Actually, I don’t question the veracity of the facts cited - I simply question the way they are presented. I find there to be an obvious agenda for the website.
I welcome your arguments in this thread, but please do not misrepresent what I said. I made it clear that the “opinion” I was referring to was that the coffee was a “problem”. I have no reason to doubt that it was 180 degrees (or 185, depending which source you read), or that other restaurants may serve their coffee at a lower temperature. As far as I’m concerned, those are proven facts. What NOONE has yet demonstrated is why McDonald’s should have considered it a “problem” that needed to be rectified, given the fact that experts consider 180 degrees to be an appropriate temperature at which to serve coffee. Was it a problem because 0.00000007% of the cups of coffee they sold resulted in people getting burned? Take a moment to ponder that percentage. Can you even conceive of a number that small?
But the question should not have been “Does McDonald’s have the hottest coffee?”, but rather “Did McDonald’s have a duty to lower the temperature of their coffee?”
But that’s just the point I’m trying to make. That seems to be taken out of context. It makes it sound like he got up on the witness stand and said “Bwah, ha, ha - I like burning people, and I will continue to do so!”. Later, you had this quote: Finally, he testified that McDonald’s didn’t intend to change any of its coffee policies or procedures, saying, “There are more serious dangers in restaurants.”
So wasn’t he REALLY saying something along the lines of “This coffee thing is not a serious problem; there are much greater risks than that.” Remember that we are talking about 700 out of 10 billion cases, which, as I said before, is 0.00000007%. They may as well have asked him why McDonald’s didn’t take measures to prevent their customers from being struck by lightning!
Right. And this is where I’m not seeing the logic: If McDonald’s supposedly should have reduced the temperature of their coffee by 20 degrees, that would put it BELOW the optimum temperature. Which is to say that they should have sacrificed the quality of their product for those 0.00000007% of the times that someone might get burned. Ridiculous!
I’ll admit it appears McDonald’s did a pretty crappy job of defending the lawsuit, but that doesn’t mean they were guilty. There is a difference between an argument made by the prosecution, and the “truth”.
My personal observation of a small McDonald’s coffee cup appears to me to be approximately 10 oz. If it’s less, I’ll concede that fact, but the point remains the same. We’re not talking about splashing an ounce of water on bare skin here…we’re talking about spilling a significant volume of lot liquid into one’s clothed crotch.
I’ll retract the editorial comment about the polyester pants (although in my experience, a large percentage of 80+ year old women wear them, so it seemed a fair assumption), because it’s not germane to my point. Spilling coffee into one’s clothed crotch, regardless of your pants material preference, is going to burn you significantly worse than if you splashed liquid onto bare skin. It’s a fact. Anyone who’s worked in food service will tell you that splashing near boiling water on your arm will cause you to say “Ow!” and yank your arm away, but winding up with nothing more than a red mark. Having a glob of hot mashed potatoes flung onto your arm, OTOH, will cause you to say “Ow!”, jerk your arm away, do a little dance of pain upon realizing that the potatoes are still stick to you, wipe the poatoes off and then wait for the blister to form.
Per pldennison’s prior quotes from the WSJ article discussing the facts of the case, there was testimony that the ideal serving temperature for coffee is 175, not the 160 that the plaintiff’s lawyers were trying to claim. Also per those quotes, liquid at 180 degrees takes 12-15 seconds to give serious burns and 20 seconds at 160 degrees. Assuming we take the low end of the range of 12 seconds at 180 degrees and 20 seconds at 160, and also assuming a fairly linear relationship between temperature and time of exposure for burning, coffee at the “ideal” serving temperature of 175 degree would be 14 seconds to a serious burn.
I find it entirely reasonable to believe that when panicked and in a confined area, the woman did not sufficiently remove her clothing soaked with hot coffee within 14 seconds. And yes, I’d say that most modern cars are sufficiently “cozy” such that it would be difficult to remove clothing while seated in the front seat, especially when said clothing is wet and sticky. In fact, I’ve tried to do this very thing quite recently…I needed to change out of my bike riding gear in my car. I own a Toyota Camry (not a small car by any means) and suffice it to say that it was quite a challenge. Take that as you will.
I’m sorry, but I believe that any reasonable person would know that spilling even a moderately hot beverage on myself while wearing clothing that’s going to keep the hot liquid against my sensitive groin while in a confined space that’s going to inhibit my preventive or corrective action is going to result in a nasty, serious burn. If you elect to disregard that knowledge and subsequently burn yourself, the fault is yours and yours alone.
