrees, most of the major scald burns caused could have been completely avoided.

The basic elements of the case were sound: did McDonalds know that their product was dangerous, and far MORE dangerous than similar products in the same market under the implied warranty? Yes. Did they know that consumers were unaware of the extra danger, thinking that the coffee they were getting was the sort that every other place sold and that they make themselves? Yes. Did they inform anyone of this difference? No.

End of story.

[Cinnamon_Girl]

@Larry Mudd

Not anymore, they don’t. Crap coffee can be tasted at 165 degrees. At 185 degrees, it can be Folgers’ instant crystals, three-hour-old burnt crap, chicory and beetroot, or the very best arabica. It doesn’t matter. You can’t fucking taste it.

Maybe you can’t. I can. Since I drink hot coffee daily immediately after it’s brewed at around 200 degrees, my mouth has acclimated to the temperature. And I can tell you right off the bat if it’s an Indonesian, Latin American or African (they are distinctly different in flavor (which difference is, granted, more distinctive as lower temps). You can taste hot things if your mouth is used to hot things. Yes, you can damage your taste receptors in your mouth with high heat. But as with many things, the body compensates when it needs to. Incidently, your sense of smell is more sensitive than your taste buds and significantly affects actual tasting. Now, your experience may be accurate, but so’s mine and it contradicts yours. Where does that leave us?

Seriously, do you remember pre-suit Micky’s coffee? If you drink your coffee black, you’ll remember that it didn’t taste like coffee. It tasted like burning. (If you’re a cake-maker, it probably doesn’t matter what the coffee tasted like, even after the adulterants brought it down to non-scalding temperatures.) It was simply too hot to taste. There was a sweet spot there, after it cooled enough to be sipped without pain, where it tasted like mediocre coffee. Then it rapidly began to taste like nothing so much as stale, burnt ass.

Yeah, I remember when Mickey D’s actually served hot coffee. It was very hot and it tasted like burnt ass (hey, we agree on something). Now, it’s served lukewarm at best and it still tastes like ass (IMNSHO, of course). Most people reached your “sweet spot” by adding creamer which would have been hard to accomplish if they added it to already cool coffee. Some of my customers ask for a couple of ice cubes in theirs to reach their “sweet spot” instead of waiting while the flavor disintegrates. Others think the “sweet spot” means right out of the brew basket. Ahem, it’s a matter taste (preference), is it not?

Then this celebrated coot burned her cooter, and voilà, some many months later, coffee started coming across the counter at normal temperature, and by god, even when it had cooled it tasted no worse than cold coffee should.

Normal to you. Not normal to everybody. What is normal anyway? The temp you brew it at? The temp you prefer it when you drink it? The temp of the room?

Far from being tin-foil-hattery, it’s common knowledge that high, high temperatures quickly disable your taste buds’ ability to detect “bitter,”

Yes, we covered that. High temps do not disable your sense of smell which is a big part of tasting. You can taste, but you may be overwhelmed by the heat. Brain say, “Whoa. Too hot!” Brain doesn’t care about flavor. My brain recognizes temps my body is accustomed to and chills, so to speak. Same with my hands. I touch hot stuff all day. You’d wince, but I don’t. Wish I had something other than experience to back this up, but I can’t find any data at the moment.

Say you’re a huge corporation, pushing millions of cups of coffee per day. You know people don’t like bitter coffee. You can get low quality, bitter-tasting beans on the cheap, and spend a trivial amount of extra energy superheating it to the point that people can’t tell it’s bitter, or you can spend a not-so-trivial amount buying mellower beans. Whatchagonnado? Serving the swill too hot to taste is the most efficient way to serve the bottom line. It’s not so much a conspiracy theory as common mercenary sense.

