First of all, try not to get upset if I don’t reply to every single line of all 100 posts in this thread so far. This was my point: You spilled hot liquid on yourself, and were badly burned. The manufacturer of the coffee pot was no doubt aware that water that hot can burn skin, yet continued to manufacture the product. And you chose not to sue them. How does this differ from the McDonald’s case? I’m certainly not trying to trivialize your injury - I just thought it might make an interesting avenue of discussion.
And everyone: It would be nice if we could have a debate without getting all huffy, m’kay?
Thanks for the response but my two objections still stand.
#1) I, and I suspect many people, expect coffee to be served way hotter than drinking temperature so that by the time they finish doctoring it it’ll be just right. Are you proposing that all coffee should be served luke-warm to account for the lowest common denominator?
#2) What would your response be if the situation was exactly the same, except she’d asked for a cup of hot water for tea and a tea bag? The expectation is that hot water for tea should be even hotter than for coffee: near boiling in fact. Would you put more of the burden on the woman in that case?
You are arguing (as far as I can tell) that McDonald’s is culpable for its wrong doing because there are lots more instances than 700 out of 10 billion where people got burned by their coffee.
Prove it.
Otherwise, you are basing your argument on facts not in evidence. For all the people leaping on posters like blood-mad cougars for not knowing the facts of the case, I would expect you to have more basis for making McD’s pay out the wazoo than “Well, everyone knows that the burn wards of America are bursting at the seams, and it’s all because of fast food coffee.”
Jodi - You don’t want me on your jury, unless I get to choose the option of “Bailiff! Kick these two nutballs in the pants!”
Coffee is hot. If you spill it on yourself, it will hurt you. Repeat this line as necessary.
Guys, I don’t know about you, but I would not expect to get instantaneous 3rd degree burns by spilling coffee on myself.
This is not a case of spilling hot coffee on you and saying “ow ow ow”. Let me reprhase your statement so it more accurately reflects the case:
Coffee is hot. If you spill it on yourself, it will cause you instantaneous severe burns that will land you in the hospital and you will require skin grafts.
Considering that spilling coffee on yourself is not exactly an unusual event, don’t you think there is a problem?
And if you are running a company serving something that can be this damaging, don’t you think you either better cool it down a bit, or serve it in something that is a bit more spill-resistant?
Coffee is hot. If you serve it at unreasonable temperatures so you can save money, expect to get sued when someone spills it on themselves. Repeat this line as necessary.
i’m wasn’t yelling at you, i was trying to address you directly by typing your name. THIS IS YELLING! DON’T MAKE ME YELL, I’LL FEEL GUILTY LATER!
Anyway, if you study the Republican party’s platform you will see that it is chock full of ‘personal responsibility.’
Hey D_odds,
About 401ks. You make it out that an employee is forced to contribute money to their 401k. Is that true? For me, I choose the amount to contribute. I can contribute nothing and put my own money in an IRA, or I can contribute a percentage, of which the company will match on some level. I have the power, and the personal responsibility, to decide where my retirement money is going.
Enron employees had the same options, so it’s their own fault that they lost their retirement savings. They could have researched their own company and decided that it was not worthy of investment.
Of course I’m exaggerating to make a point. There is a fine line between being a victim and making a mistake. Each person’s experience will move a situation above or below that line, but lawyers tend to, IMHO - ICBY, move people into the victim catagorey and then assign blame and then sue and then we have endless threads about whose-fault-is-it-really! Like this one.
When I first heard about the McD coffee case I thought, yeesh, she should have known better. But then when I found out all the details and facts I thought, yeesh, McDonald’s should have known better.
But it doesn’t matter what I think or you think or whay anyone thinks, as long as a lawyer can convince 12 people to see it their way, then that’s all that matters.
So how many of you shirk jury duty? I’ve tried to get on the Jury, but they always excuse me when they find out I have education past high school.
Beagle, in some situations, subsequent remedial measures can be used against defendants, such as to prove ownership or contol or to controvert arguments that precautionary measures were not feasible.
In at least one jurisdiction, subsequent remedial measures are admissible in products liability cases based on strict liability. Texas Rule of Evidence 407 (sorry, you need to scroll down the page.)
Without getting into the debate here on matters that are being dealt with quite adequately by others, I would just make one point that I don’t think has been made. Which is that the issue at hand is not a purely legal one but one of right and wrong. IOW that even if one were to conclude that the law, as presently constituted, justified the verdict, this lets the judge and jury off the hook, but does not necessarily mean that the right thing was done - it may just imply that we need some tort reform in this country. In this context, the issue can be viewed without undue focus on the technical legal aspects of the case.
(Where we do need some legal input is in regards to my question about the legality of the perp walk - a matter that has yet to attract comment by our resident legal community - feel free to speak up.)
