I have a pistol at home, (didn’t bring to work) Ruger P95D that was manufatured prior to 1994, and on it there is a warning about not standing in front of bullets. I can’t remember the exact wording now, but it’s to the effect of ‘If you go in front of the pointy end, you could get shot. People who get shot can die from that.’
It’s actually stamped into the composite material that makes up the grips. I suppose that there are people so stupid they are unaware that the pointy end of the gun is where the bullets come out at extremely high speed, but shouldn’t they all be too young to read?
Rubbish. I’ve read the details and it’s still rubbish. Regardless of how hot the coffee is (anything up to about 95 degrees Celsius should be expected), and whether you are or are not disabled/elderly/mentally defective/incapable of adding cream without spilling the drink… if you get burnt by hot coffee that you spilt it is not the fault of the restaurant that provided you with the coffee. End of story. If you think otherwise, the compensation culture has already affected your brain. Proceed to the Real F’ing World for treatment. Tip: coffee is made with near-boiling water. Thanks to idiots that don’t know this, :rolleyes: and try to add cream to their coffee while it’s wedged between their thighs :rolleyes: many restaurants now serve it tepid. Sorry about the rolleyes, but this really gets my goat.
Well, perhaps I have greater insight than these witnesses. It’s because of a little concept that used to be widespread in the civilised world back in the day — it’s called CFS, or common sense for short. Hot coffee will scald you if you spill it on yourself. Most kids used to figure this out from a pretty young age, and managed to remember it throughout life. Not any more, it seems. We can’t find out about danger for ourselves - we have to read it on warning signs. And what if I couldn’t read? If I were illiterate and scalded myself on the tepid dishwater they are now forced to serve, would I still be able to sue?
On a more light-hearted note - I’m glad I don’t work in the mail room chez Ansell!
Of course, the mailroom staff probably sued for gazillions for spooge-related trauma :rolleyes:
There’s no arguing that point, but I don’t know if your link supports your argument. McDonald’s had received hundreds of reports indicating that its coffee was just too damn hot and had done nothing about it.
Dumb as it is to put it between your legs, most coffee will probably not give you third-degree burns if you spill it on yourself. From McDonalds’ standpoint, this is what’s gonna happen when lots of people burn themselves with the coffee and you never do anything about it. I’ve spilled coffee on myself (though never a whole cup’s worth) and never needed a skin graft.
Well, the article says McD’s served coffee at “between 180 and 190 degrees”. In my opinion, coffee is, and should be, served boiling hot, more or less. So 180-190 degrees is about what I’d expect. If I make a cup of coffee at home - a cup of instant, say - I use freshly boiled water, so it’s going to be that hot before I add milk. And yes, it’ll hurt if I spill it on me.
700 reports of burns from coffee over 10 years… okay, quite a lot, but that is presumably worldwide. I’d wager that more than 700 clumsy putzes drink coffee in McDonald’s every day, so you’d expect a few burns. I’m sorry, but if you spill it on yourself, it will burn you, and will hopefully serve as a reminder to be more careful in future. I’ve spilt coffee on myself quite a few times, fortunately only over my hands. A quick trip to the bathroom and run cold water over yourself, and then :smack: yourself and get on with your day. And definitely don’t balance the cup in close proximity to some of your body’s most sensitive bits :eek:
[QUOTE=Colophon]
I’m sorry, but if you spill it on yourself, it will burn you, and will hopefully serve as a reminder to be more careful in future. I’ve spilt coffee on myself quite a few times, fortunately only over my hands. A quick trip to the bathroom and run cold water over yourself, and then :smack: yourself and get on with your day. And definitely don’t balance the cup in close proximity to some of your body’s most sensitive bits :eek:[/QUOTEI somehow doubt that a quick run to the bathroom–even if the plaintiff wasn’t parked in the drive-through–would bring a quick fix to third degree burns suffered to 6% of one’s body. The scalding liquid soaked through her sweatpants and stuck to her thighs and buttocks, burning through skin and muscle in 6 - 7 seconds. This wasn’t a minor injury to after which one should “get on with your day”.
Coffee at home is served at between 135 - 140 degrees F. Coffee at this temperature does not cause injuries to the extent suffered by the plaintiff. It certainly does not cause third degree burns in less than 10 seconds.
MacDonalds knew their coffee was exceptionally hot; they knew of over 700 complaints; they knew other customers had suffered third degree burns; they knew the plaintiff would consume her drink seated in the car; and they refused to settle for the original $11,000 damages the plaintiff claimed.
Years ago, I briefly worked a temp job for a consumer magazine in Germany. A reader sent in a pair of bathing trunks for men.
On the label it said, “Should Not Be Submerged In Water.”
Pardon me for interjecting and further hijacking this hilarious thread, but…
That’s not coffee. That’s coffee-flavored tepid swill.