Well, I happen to work for a corporation that pushes millions of cups of coffee per day. Here’s the inside dope. Your coffee isn’t superheated to alleviate bitterness. It’s brewed at the proper temperature to release the optimum flavor in the coffee grind which happens to be just shy of boiling (190ish-205 degrees). If you’re lucky, your coffee is stored in an insulated urn that retains as much of original heat as possible and is protected from excessive exposure to oxygen. And served to you within at least a couple of hours of brewing. The sooner, the better. If you’re not as selective, your coffee is stored in a glass container open to air and resting on a burner which maintains the heat of the coffee for as long as the burner is on, essentially continuing to cook the coffee. It could be served to you at the same temperature an hour after it was brewed or five. Of course, five hour old coffee is naturally going to suck if its been exposed to low level heat and air. Even if it’s Jamaica Blue Mountain. So what’s the bottom line? Sell cheap coffee fresh or expensive coffee fresh. But don’t fuck with the temperature if you want to keep selling coffee that people don’t choke on. Let the people do their own temperature-fucking.

And if some old bag wants to put a cup of hot coffee in her lap, don’t pay her off for being an idiot. Do offer to call 911 and pray she never returns.

Not sure what you’re trying to say there. Point one: At 190°, it doesn’t matter what “flavour molecules” are present. You aren’t going to taste them. Point two: Caffeol, the wondrous substance which imparts flavour to coffee, is an extremely volatile oil, and keeping coffee near the boiling point only expedites its degradation. You’ve only got about a half-hour at best before the flavour’s out the window, and much less than that if it’s practically boiling in the carafe. Of course, if you can suck it down before it cools fifteen degrees, it doesn’t matter how much the taste has degraded, because it only tastes “hot.”
[/QUOTE]

[Cinnamon_Girl]

Damn it, I meant to hit preview! :smack:

@Larry Mudd

Not sure what you’re trying to say there. Point one: At 190°, it doesn’t matter what “flavour molecules” are present. You aren’t going to taste them. Point two: Caffeol, the wondrous substance which imparts flavour to coffee, is an extremely volatile oil, and keeping coffee near the boiling point only expedites its degradation. You’ve only got about a half-hour at best before the flavour’s out the window, and much less than that if it’s practically boiling in the carafe. Of course, if you can suck it down before it cools fifteen degrees, it doesn’t matter how much the taste has degraded, because it only tastes “hot.”

Point one: 190° is the lower edge of proper brewing temperature. Point two: If you want to drink your coffee sooner, add something to cool it down yourself if 190 is too hot. Ice cubes really have no detectable flavor whatsoever in coffee. Especially if your coffee provider filters their water which they’d BETTER be doing if they’re brewing coffee! Point three: you do not experience taste and temperature exactly the same as everyone else. But you can more effectively lower the temperature than raise the temperature of your coffee while preserving flavor. Get it?

[Jervoise]

Three years on the boards and finally I’m pitted for the MacDonald’s coffee case. How ignominous.

As I said in the linked thread, I really don’t have anything more to add. I’d only be repeating myself or what Apos has posted in this thread. Enough words have already been spoken about the case in question and no one is going to change their minds at this point.

Have fun, Cinnamon Girl. If you want to convince anyone, I’d lay off the insult and tone down the shrill.

[Guinastasia]

Cinnamon Girl, are you really so stupid? I highly doubt you actually drink your coffee that fucking hot.

The woman’s labia fused together! Jesus Christ, all she wanted was compensation for her medical bills.

[Cinnamon_Girl]

@Apos

Do people STILL not understand this case?

No. You obviously don’t.

The woman who spilled the coffee did not experience what people normally experience when you spill hot coffee on yourself. She had to have skin grafts to repair her legs.

You failed to mention what others did in the previous thread. She received third-degree burns by prolonged contact with the hot liquid. I have spilled 200 degree coffee on myself and did not get a third-degree burn because it was off me in a matter of seconds. This woman had hot coffee soaked into her clothing and in her car unable to remove the heat from her skin. Why the hell didn’t she sue the car manufacturer? They didn’t tell her that her lap wasn’t a cup holder.

It would be like suing a car manufacturer for crashing a moving vehicle you’re operating while you’re trying to add cream and sugar to your coffee. It’s not their fault you’re not using the product in the proscribed manner! McDonald’s never intended their coffee to be worn! Maybe it would have been a better policy to not sell coffee through the drive-through, but even that seems ridiculous. It’s self-evident and it’s not their business to worry about you multi-tasking with dangerous objects behind the wheel of a car.