In most jurisdictions, including federal court, no. Federal Rule of Evidence 409 provides that “evidence of furnishing or offering or promising to pay medical, hospital, or similar expenses occasioned by an injury is not admissible to prove liability for the injury.” (This is also true of the state jurisdictions which have this same rule which, IIRC, is most of them.) This is U.S. law, obviously. I don’t know the status of the law anywhere else.
BEAGLE –
I find it interesting that you think you can guage my level of excitement from my posts, especially when you guess incorrectly. To the extent this case “excites” me, it is only because it is so often incorrectly cited as proof of the judicial system run amok, something that occurs with tiresome frequency.
Insofar as you are concerned, I find it interesting that someone with legal training would presume to second-guess a jury by hypothesizing evidence that either did not exist or, if it existed, the jury never saw. That seems to me to be an exercise in futility, and not a terribly intellectual one, either. Like I said, if you want to change the facts, go ahead and change them to ones you like better than these.
How odd that you would have waded in, since you see no debate.
This amuses me. I think anyone reading my posts, and yours, can decide who is adding to the debate, so I will leave them to it. Your opinion in this regard I’m afraid I am unable to credit.
FENRIS –
You cannot attribute your expectation, even if you “suspect” it is held by many others, to everyone. What you are missing, I think, is that in this case, McDonalds admitted that people expected to drink coffee right away – i.e., that they do not expect it to be served “way hotter than drinking temperature.” Now, you’d like to argue that isn’t so – well, who knows? I don’t drink coffee, myself, so I’m not really qualified to say. But I do know enough to say that there is a difference between “too hot to drink without blowing on it,” and “so hot you get instantaneous third-degree burns if you spill it.” I’ve spilled hot tea on my lap; I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t need skin grafts, either.
If we can assume that “the expectation is that hot water for tea should be even hotter than for coffee,” then, sure, she would bear “more of the burden” for knowing that the water was that much hotter. But here you are positing a beverage that needs to be served that hot because, according to your hypothetical, tea cannot be made properly unless the water is really hot. That was not the case with the coffee. There was no quality-control or flavor reason to serve the coffee so hot, and it could just as easily have been served 20-30 degrees cooler.
What surprises me about this thread is almost willful refusal to acknowledge any matter of degree (ha!) in this case. “Coffee is hot” – well, “hot” is a gradient and there is a difference between “hot,” “too hot,” and “way too hot.” No one is saying coffee should be served cold. “Hot” and “cold” are not the only choices. “If you spill hot coffee it will hurt you” – well, hurt you how? Hurt me like leaping up and dancing around? Hurt me like dropping trou to dab on some aloe vera? Or hurt me like “extended stay in the hospital/multiple skin grafts”?
Here’s my take on it: People are able to argue that this is the El Numero Uno Terrible Case because they don’t understand the details of the facts of it. And I can understand that. What I have trouble understanding is people who, even after they’re advised that the case is more complicated than it at first blush appears, stubbornly insist on recasting it as simple and therefore dumb – “coffee is hot and it will hurt if you spill it on yourself.” It’s as if they want the case to be the Grim Spectre of Justice Run Amok – as if believing that is some sort of article of faith, so facts and reality bedamned. And I don’t get that. I really don’t. As I have said before, there are some amazing examples of judicial or jury stupidity and totally indefensible awards. This, however, IMO isn’t one of them.
I apologize. It’s usually considered rude to address someone as “Hey ______”. But I guess that’s an idiosyncracy of yours.
First of all, I never used the phrase “personal responsibility”. And I don’t agree with this reasoning that someone MUST be responsible for everything. It was an accident, and a freak accident at that. I swear, if she had been struck by a meteor, people would be trying to affix blame somewhere.
I’m just looking at the facts - McDonald’s kept their coffee at a temperature that was recommended by coffee experts, NOT some freakishly high, unworldly temperature, as is constantly repeated. I posted links to several websites that recommend temperatures very close to that which McDonald’s used. The argument that keeps getting repeated is that other people had been burned over the last 10 years, so they should have done something about it. (Never mind that the number of incidents is statistically miniscule - in fact, functionally equivalent to zero.) And please, if someone wants to argue that the number was NOT statistically insignificant, can you please present some evidence, rather than just saying “well there were probably more cases than that”. The 700 number was brought up by the PLAINTIFF, not the defendant. McDonald’s argued in the trial that the number of coffee burns was statistically insignificant, but the jury obviously did not grasp the concept. When a company serves billions of people, how many complaints do you suppose they get? Thousands? Millions? How many lawsuits? I bet it’s a lot. Are they supposed to consult experts and make changes to their procedures that result in a lower quality product every time they get a complaint? And by the way, arguments such as “her labia were fused together”, are not convincing as to why they should have turned down the heat over the past ten years, because IT HADN’T HAPPENED YET. If someone wants to cite an incident that happened BEFORE the lawsuit, that’s great, but it’s disengenous to cite the severity of HER injuries as evidence of what McDonald’s should have done in the past.