I’m with **Colophon **on this one. The only thing Mickey D’s did wrong was ever offering anyone any kind of renumeration for being complete jackasses. “Wah, I burned myself with your hot beverage. Pity me!” Try sticking to chocolate milk, genius.
CG, who burns herself almost daily with properly made HOT coffee and lives to scoff at the thought.
Well I’m glad somebody’s with me. I know the plaintiff in that case suffered serious burns, and not the sort of thing you “rinse under cold water and get on with your day”. But, well, it happens. Bad stuff happens every day, to hundreds of thousands of people. If I sell a man a knife and he goes home, leaves it on the sofa aabsent-mindedly and castrates himself when he sits down, is that my fault? No.
Coffee should be near boiling point, and any sane person should expect it to be so and therefore treat it with respect. Would that woman balance a freshly boiled kettle between her legs too?
Come on - you’re meant to be a smart bunch of people. Don’t get brainwashed by the ambulance-chasers - it’s you who ends up footing the bill. If you injure yourself, curse god, curse your stars or your lucky heather or whatever, but don’t immediately look for someone to blame. Especially if it’s your own putzitude that hurt you.
Maybe comparing restaurant coffee to Mr. Coffee-type brew isn’t the best – but before that suit, McDonald’s still kept their coffee thirty degrees hotter than practically every other commercial vendor served theirs.
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.
For an optimal brew, the water should be that hot when it hits the beans in order to assure that the proper fraction of lovely oils and whatnot end up in solution. After that, it should cool in the carafe to the neighborhood of about 160/170 degrees. This is what everyone else typically does – not because they’re wringing their hands about the possibility of burns, but because they serve coffee that’s palatable enough to be swallowed without tricking your sense of taste by scalding your tongue.
This is why when people spill coffee from Second Cup or wherever in their lap, they curse themselves rather than ending up with horrible blistering burns and filing a lawsuit. This is why if someone did get the bright idea of sueing someone else over the types of burns you can expect to get from spilled coffee, they would be told “Coffee is hot. Deal with it.” This is why McDonald’s was successfully sued, and they started serving coffee at regular temperatures.
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.
FWIW if the coffe had been served at 130 degrees, she probably would have still been burned.
Her clothing would have held the hot coffee in contact with her body, and led to a 2nd or 3rd degree burn. So if Mickey D’s had served the coffee at 130ish and she had gotten burned, then whose fault was it? Cite
Please don’t think I am trying to minimize the damage done by a hot water burn. My daughter spilled a cup of Ramen noodles on her ankle, and the combo of the hot soup and her sock caused her to have a severe burn (huge 2nd degree) But it never occured to me to sue the ramen maker.
It was at the bottom of a humor e mail I got a few days back about eating tips for the holidays. Since it pretty much sums up my thoughts, I stole err borrowed it for my sig.
Here’s how I think about it: if I buy a skateboard, step on it by accident, fall, and break an arm, I won’t sue anybody. If I buy a skateboard, step on it, and it fractures in just such a fashion that sharp shards of it are pointing directly upwards and pierce my eyeballs when I fall, so I not only break an arm but also am permanently blinded, AND I find out that the company had received warnings that this kind of thing might happen, THEN I will sue.
In both cases, I did something stupid that will result in injury (stepping on a skateboard). But the injury in one case was FAR worse than I might reasonably have expected.
If you spill hot coffee in your lap, it will hurt, everyone knows that. But do you really expect it to give you 3rd degree burns over 6% of your body?
And JohnBckWLD, bringing up other, truly stupid, lawsuits has no bearing on the current discussion. No one is mountaing a blanket defense of every lawsuit ever filed. It’s just that (speaking only for myself) I’m positive sick of the McDonald’s-hot-coffee-lawsuit always being brought up as a canonical example of some lazy greedy idiot suing over something stupid.
I agree. I too am sick to death of hearing about the McD coffee case (especially now that Starbucks is the new hot beverage target on the block).
I didn’t post that settlement cite just to bring up another, ‘truly stupid lawsuit’ - I posted it in accord with Colophon’s statement: “if you injure yourself…don’t immediately look for someone to blame. Especially if it’s your own putzitude that hurt you”.
I’ll concede my post about the Brothers Dimm had no bearing on the discussion – especially given the fact I didn’t contribute any new (or additional) inane warning labels. I’d like to correct that now…
Warning: It only takes one injured client, a dozen jurors, a sympathetic judge, vague interpretation of the law and a slick attorney to award a couple of morons $104,000,000.00 (later reduced to a mere $25,000,000.00).
I make coffee from freshly boiled water. I heat the mug before pouring hot coffee into it. I don’t put any cool milk or room-temperature sugar in it. It’s winter here, dammit, and I want a hot drink. If a restaurant supplies me with one, they have discharged their responsibility and handed the ball to me.