And why? Because McDonalds was heating their coffee from over 20 to 40 degrees more than almost anywhere else heats coffee: hot enough to literally melt flesh within seconds. This is not, NOT what anyone expects from a “hot” cup of coffee. They expect a potential spill to hurt and to suck and maybe to get first or even second degree burns and hence treat the coffee with extreme care. But they are not accustomed to having to treat the coffee as if it were volatile nitroglyercin. In short, the coffee McDonalds was selling was a radically different sort of “hot” than anyone had any knowledge of: and they refused to inform customers about this even after incident after incident where this merely “hot” coffee peeled the flesh off of people.

And, for the love of god, they weren’t overheating their coffee. They just didn’t underheat it. From your own link:

By corporate specifications, McDonald’s sells its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit;

This is not excessive or radically different! It’s even lower than the recommended brewing temp acknowledged by major specialty coffee purveyors. I do agree that continuing to heat the coffee to maintain this temperature is wrong, but only because it damages the coffee. The policy sucked. It should have been “brew it at this temp.” As for serving it, even Bunn (brewing equipment manufacturer) notes that serving temperature should be between 155-185 degrees. According to the expert testimony in that case, even that temperature can scald in 60 seconds.

This attitude is totally reactionary as many have said. The product has inherent dangers and should be treated as such. Putting it in your lap in a drive-through is not the proper response for handling potentially harmful product. But it’s inherent harm does not the product is defective. And it’s mishandling is not McDonald’s fault.

And to refresh people’s addled memories, here’s some things that McDonalds itself admitted to:

-Witnesses for McDonald’s admitted in court that consumers are unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at the McDonald’s required temperature

-McDonald’s admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not;

-McDonald’s witnesses testified that it did not intend to turn down the heat – As one witness put it: “No, there is no current plan to change the procedure that we’re using in that regard right now;”

-McDonald’s admitted that its coffee is “not fit for consumption” when sold because it causes severe scalds if spilled or drunk;

http://www.centerjd.org/free/mythbusters-free/MB_mcdonalds.htm

There’s burns, and then there’s BURNS. The jury award in the coffee case was a no-brainer. McDonalds knowingly breached implied warranty: a legal concept they knew perfectly well, when it sold coffee that was deliberately engineered to be up to 40 degrees hotter than anyone is used to coffee being. Had they lowered the temperature even TEN degrees, most of the major scald burns caused could have been completely avoided.

The basic elements of the case were sound: did McDonalds know that their product was dangerous, and far MORE dangerous than similar products in the same market under the implied warranty? Yes. Did they know that consumers were unaware of the extra danger, thinking that the coffee they were getting was the sort that every other place sold and that they make themselves? Yes. Did they inform anyone of this difference? No.

End of story.

This case stands as a blasphemy on common sense. To me, it represents all that is wrong in civil litigation.

[Cinnamon_Girl]

@Jervoise

Have fun, Cinnamon Girl. If you want to convince anyone, I’d lay off the insult and tone down the shrill.

It is the Pit, isn’t it? How could I possibly convince anyone that lacks common sense?

@Guinastasia

Cinnamon Girl, are you really so stupid? I highly doubt you actually drink your coffee that fucking hot.

Well, I don’t actually measure the temp in my cup, but I see the temp on the digital display on the brewer. I’m sure it’s probably cooled by a few degrees from the urn to my cup, but yup, pretty much. Oh, and at that temp, I’m generally slurping the coffee. For one, mixing with air lowers the temp in my mouth making it more tolerable, and two, it aids in tasting as you are actually inhaling the vapors in the process. This is stupid?

[Larry_Mudd]

@Cinnamon Girl

Point one: 190° is the lower edge of proper brewing temperature.

You misunderstand the chemistry. 190° is the correct brewing temperature because that’s the ideal temperature for liberating caffeol from the grounds. If you brew at a lower temperature, you’ll get a higher fraction of bitter compounds. This is about getting the good stuff in solution.

After the coffee is brewed, there is no advantage in keeping it in an open carafe at a constant 190°. Caffeol is very volatile compared to water. Its boiling point is around 165°. Keeping fresh coffee in a sealed thermos is a good way to keep it hot and tasty. Keeping it on a hotplate, maintaining a constant 190°, as McDonald’s did, does not in any way maintain flavour – on the contrary, it rapidly boils off the caffeol. The only advantage that constantly heating the coffee to 190° after it was brewed offered was that it made it too hot to taste.