I think McDonald’s blew it big time. They should have paid the woman for her medical bills in the first place. And it sounds like they put on a lousy defense, and let the plaintiff get away with a lot without challenging their assertions. And they tried to appeal to the jury’s intellect, rather than their emotions. Apparently they came off sounding arrogant as well. But I still think the original jury verdict was wrong.
That’s my opinion on THIS CASE. SandWriter, do you really think it’s impossible to have an opinion on one lawsuit without being in one “camp” or the other?
Your question is amenable to (as I see it) three different-but-related interpretations, so I’ll give you all three answers to cover all the bases.
Offer made to “Coffee Grandma” and accepted - In that case, Grandma couldn’t use the agreement against McDonalds, because she’s accepted the settlement (even if she hasn’t gotten the money yet). Settlements are contracts. If she tries to continue the suit, McDonald’s can sue to have the contract enforced;
Offer made to “Coffee Grandma” and rejected - In that case, Grandman couldn’t use the agreement against McDonald’s. Under Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 408 (and, I believe, the Rules of Evidence of every state) settlement offers are “not admissible to prove liability for or invalidity of the claim or its amount.”
Offer made to “Coffee Grandma.” Whether accepted or rejected, another plaintiff in another suit tries to use it against McDonald’s. Possibly admissible, but probably not. First, it doesn’t prove anything; any half-way decently written settlement agreement includes a clause that the party paying does not admit liability. Second, to the extent it is deemed relevant, it would probably be determined that its prejudicial weight outweighed its probative value.
I think we need to clear up a couple points here. It’s my understanding that she was not “instantaneously burned”; she was wearing sweatpants, which absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin. Is that not correct?
The cup WAS spill resistant. She took the lid off. And I believe she spilled the ENTIRE contents of the cup directly onto her groin, correct?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Guinastasia *
Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually go to McDonalds sans pants. Does anyone? I’d like to know.
You are right. You are not obliged to contribute to a 401(k).
However, when companies offer a free match and you don’t take advantage, it is like throwing away money. I don’t know of any company that offer’s matches on IRAs.
Wise retirement investing will take maximum advantage of any company’s matching program. A retirement investor should keep the minimum required in company stock (i.e. they should diversify as soon as any lockup ends). This isn’t as common knowledge as, say…coffee burns (not instant third degree burns, but burns) or supersized Big Mac meals are unhealthy as a primary diet, however.
Additionally, and specific to Enron, there was a mandatory lock-up on all employee 401(k) stock sales, including unrestricted shares, during the devaluation. Whether legal or not is for others to determine. These people weren’t given the option to minimize losses.
Lastly, thanks to analysts being in bed with investment bankers, researching Enron might have given you the impression that it was a good buy, or at the very least a hold. Merrill Lynch allegedly released an analyst who said bad things about Enron because it lost investment banking business. Merrill’s Enron role probed
Robb: “generally” - and certainly not in the context the poster was referring to. But, thanks, if I ever move to Texas…
Sua Good explanation.
Jodi I was correct in my use of res judicata.* Yet, you tried to tear me a new one. I could have said collateral estoppel.** The point was, and remains, I don’t care how the case was argued, evidenced, or decided before. This is a debate. We can even debate the horror facts. We are only limited by the bounds of reasonable interpretation. Juries, as you know, are often stupid or easily manipulated - especially where there is a sympathetic plaintiff.
You did notice I already settled the case with you about three posts ago, right? How about $20,000 SDMB dollars and call it quits? I agree with your bottom line and you keep insulting my intelligence - not a good reflection on you.
To Anyone who can hear my voiceStill waiting for anyone to address the platitiff’s failure to use a drink holder or ask McDonalds for one. Reasonable care, obviously, would require someone to use these common safety devices. Every time I go to McDonalds - this has been true for years - they ask me if I want a drink holder. Its use would have prevented the spill, or in the alternative, reduced the severity of the injuries.
*Res judicata: “A matter adjudged” Black’s Law Dictionary
**This, of course, refers to specific issues within the case being adjudged. You used the argument enough, I thought it rose to the level of res judicata. Or, I could have thrown in issue preclusion.
[quote]
I’m just looking at the facts - McDonald’s kept their coffee at a temperature that was recommended by coffee experts, NOT some freakishly high, unworldly temperature, as is constantly repeated.