Well, hmm. What can I say but a general retraction?
I still don’t see that McDonalds was at fault, however. Coffee is brewed hot, McDonalds regs call to throw away the coffee after 30 minutes. Now, I’m not going to calculate out Newton’s Law of Cooling on the coffee, but it is clear that the burner keeps the coffee at ~185 degrees or the coffee would be cooler. Intentionally, and I’ve set those burners to do that, too (I don’t recall the temperature exactly, but if you all say it was that temp then so be it; you can also set the water temp on those suckers which I’ve also done).
I guess I just think that hot liquids are, well, hot. That’s my whole opinion, I just misread and misremembered facts cited in this thread in my anger, so I apologize for that, and I hope we can all just get over it. I think the only relevant facts in the case are that one, she ordered hot coffee (whatever hot means), and two, it wasn’t boiling, and three, accidents do happen.
I do not feel McDonalds was negligent. I think negligence in this case is BS unless they threw the coffee on her or handed her a cup with a false bottom. I trust I didn’t mess that up?
Coffee is hot. I worked at McDonalds for five years and we never received one burn complaint and none of our employees managed to go to the hospitol. And if you think 700 burn incidents are too much, imagine how many employees have spilled that coffee on themselves. I can assure you it is quite a large figure. I can recall spilling coffee on myself probably once a day in some fashion or another, or touching the hotplate, or something else that just happened when I was in a hurry to get things done.
I feel sorry for this lady, I truly do. Burns suck big time. Try slipping on a floor and having your hand end up in the fry vat when you instinctively reach for balance. But the coffee she was served sounds, from all reports in this thread, to be the same coffee I drank for five years and served five days a week and spilled on my hands probably every day I worked (well, morngings, anyway, when the coffee is really flying).
So my concern factor is about zero. Shit happens. A monetary award for this in any amount seems downright excessive. Well, that’s not true. I’d replace her coffee free of charge.
Yeah, sez you. But you’re pretty short of facts to back up that colorful opinion, unfortunately.
Well, Mr. Silly, how are you on expectations that you won’t be served a hot liquid in a drive-thru – by someone who admits to the possibility you will spill it on yourself – at a temprature that will instantaenously cause you third-degree burns? The woman was not attempting to drink the beverage, by the way, she was attempting to doctor it up – i.e., add cream and sugar.
What I am saying (as opposed to suggesting) is that the jury found that the plaintiff did not know and had no reason to expect that the coffee served would be so incredibly hot as to cause severe burns in the not-so-unlikely event it was spilled.
I’m curious – do you actually know what you’re talking about? As PLD pointed out, this woman was not driving, nor was the car in motion when the accident took place. And as SUA pointed out, the jury did reduce the verdict based upon comparative negligence. They only gave the woman $200,000 anyway (reduced on the basis of comparative negligence to $160,000) – an amount certainly not outrageous for a woman who suffered third-degree burns to 6% of her body – and a pretty delicate 6% at that.
The woman wasn’t driving. Do you generally make legal arguments with such a tenuous grasp of the facts?
The “assumption of risk” doctrine applies to known risks. Axiomatically, you cannot assume a ‘known’ risk if you do not know about it (because then it isn’t ‘known’). Furthermore, this argument assumes the “negligence was de minimis” and the “danger familiar to virtually anyone.” The verdict in this case indicates that that the jury did not consider eeither of those characterizations to be accurate.
You do understand that “hot” is a gradient, yes? There’s “hot” and then there’s “here’s your heapin’ helpin’ of third degree burns” hot.
The woman was not driving in traffic. Hello? And the best case scenario would be, oh, 120 degrees. Certainly warm enough to drink, but not hot enough to necessarily cause third degree burns before a person in a stopped car could react. It takes 30 seconds or so to develop a third degree burn at 120 degrees. At 185 degrees, it take less than two.
JADIS, you are aware the woman didn’t actually pour the coffee on herself, right? Maybe you’d like to restate your hypothetical scenario as one where an entire cup of scalding liquid is accidentally spilled, as opposed to intentionally poured. Because nobody, on either side, thinks this woman did this to herself on purpose.