If serving hot-plate warmed coffee at 190° made for a better cup of coffee, then everyone would do it. It’s not as though McDonald’s was the only place in town to get a proper cuppa.

Point two: If you want to drink your coffee sooner, add something to cool it down yourself if 190 is too hot.

No, you and I are in agreement about coffee and the appropriateness of its being served hot. I am mystified when people add water to cool it.

Judging by your post here, you’d think folks were saying that generally coffee is served too hot. Do you remember McDonald’s coffee in the eighties? Because that’s all we’re talking about here.

So what’s the bottom line? Sell cheap coffee fresh or expensive coffee fresh. But don’t fuck with the temperature if you want to keep selling coffee that people don’t choke on. Let the people do their own temperature-fucking.

Once again: The only people doing any temperature-fucking were McDonald’s. After the incident, they stopped selling superheated coffee. You seem to be reacting as if people are saying that a brewing temperature of 190° is too hot. No one is saying that. We’re talking about serving temperature, and if you think it’s common in the industry to hand out mugs of 190° fluid, you should avail yourself of a thermometer some time – because it simply ain’t so. Not even close. 160° is a nice hot cup. We’re not talking a “I like mine lukewarm, thanks” “nice hot cup”, either. 160° is still gonna burn you if you drop it on your lap.

Some (though not me) say that 160° is even too hot to enjoy:

“14. Fresh, hot water, in fusion with the coffee, should be over 190º Fahrenheit for optimum brewing.
15. The longer the brewing time, the stronger the brew, all other things being equal.
16. Coffee under 140 degrees Fahrenheit tastes better and won’t burn your taste buds.”

(Most people prefer their coffee at 165, BTW) Don’t think that brewing temperature and serving temperature are equivalent.

190° fluids are, in a way that is totally objective, unfit for human consumption.

Yes, coffee is better hot than cold. This isn’t a binary argument. There was no advantage in serving it at temperatures that will cause deep tissue burns, except the economic advantage of being able to use schwag beans. If there was, consumers would demand that coffee be served at those temperatures. As it stands, only one major outlet has a standard serving temperature that even begins to approach eighties McDonald’s level, and again, their business model is dependent on mediocre beans.

[Dead_Badger]

@Cinnamon Girl

I have spilled 200 degree coffee on myself and did not get a third-degree burn because it was off me in a matter of seconds.

I strongly doubt it, as at this temperature you should have received 3rd degree burns in substantially less than 1 second, and lesser but still severe burns instantaneously. Did you really take the temperature of your cup before spilling it on yourself? I’d suggest a more controlled experiment, but it hardly seems sensible.

[PookahMacPhellimey]

Go Cinnamon Girl!

And my additions.

Look we can argue about the nicest temperature to drink and therefore serve coffee at but let’s leave that out for a second.

Coffee can only reach a certain temperature due to the law of physics namely about boiling point. You’d hope the restaurant wouldn’t serve boiling coffee because the coffee will be scalded and that isn’t nice. But a reasonable adult may be expected to be able to handle a cup of boiling (in actual fact just off the boil due to pooring in into a cup) liquid, surely?

I also do not think it’s unreasonable to expect that it might be that hot. It’s a hot beverage and, as we have seen, everyone has their ideas of how hot is the tastiest. Restaurants will be the same disagreement on taste or will just not have any clue whatsoever so it is reasonable to expect the whole range from disgustingly tepid to as hot as possible.

Here in Ireland many people like their tea scalding hot. I can’t drink it, it burns my mouth but they like it that way. I wouldn’t recommend that you suggest to them the practice gets banned for being dangerous.

[Harborwolf]

To me, this case boils down to two things - and yes, I am frightfully funny for making that pun.

She didn’t think that the coffee was as hot as it was.

She put the coffee in her lap. Not where it should be.

That’s two lapses in judgement that led to her injury. If the jury awarded her the money because the coffee was hotter than it should be, then that’s just fine and dandy. Just strikes me as wrong that she should be allowed to take a case like this to court since it’s mostly her own fault.

[Cheesesteak]

@PookahMacPhellimey

But a reasonable adult may be expected to be able to handle a cup of boiling (in actual fact just off the boil due to pooring in into a cup) liquid, surely?