[/quote I posted links to several websites that recommend temperatures very close to that which McDonald’s used. [/quote]
This is incorrect, and your links do not back it up. The first link is observational only and contains no temprature recommedations. (It does, however, note a 114 sec., or nearly 2 minute, delay between service and consumption, which in this case was contradicted by McDonalds’ own admission – by which it was bound – that it expected the coffee to be consumed immediately.) The other links deal with optimal brewing temperature, not the temperature at which the beverage should be served.
Actually, the argument is that if McDonalds chose not to do something about it because it judged via a cost-benefit analysis that it was willing to live with X number of people being injured, then fine, but that did not mean that McDonalds should not be liable for the 700+ cases where it made that gamble and lost.
McDonalds itzself argued the number was “statistically insignificant” given the volume of business it does. This was not a winner of an argument: Let’s highlight what a behemoth corporation we are; let’s put this in the coldest possible terms, underscoring just how little we care about this scarred little grandma; let’s frankly admit we put our own profits over the safety of at least some of our customers. Juries do not look with favor on cost-benefit analyses that place the interests of a corporation in making money over the suffering of a person sitting right in front of them. You may think this makes juries stupid; I think it makes them human.
Every time? No. But wouldn’t it otherwise depend on the severity of the complaint, the number of complaints received, and the ease with which the problem could be fixed?
McDonalds apparently settled and paid in excess of 700 claims prior to this one. This has been posted several times. Furthermore, the severity of her injuries goes directly to the issue of how dangerous the condition was. The dangerousness of the condition in turn goes directly to the reasonableness of expecting the company to take corrective action to rectify it.
Most of the cites I can find indicate that liquid at 180 degrees will burn you instantaneously. Here, for example.
“Tear you a new one”? Um, no. And I did not understand you to be using the term res judicata to mean merely “a matter adjudged,” since that would apply to every post-verdict case and is not usually how the term is used. Res judicata, as a legal theory as opposed to merely a latin phrase, means that a final determination of the rights of the parties under a given set of facts settles the question of what those rights are. Before you can argue that one case is res judicata, you have to have someone bring a second case (other than a direct appeal) attempting to relitigate the matters settled in the first case. Res judicata is claim preclusion; once the claim is brought and settled, that’s the end of it. The case would have been res judicata if the woman had tried to sue McDonalds again, over the same coffee spill.
“Collateral estoppel,” on the other hand, bars one party from raising again an issue that has already been decided in another case, not the same case. So CE is “issue preclusion,” as contrasted with RJ, which is “claim preclusion.” If the woman had sued again over another coffee spill, where the coffee was served under the exact same conditions, she could argue that McDonalds was “collaterally estopped” from claiming they were not negligent in serving the coffee that way – because that issue was already decided between those two parties, albeit in a different case.
This is not to lecture you, but more to clear up the difference in case anyone is interested, and also because I can’t resist explaining it, since I wrote a paper on the differences and the frequency with which the terms and concepts are mixed up and misapplied.
Sigh. The point is that the jury can only consider the evidence given to it. So if YOU want to argue that THIS JURY was “stupid” or “easily manipulated” or made the wrong decision, then you are bound to consider the same evidence it did. Otherwise, you’re not talking about this case; you’re talking about some other, totally hypothetical case in which the jury knew other facts that it did not in fact know. Any time you want to accuse a jury of making a “wrong” decision, you obviously must confine yourself to the facts that jury knew. If it didn’t know something else, how could it have been wrong to fail to consider it? How do you consider something you do not know?
Listen, do me a favor: Don’t tell me something doesn’t reflect well on me, or accuse me of insulting your intelligence, and then follow it up with a smiley. We can be friendly about this or not, but we can’t be both friendly and unfriendly. So stop insulting me, be it ever so mildly, or stop winking at me. Honestly, I can go either way because, despite what you seem to think, I’m not much invested in this conversation, but you’ll have to help me out here and be a little clearer about which way we’re going.
First, you cannot assume facts not in evidence, and that includes that this woman was offered a drink holder. Second, one of the reasons it may not have come up at trial is because neither cardboard drink carriers nor automobile cupholders are “safety devices,” and I’m confident the manufacturers of both are clear that they are not. (“Safety devices,” since they are intended to make things safer, produce enormous liability when they fail.) Third, I think it’s a tough argument to make that “reasonable care” requires one to request a manner to make a product safe – even if drink holders did so – rather than expecting that a consumer will be presented with a safe product in the first place. Assuming the product is unsafe, it is not incumbent upon the consumer to make it safe, nor will the manufacturer be absolved of liability if the consumer fails to do so.
I think anyone reading my posts, and yours, can decide who is adding to the debate, so I will leave them to it. Your opinion in this regard I’m afraid I am unable to credit.