Assumption of Risk only requires assuming normal risk. The normal risk assumed from buying and handling a cup of coffee was not found to include second degree burns.
Do you really think that getting coffee on her skin should have resulted in swelling, blistering and pain that prevented the plaintiff from walking normally, sitting down, sleeping or even using the toilet normally for weeks?
Floor steamers: do not point them at your face. Cooking at home: do not dunk your hand in a boiling pot of water. Icing your leg after an injury: do not leave the ice on your leg until you get frostbite. Fresh coffee: do not pour it in your lap. Obviously I could go on and on. Somehow, reasonable people avoid the risks of boiling water (steam) and nearly boiling water (hot) on a daily basis.
Yes, McDonalds coffee was somewhat hotter than some other coffee. How that constitutes negligent behavior - much less gross negligence is still a mystery to anyone reading this thread. Clearly (to anyone with any experience with coffee) the only temperature you can assume coffee will not exceed is the boiling point of water.
The risks associated with water at extreme temperatures are all around us. Most people understand that if steam is rising off the top of water, it is hot and therefore dangerous. Boiling water is an open and obvious risk that reasonable people avoid every single day of their lives.
French fries Glad you brought that up. I absolutely want my fries straight out of the fryer. They taste better - much better. Yes, I have to blow on the first few, or wait a minute. Agan, an open and obvious risk people deal with every day - unless (sorry) they are morons. It is impossible to structure a safe society for morons.
Beagle, I think you are missing the point. Coffee is a beverage that humans are supposed to be able to consume without injury. Floor steamers, hot cooking oil, and the boiling water used to cook pasta are not. The above are intended to cause burns; coffee is not.
McDonalds’ behavior was ruled negligent because the documentary evidence demonstrates that despite an increased risk of customer injury, McD knowingly served its coffee excruciatingly hot in order to minimize costs. It proved to be cheaper to settle the occasional injury suit than to serve a superior product (at a lower temperature) at an increased cost to itself. Therein lies the negligence.
If your comprehension is still obstructed by this “doctrine of assumption of risk,” simply recast the coffee lawsuit as a prescription drug lawsuit. In order to peddle more pills, a drug company knowingly conceals a drug’s side effects that afflict only a small proportion of its users, relying on the simple formula that the drug’s profits will more than offset occasional lawsuits, and that further costs associated with R&D to eliminate the side effects will also be minimized.
You assume risk every time you take medication, no? But do you really assume the risk that your heart will fibrillate when you take a simple pill for heartburn?
Or…
3. McDonald’s served coffee at the proper temperature because coffee tastes better when it is served very hot. Look at this website - it suggests that the temperature shouldn’t drop below 175 degrees.
http://www.bunnomatic.com/pages/drbrew/drdodont.html
If the “industry standard” is supposedly 165 degrees, as was claimed, then aren’t all those other restaurants serving an inferior product? Should McDonald’s really have to cater to the lowest common denominator? Coffee’s flavor deteriorates very rapidly. If it is allowed to cool to a “safe” temperature before being served - by the time you drink it, it will no longer taste good.
Until this lawsuit, McDonald’s was the only fast food joint that served coffee that doesn’t taste like garbage. Now, in reaction to the litigation, they serve the same lukewarm piss that all the other fast food places serve.
AND, I don’t think the “vast majority” of drive-through customers drink their coffee right away. If anything, most customers probably get the coffee on the way to some destination, and drink it when they get there.
I’ve run across this argument quite a bit that McDonald’s served the coffee hot in order to save money . While the plaintiff no doubt made that argument, that doesn’t mean it’s true. Does anyone have more detailed info on how this was “proven”?
Could you elaborate about them being “warned”? Who warned them? How many warnings?
That’s just the point, though. Was it really proved? Or did the jury just become hysterical after being shown some gruesome pictures of the plaintiff’s burns? People have a tendency to want to place blame somewhere when terrible things happen. But sometimes bad things just happen. It’s not always anyone’s fault. If the jury was so rational, as you suggest, would the award have been severely reduced on appeal, as it was?
Yes, that’s what the trial-lawyers’ website claims. But I remain unconvinced. The argument that “it must be true because the jury believed it” doesn’t tend to sway my opinion. The temperature at which the coffee was served would seem to be consistent with that recommended by experts on coffee brewing, in order to serve a superior product. When you say “without warning them”, are you suggesting they should have? To be honest, I find the warnings that they put on the cups now to be rather silly. And which damages do you believe were justified, the original multi-million dollar jury award, or the undisclosed settlement amount that was agreed to after the original jury award was reduced on appeal?
Actually, I would expect to be badly burned if I spilled a whole cup of coffee on myself. I would also expect to be burned if I held my hand over the stove, or put the clothes iron to my ear instead of the phone. I assume a risk of death every time I get in my car. Does that mean the manufacturers of these products were negligent? Of course not.