Those of you who argue that the coffee wasn’t *unreasonably[i/i] hot and did not present a real danger to an unsuspecting consumer need to keep in mind that McDonalds’ own employee admitted all this on the stand. Therefore, if you want to talk about cases where these things are not true, then pick another case, because in this case they were true – because McDonalds itself admitted they were true, and McDonalds was bound by its own admissions.
I mean, you’re the juror: You’re confronted with a defendant who says “Hell yes, I knew that was dangerous and, yeah, I knew people got hurt from it in the past and would likely be hurt from it in the future and, yeah, it would have cost me nothing to fix the problem but fuck 'em – we’re not fixing it.” What do you do? Don’t tell me a “reasonable person” decides that defendant is not at fault.
And let me say that while I don’t mind arguing the merits of this case, I am sick and tired of trying to make that argument to people who don’t even bother to grasp the rudimentary facts of the case before spouting off about how unfair it was. For crissake, there must be 100 links on the web about this case. Go read one or two before coming back and talking about how she was driving (she wasn’t) or how she was drinking (she wasn’t) or how she wasn’t at fault (she was, in part). That go double for those arguers who are lawyers, who for certain ought to know better than to make legal arguments when they haven’t bothered to review the facts. Facts before law, always.
I disagree. Those may be questions of law, but findings such as “McDonald’s was aware of…” or “McDonald’s did not act on…”, are questions of fact, determined by weighing evidence.
Hey Sandwriter - why are you shouting at me?
I didn’t say it NEVER happens - I said it was rare. In general, the judge is not allowed to simply say, “I disagree with the jury - I don’t think he’s guilty so I’m reversing the decision”.
Thank God - if just ONE person is saved from being horribly mutilated by a toothpick, then it was worth it.
Gosh, Sandwriter - that’s a pretty broad brush you painted me with. I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a republican. Actually, I’ve never voted republican in my life. I’m not against litigation in general - I just don’t think the jury acted responsibly in this particular case.
This is really funny in light of the thread on no-fault insurance awhile back. I expressed my opinion that no-fault was a bad idea, and was lambasted for being on the side of the trial lawyers. Guess you just can’t win.:rolleyes:
In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sean Penn, who is working at a convenience store, throws coffee in the face of a robber. The robber screams in pain, and becomes so incapacitated that Sean is able to take his gun away from him. I originally saw that in the theater, and I don’t remember anyone in the audience being surprised that hot coffee would burn a person. But you’re right, it didn’t MELT his face.:rolleyes:
Of course, they never said it wasn’t coffee that made the Nazi guy’s face melt in Indiana Jones…
Hells bells, why not believe she was drunk, or had a seizure? You can’t change the facts, or make the facts up, just because you don’t like them. “There’s nothing more annoying than an inconvenient fact,” but we have to take 'em as we find 'em. There’s no evidence the woman panicked. There’s no evidence anyone thought she should have been able to exit the car and take her pants off in 5, or 14, seconds. That isn’t an argument that was even made at trial.
Oh, and another thing: Those of you who are arguing that 700 injuries out of billions of cups of coffee does not signify? That is exactly the argument McDonalds made at trial: That the injuries were “statistically trivial” in the grand scheme of things. Based on the verdict, you can guess how impressed the jury was by that airy corporate dismissal, in the face of a nice granny with burned labia and multiple skin grafts.
blowero, if I misrepresented your arguments, the fault is mine alone, and I apologize. To address a few of your responses:
Well, ask the lawyers for McDonald’s – they’re the ones who sent someone out to measure the coffee temperature at other fast-food restaurants. At the very least, they expected to be asked about it at the trial, and I suspect they were taking those measurements hoping that they could claim that their coffee temperature was comparable to that of other restaurants. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t. (And 20 degrees Fahrenheit is hardly trivial, especially in that temperature range – think about the difference between 60 degrees and 80 degrees.) If McDonald’s didn’t consider it a problem, or at least didn’t realize that a reasonable person might consider it a problem, why were they out measuring coffee temperatures?
We can obsess over that percentage all we want, but the fact is that McDonald’s had settled more than $500,000 worth of burn complaints before. What about this case was so unique that McDonald’s didn’t want to settle it? And that’s 700 reported incidents. How many unreported incidents were there?
I’m not saying it’s wrong for McDonald’s to have done a CBA and discern that, if they serve their coffee at Y temperature, they risk causing severe burns to X customers. That’s fine – it’s up to them to determine what combination of X and Y works for them, but when those X customers do get burned, McDonald’s can’t then claim that they’re faultless. By doing such a CBA, they admit that they knew that the coffee was likely to cause serious burns and were willing to accept the risk. Fine–accept the risk, then! You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.