Does your reasonable adult know the water is boiling? Give a person a big cup of boiling water in their car when they expect it to be 50 degrees F cooler, and accidents will happen.

Cinnamon Girl, since you work for a company that sells coffee, why don’t you pour yourself a cup and measure the temperature, then report back here with the results? The numbers on the brewing kettle are completely irrelevant, the temp in the cup is what matters, and your assumptions (or mine, for that matter) on the relationship are worth bupkus, facts and data are valuable here.

[PookahMacPhellimey]

@Cheesesteak

Does your reasonable adult know the water is boiling? Give a person a big cup of boiling water in their car when they expect it to be 50 degrees F cooler, and accidents will happen.

I explained in the next point that yes, one may reasonably make that assumption since there is no agreement on what the “right” temperature for coffee is and that restaurants often don’t have a clue about it. I really honestly would expect a whole range of temperatures.

Could an American sue and Irish restaurant for the tea being to hot as they were used to their local tepid variety and therefore didn’t expect it? Again, ideas of how hot something should be vary according to culture and/or individual taste.

Hot beverages maybe hot. Or even very hot. I don’t see that as an wildly unreasonable expectation.

[Cheesesteak]

@PookahMacPhellimey

I really honestly would expect a whole range of temperatures.

So, if you spilled coffee on yourself, you would honestly expect a trip to the emergency room with 3rd degree burns that require skin grafts?

Luckily, the jury had a bit more sensible set of criteria about what customers should and shouldn’t expect from their beverage purveyors. You offer a beverage in a container designed specifically for consumption in a moving vehicle, sold directly to a person IN a vehicle, it should be safe enough to deal with in that environment. Part of that means that spilled beverage won’t send your customer to the hospital.

[Harborwolf]

@Cheesesteak

So, if you spilled coffee on yourself, you would honestly expect a trip to the emergency room with 3rd degree burns that require skin grafts?

Luckily, the jury had a bit more sensible set of criteria about what customers should and shouldn’t expect from their beverage purveyors. You offer a beverage in a container designed specifically for consumption in a moving vehicle, sold directly to a person IN a vehicle, it should be safe enough to deal with in that environment. Part of that means that spilled beverage won’t send your customer to the hospital.

If only the lap were a proper place to store said beverage container, then you would have a point. She put herself in a position to recieve the burns.

[PookahMacPhellimey]

@Cheesesteak

So, if you spilled coffee on yourself, you would honestly expect a trip to the emergency room with 3rd degree burns that require skin grafts?

If I was handed a hot beverage I would presume it might actually be, well, hot and therefore take care to avoid spilling it.

[cj_finn]

@PookahMacPhellimey

If I was handed a hot beverage I would presume it might actually be, well, hot and therefore take care to avoid spilling it.

That’s nice and all, but the emergency stop that one is occasionally required to undertake is no respecter of your coffee. Simply avoiding the amadan that is pulling out of his parking spot without looking before you can get the cup in the holder will get you. And I also suppose that you are a particularly responsible person in that you NEVER drink coffee in the car, an action that would require you to hold said unsafe cup of extremely hot liquid that is to be treated as lava by all customers in your hand while driving. What is more, you have never had another person in the car with you who might just be capable of jogging your arm during the aforementioned, never-to-happen drinking operation, right?

The fact is, accidents happen. Spilling coffee is such a common occurence that it is UNREASONABLE for someone to hand a person in a car a cup of coffee so hot that it will cause third degree burns. McDonalds knew this as they had previous legal issues on this same topic. They KNEW it ALREADY! People had already complained. What is more, McDonalds had the gall to state that they had no plans to change their procedures, i.e. we don’t care that severe burns are occuring, we’ll stick to the status quo.

There is reasonableness and there is reasonableness. You are correct that putting hot coffee of any temperature between your legs is not a good idea (unless you are into that sort of thing). At the same time, you should probably open your mind a bit accept the fact that handing a person in a vehicle a cup of coffee hot enough to remove skin was not anything we could charitably call a good idea.

Anyway, enough about coffee, does anybody remember the lava that was the filling of a hot apple pie? I lost many a skin cell to those damn things as a child.

cj