[Oops - on previewing this, I see that Beagle already made this point.]
So the proper warning should be “Hotter than the average cup of java”? To me, “Warning: Coffee is served hot” falls into the same category as “Warning: Do not attempt to stop chainsaw blade with hands”. Had the coffee been 10º cooler or the burns only second degree, she wouldn’t have had a case?
Actually, it should be around 375º, on the 2nd cook stage. At 325%, you’ll end up with even greasier fries.
One point I can’t refute is that McCoffee is inferior (going on the assumption it hasn’t changed in the last 5 or so years since I last gagged down a cup).
And if the suit was so meritless, would the judge have agreed with the relative finding of fault for each party, rather than simply reduce the size of the judgement? And wouldn’t he have reduced the size of the compensatory damage judgement as well as the punitive judgement?
Oh, and blowero, since you seem to be questioning whether the facts as presented by the link in your OP are indeed facts, I present the following. This article, headlined A Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided That a Coffee Spill Is Worth $2.9 Million, appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 1, 1994. I cannot link to it, because I retrieved it from a database for which I pay, so I will try to limit the quotes.
You said: “McFact No. 1: For years, McDonald’s had known they had a problem with the way they make their coffee - that their coffee was served much hotter (at least 20 degrees more so) than at other restaurants.” That’s not a fact, it’s an opinion..
The article says: "When a law firm here found itself defending McDonald’s Corp. in a suit last year that claimed the company served dangerously hot coffee, it hired a law student to take temperatures at other local restaurants for comparison.
After dutifully slipping a thermometer into steaming cups and mugs all over the city, Danny Jarrett found that none came closer than about 20 degrees to the temperature at which McDonald’s coffee is poured, about 180 degrees.
>snip<
For [a previous] case, involving a Houston woman with third-degree burns, Mr. Morgan had the temperature of coffee taken at 18 restaurants such as Dairy Queen, Wendy’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, and at 20 McDonald’s restaurants. McDonald’s, his investigator found, accounted for nine of the 12 hottest readings."
You said:* “Somehow I doubt he phrased it that way when he testified.”*
The article says: “Also for that case, Mr. Morgan deposed Christopher Appleton, a McDonald’s quality assurance manager, who said ‘he was aware of this risk . . . and had no plans to turn down the heat,’ according to Mr. Morgan. McDonald’s settled that case for $27,500.”
The article also provides the following quotes, which I think are relevant to the case here:
pldennison, one of the things I remember reading (from where, I can’t remember) and implicitly shown in your article, is that McDonalds did a piss-poor job defending themselves. The article I read dealt more with McD’s poor preparation than with the merit of plaintiff’s case. The WSJ article and several other law sites all take about the case presented by the plaintiff. None that I’ve read go into the same detail about the defense presented by McDonalds. According to the aforementioned article, it’s because there wasn’t one, or at least one nearly as strong, as well-prepared or as well-presented as the plaintiff’s case. Would a better defense have changed the outcome? We’ll never know.
Coffee is intended to drink, this is true. Thus, when you drink it, it shouldn’t be so hot as to cause etc. True. But that has nothing to do with serving temperature. At all.
Coffee is not meant to be spilled, and hot drinks will really hurt even at temperatures they would be drank at.
This lawsuit is complete garbage, IMO. Always has been, alwasy will be, and expecting McDonalds to lower their coffee temperature because people choose to wear it is ridiculous.
Some things you just know in a modern society. Hot liquids can cause serious burns is one of them. This is why people tend to blow on or over their coffees before taking careful sips. It is so damn trivial that I can’t even understand how anyone in good faith could possibly hold them liable for this.
Neurotik and blowero, you are conflating “complaints” and “settlements” There weren’t 700 complaints about the heat - there were 700 incidents in which a customer allegedly was injured by the heat, sued McDonalds, and received a settlement.
That 700 does not include (i) any lawsuits that McDonalds was able to defeat, (ii) any lawsuits that McDonalds fought to the end and lost at a jury verdict, (iii) injuries to customers who did not file a lawsuit, and (iv) old fashioned complaints about the temperature burning someone’s tongue or finger or the like.
What is the total of categories i-iv? No idea. But I think it’s safe to wager that for every person who sued McDonalds over the coffee temperature, a significant number of people didn’t think it was worth their while to sue.
Sua
Straw man much?
D_Odds, whatever the cases presented by the plaintiff and the defendant, the fact is that the judge heard all the same evidence and all the same witnesses as the jury did. Upon appeal, he could have questioned the jury’s 80%/20% assignment of fault, he could have reduced the amount of compensatory damage, or he could have disregarded the jury’s decision completely, finding it incompatible with the law. He did none of those things. The only thing he did was reduce the punitive damage award from approximately 2 days’ worth of McDonald’s coffee sales to approximately 2 hours’ worth.