The fact that there are other, more serious problems does not obviate the need to address any particular problem. That’s the same argument that people make when they argue against research into lupus because cancer kills more people. If e. coli infections occur at a rate X times greater than botulism, does that excuse McDonald’s of any duty to protect its customers from botulism to the best of their ability? Of course not. In any case, the generation of lightning is not something within the control of McDonald’s; the temperature of drinks sold at McDonald’s is.
Appleton’s testimony also indicated that they knew the coffee could cause serious burns but did not consult experts to discover how serious, and also decided not to warn customers about that possibility even though most people would not assume it possible. If that isn’t negligence, I don’t know what is! It’s admitting, “We could have consulted someone knowledgeable to allow us to make an informed decision about how severe any given coffee burn might be, but we chose not to.” That’s quite practically a textbook definition of negligent behavior.
Well, of course they were guilty! This wasn’t a criminal proceeding–it was a civil proceeding. There isn’t an ultimate “truth” to be revealed, there is a determination of culpability. And McDonald’s was found to be partly culpable.
Your reading comprehension isn’t so good, is it? That’s not 700 incidents–or even 700 reported incidents, as Phil says above–but 700 settlements. Seven hundred cases in which the complaint progressed to such a stage as to require a burned customer to retain counsel, and for that counsel to sit down with McDonald’s counsel and accept a sum of money in lieu of further litigation. As was mentioned on the first page–where this was already brought up–who knows how many people were burnt by the coffee and chose not to complain, or who complained and were appeased by McCoupon, or who were rebuffed yet never retained a lawyer, or who retained a lawyer but the suit never went anywhere. Bottom line is, the 700 figure is bullshit. People need to stop bandying it about.
What is bullshit is all the posters saying, “This is just the tip of the iceberg! Obviously thousands are dying in agony because Mickey D’s serves its coffee too hot!”
.00000007% is the only hard figure there is. You want to multiply it by some arbitrary number and arrive somewhere that justifies half a million to someone who claims they don’t know coffee is hot, go ahead and try, but I want cites.
Maybe there were a hundred thousand cases of people who grabbed a pot fresh off the burner and dumped down their pants leg at Burger King. Maybe there are a million people a year who die from sticking plastic straws up their noses. Maybe none of them collected because they were intellectually capable of understanding the concept of “You might want to blow on that before you dump it down your shorts”.
Coffe is hot. Knives are sharp. Stones are hard. People who can’t manage to put cream in their coffee without spilling it all over themselves might want to choose a Coke instead.
And for God’s sake, be careful not to choke on the ice. McDonald’s is such a greedy, heartless corporation that they continue to add it even though there are countless cases of people choking to death on things that are smaller than their heads.
Does anyone seriously think this woman “dumped” or “poured” coffee on herself? Please. I can only assume, SHODAN, that you’re careful to blow on hot liquid before you accidently spill it all over yourself, because youknow you’re going to accidentally spill it all over yourself . . . oh, wait. Then it’s not an accident, is it? It’s an intentional act. This was not an intentional act.
McDonalds:
Served the woman a beverage at a temprature hot enough to instantaneously cause third-degree burns.
Had prior knowlege of the certainty that a spill of a beverage served at that temprature would cause burns of that severity.
Had prior knowledge of the likelihood of such a spill in the forum in which the beverage was served (a drive-thru).
Had an easy and free option to reduce the likelihood of such burns, by simply turning the temprature down on the coffee.
Freely admitted they refused to do so, because in their opinion the chances of severe injury to customers was outweighed by the economic savings of serving extra hot coffee that would keep extra long.
And people who can’t drive cars without getting into wrecks may want to walk instead. And people who can’t avoid falling pianos may want to just stay home. And people who can’t manage not to eat contaminated food might want to stop eating.
Do you have any indication that any people choke to death on ice at McDonalds each year? If so, how many? And how many people have to die from such a thing before McDonalds cannot claim to be doing an economic cost-benefit analysis that indicates that in their opinion the risk of death (or burned of naughty bits) is acceptable? Can McDonalds change the Ice of Death at no cost or difficulty to itself? How persuasive is its excuse for failing to do so?
I’m amazed so many of you are not only willing to assign some blame to this woman – and, once again, she was partly to blame, and the jury so found – but are willing to go beyond that and absolve McDonalds of any culpability whatsoever. Heck, serve the coffee hot enough to vaporize the customers! Continue to do so even after you know people are being hurt! Continue to do so even though you could easily stop! Because if they spill it, it’s all their fault!
Where the heck are all of you when I’m trying to empanel a defense-friendly jury?
I don’t know either, Jodi, but my grandfather (who was a trial lawyer, btw), frequently used to say, “Another great theory ruined by the facts.” He’s been dead for 20+ years, and the saying was firmly embedded in family folklore well before then, so I expect variations of the expression have been around for quite some time, and they probably didn’t have a single point of origin.
I suspect all those who are arguing on the side of McD’s about ‘gee, coffee is hot’ have probably had number of scalds in their life and equate the sensation, but no personal experience with more serious burns caused by liquids.
about 20 years ago, 2 cups of hot water (in a little coffee maker type thing) spilled on my back. I instantly reacted by straigtening up and pulling my clothes away from the area.
and pretty soon, my back was covered with blisters about a foot long and 3- 4 inches wide. Second degree burns covered my torso. And that was from a similar type injury (though in my case the liquid was water and it was 2 cups).
Instant 2nd degree burns. Instead, this woman suffered instant 3rd degree burns. Upon hearing about my injury, my mom ‘related to it’ by commenting about getting scalded from the hot water tap a few days prior. When she actually saw my injury (and she only saw the relatively minor 2 nd degree burns on my leg, and not the multi-colored lobster effect that covered my back), she teared up and realized that there was no comparison.
I’m continually amazed at posters who are corrected as to facts of the case and yet cling tenatiously to their belief “yea, but…”.
Thanks, Shodan. Until you explained it with such clarity, I didn’t understand that the seven hundred instances in which a consumer reached a legal settlement with McDonald’s as a result of being injured by scalding coffee are obviously and logically the only times that McDonald’s coffee has ever caused injury. Makes perfect sense.
Also, there must only be around a hundred planets in the entire universe, since that’s how many we know about.
blowero: One would presume because wring felt that a defect in the coffee maker was not what caused her to be burned. Do you need a crash course in products liability law (which, of course, has nothing to do with the situation at hand)?
Maeglin Did you see the “correction” post? Express assumption is certainly possible with drugs. There is the whole issue of informed consent that really makes this not applicable to the OP.
Your first post dealt with unknown (fraudulently concealed, actually) risks then you switched to known risks on the bottle - not really following you. I don’t see how the risks of drugs can ever be compared to the risks of hot liquids. The difference is lab tests, clinical trials, and the resulting controversies versus the common experience of all humans since fire was observed and harnessed.
Sua A court already ruled that comparative negligence existed so we no longer debate it? I thought we were rearguing the case.
Jodi I hope your wrists are OK. Not much new there. You rely on res judicata over and over - this is a debate, not court. Thanks for the lecture on facts - yes she was riding.:smack: That would reduce the plaintiff’s comparative negligence, IMO.
I will grant you this one essential point you raised (the bottom line), McDs should have settled. There, I said it. Not because I think the cause of action was great but because of the temperature evidence and the injuries to the plaintiff. I still think the case is borderline for obvious reasons. McDs let this be a coffee case when it was really a hot water case: a commonly known obvious risk which reasonable people avoid every day in dozens of situations.
The cup of concealment argument is pretty silly if you have ever had McD’s coffee - or ever held a disposable cup.
The case is bad precedent if we are trying to prevent future harms: it provides a big financial incentive to take minimal care* and hurt yourself. Although, I must admit, I have no plans to scald my privates for money. Maybe my leg, hmmm…
generally Some posters have said “it was not even raised at trial.” Well, we are rearguing the case. Are those opposed to the status quo limited to arguing within the status quo?
I would like to concede for the record and I think I speak for everyone: hot water burns, nobody has rerestate that anymore.
*still waiting for someone to address the drink holders in cars and the ones McDs gives you if you ask. Reasonable care does not mean ignoring safety devices within easy reach.
blowero, Gadarene has it correct. HOwever, nice of you to absolutely skip the relevant bits about my post - that instantaneous serious damage occured. So, at levels that hot, even the act of receiving the cup from the cashier, if it spilled, would/could cause instantaneous serious damage.
Another question I have-suppose she had gone to a table at McD’s, and sat down, tried to lift the lid off of her coffee-and it spilled onto her lap from the table, with the same results?