Plus, what if she tried to DRINK it with that temperature? shudder
If I’m not mistaken, the burns were so severe her labia fused together.
OUCH!!!
I particularly get ticked off at the repeated “most people don’t pour coffee in their crotch” statements.
3rd degree burns burn away flesh. If she’d attempted to sip on the coffee, and it’d instead burned away the flesh on her lips - is that any better? and, of course, no one, upon slurping something too hot has ended up spilling said something, have they?
the medical evidence re: amount of time required to burn flesh at the various temperatures is a compelling piece of data.
I’m truly disillusioned by the responses of posters to this thread who, after reading responses which expound on sound legal principles, and give in-depth answers and cites(thanks pld), continue to say, in essence, “Don’t confuse me with facts. I will believe what I want to believe.”
I feel as though I am listening to the callers on my local talk show who just don’t get it. And never will.
BEAGLE –
Not “somewhat hotter.” Significantly hotter. Unreasonably hotter. Unexplainably hotter, until it was explained that the hotter the coffee, the longer it “keeps.”
Actually, it seems to be a mystery to only a very few reading this thread.
Why would this follow? If you are handed a cup of coffee with the expectation you will drink it, why would you assume that it is not only too hot to drink (which it might well be; it’s a hot beverage, after all) but so hot that should you be unfortunate enough to spill it (a foreseeable event, especially in a drive-thru), you will sustain burns severe enough to require skin grafts.
A liquid contained in an insulated cup and sealed with a plastic lid can hardly be deemed an “open and obivious” hazard. This isn’t a cauldron of boiling oil; it’s a cup of coffee.
Look, the lawyers and paralegals weighing in on this in this thread (and there have been a few), not to mention the learned laypeople (of which there’s been a few more) are all telling you that tihs verdict is not as outrageous, much less stupid, as it is portrayed. McDonald’s served a liquid intended to be consumed at a temprature so unreasonably high that not only was it not consumable, it causes serious and debilitating injury to the individual who purchased it. Furthermore, McDonalds had prior notice that the temprature it was serving its coffee at was unreasonably hot, and it had every reason to know of the higher risk of (a) spilling drinks and (b) not realizing the temprature of drinks when such drinks are served in covered, insulated cups in a drive-thru.
I’m a defense trial lawyer. I defend companies, including stores and restaurants, in lawsuits, including quite often suits for personal injury. I have no great love for plaintiffs’ lawyers. I know full well there are lots of people complaining about non-incidents and claiming non-injuries in order to basically extort money from companies they assume have it to spare. I know full well that sometimes juries decide to just give money away, like the lottery, because, hey, it ain’t their money.
I know all that, and I’m still telling you the plaintiff had a good case here, and deserved to win.
Wonderful post, Jodi. Thank you. (And Phil, and Sua, and…)
Well, I’ve been on the side of the plaintiff in this case, thinking that McDonalds was at fault. But I have to admit, that 700 cases in 10 billion bothers me, even if there were five times that many.
This is an EXTRAORDINARILY small number of injuries for a supposed beverage that will fuse your skin together if spilled, and which is served to people in vehicles. If the coffee were really that dangerous, I would expect tens of thousands of injuries over the same number of servings.
Can anyone explain this low number?
And it doesn’t surprise me that witnesses for McDonalds said that the company ‘knew’ the coffee could burn people. Given the billions they serve, I’ll bet you if you looked up their incident reports you’d also find that they ‘knew’ that their floors could be slippery and break limbs by the thousands, that their powered doors could stop and cause people to chip teeth, that the ends of their straws were sharp enough to cause cuts or skin punctures under the right circumstances, etc. I’m sure they get hundreds of thousands of injury reports and claims. From the standpoint of head office, a handful of coffee scalds a year might just not be actionable.
Unfortunately, you can’t say that to a jury. Because if you do, you’re instantly tagged a callous, money-grubbing bastard who chose to trade other people’s pain for money. Cost-benefit analyses are perfectly valid tools for a company (NECESSARY tools), but they are poison in court.
Don’t thank me yet, Gadarene, I haven’t expressed an opinion about the case yet. I was simply trying to correct the misapprehension of a fact.
As for the case itself, I’ve always been ambivalent. I certainly felt better about the result when the judge (1) reduced the verdict and (2) held the plaintiff (IIRC) 30% liable, thus reducing McDonald’s liability even more.
I’m just going to follow the thread and see if any argument resonates.
Sua
Sua, I wasn’t trying to make an argument either way on the case, I was just trying to give an example of how absolute numbers can be misleading.
Hmmmm. Every time I sit down to eat a fresh pizza, I end up scalding my mouth, particularly my tongue. It takes days for the pain to go away . I can’t help it, its lile I’m addicted to piping hot pizza. I’m also concerned about the carcinogenic effect of this repeated tissue trauma. Should I sue ?