In yet another lawsuit of questionable merit, a woman has sued Pizza Hut for using “excessively hot” oil to deep fry peppers. Umm-that’s why people bob for apples and not french fries, lady. :smack: Her husband’s inclusion adds icing to the stupidity cake. Worst of all, I bet they’ll win.
Unless the husband has a perfect-chin fetish, I have to wonder exactly what companionship he’s losing here.
I dunno. I’d expect a popper to be hot. I wouldn’t expect it to be filled with scalding oil, as the woman alleges in her suit. The McDonalds’ hot coffee suit sounds pretty frivolous, too, until you look at the actual details of what happened. At the very least, I’m withholding judgement until I get more information.
I hate to say it but that doesn’t seem that unreasonable. I would say if a resturant brings food to your table you should have a reasonable expectation that it’s…edible. And by edible I mean not going to do you serious injury if you attempt to eat it.
Of course the question here is was it a serious injury? If it’s a pizza-burning-the=-top-of-your-mouth kind of thing, then it’s ridiculous. Of course she should know it was hot. But if it’s a hospital skin graft kind of thing…no, food that is being served to you should not do that.
And actually I find it kind of refreshing that they’re asking for $25000 (to cover medical expenses?) and not a bizzilion as is usually asked for.
No blow jobs for a while. Who wouldn’t sue?
Maybe it’s not the woman’s companionship he’s missing - maybe he’s a diehard boiling oil fanatic. And, in the course of trying to get his wife into it, events unfurled*…Resulting in a loss of the precious, precious oil**.
*tempted to say penis ensued, but I can’t think of that and boiling oil in the same sentence without cringing.
**Hey, this sounds familiar. Bush’s already had problems with food. Could this be a relative?.. :dubious: 
Hold off on the Humanitarian of the Year award. From the article:
A complaint typically will not ask for a specific amount of money (“and damages in an amount to be proven at trial.”) Some courts, however, have what’s called a jurisdictional minimum. For example, in California, there are three levels (like Goldilocks and the three bears): small claims court (less than $5,000), limited jurisdiction, and unlimited jurisdiction (above $25K).
I suspect that this article was written by someone who knows nothing about complaints. I further suspect that the complaint says, “has suffered damages in an amount to be proven at trial, but at least $25,000” so as to get into Pennsylvania’s unlimited jurisdiction court.
I express no opinion about the merit of the underlying claim, and will now return you to your regularly scheduled pitting. After all, it stops being fun once the lawyers turn it into a mundane discussion of the finer points of obscure procedural rules. 
You see, what chaps me about these allegations is that apparently these folks have no duty re: their own safety and preservation, and shove something in their gub without checking, first.
Coffee is friggin’ hot. I add a few cubes of ice when getting self-serve stop n’ go coffee. If soup is steaming, you blow and sample, slowly. Kinda like checking my daughter’s bottle to make sure it wasn’t too hot-when she was a baby. At 10 she’s smarter than the woman in the OP.
In short-if you stuff it in your pie hole and it burns you, bites you, explodes, or grows tentacles, you should have checked it first, meathead.
The guy is married. Like he actually gets blow jobs anymore.
True…but I say again, don’t they have a reasonable expectation that food brought to their table for their comsumption is consumable? Isn’t that part of the resturant/patron contract? Yes, they have a responsabilty…does that mean the restaurant doesn’t have any?
Er…and really, if you’re served something and it explodes when you eat it, it’s your fault? What if steel bolts shoot through your cheeks? What if there’s a frog in it?
You obviously have a very different conception of marriage than I do 
.
Yes, a customer should expect that their food is hot. They should not be expected to know that their food could inflict serious injury if they eat it. Yes, coffee is hot, but it should not be so hot that it can inflict third degree burns. Poppers are hot, but they should not be served so hot that they cause serious injury. If food is being served so hot that one would have to wait 10 minutes before it’s safe to eat, there’s a problem.
Besides, those poppers can be deceiving. I picked one up bare-fingered and it wasn’t all that hot to the touch. Took a bite and could have sworn I had swallowed napalm. I had a red mark on my chin for a couple of days and a blister on the roof of my mouth as a result. I can’t imagine how much hotter one would have to be to have actually inflicted a serious burn on the chin.
Exactly, from the outside, the breading can be fairly cool to the touch while the inside is full of 350 degree oil. There is no way to tell short of cutting the thing open on the plate. I can’t blame the woman.
OTOH, I don’t know what Pizza Hut could have done to prevent it, if there was no way for the customer to tell that the pepper was full of hot oil, then there would be no way for the cook/server to tell either. It’s one of those unusual circumstances where someone gets hurt, and where it isn’t clear that anybody acted irresponsibly.
If I were asked to rule today on it, with this little info, I’d find for the plaintiff, but only award compensatory damages, not punative.
Wait a minute-didn’t this happen before? Only it was at a hamburger chain and it was a pickle that burned her lip? And her husband also sued for the loss of comfort?
Anyone remember that?
A quick google on ‘pickle burn lawsuit’ comes up with this:
The ‘case settled’ link:
Here is the thing, punitive damages are only availible in cases where the plaintif can PROVE malice, fraud or oppression. If that is the standard and they can meet the standard, why should they not get punitive damages?
That being said full disclosure requires that I inform you that I have not read the linked article. I stopped reading the “Stupid lawsuit” articles because the reporters invariably get the facts screwed up.
For christs sake, we have a legal system that is vary capable of protecting itself from so called frivolous lawsuits. Why are so many people so intent on barging in with little or no facts spouting “Oh my god, look what some stopid jury did”?
That’s it, in a nutshell. I love jalepeno poppers, and order them all the time. The waitress brings them out, and I pop one in my mouth and bite down. And yes, every time I burn myself on the piping hot cheese.
'Cuz I’m a dumbass. My husband just laughs at me.
I would never think to sue anyone. It’s my own damn fault.
I feel like I’m beating a dead horse but there’s a difference between burning yourself and actually suffering serious injury. Me? Scalded chin and blistered roof of the mouth - not something to sue over, and probably my fault for not being more careful. Third degree burns on my chin? Not reasonable to expect, and shouldn’t happen in the first place.
In another thread that is dealing with the same sort of thing, someone pointed out that it’s a matter of degree (no pun intended). What if the temperature of the popper was 500 degrees? Would you sue then? At what point does it differ between “reasonably expected to be hot” and “hotter than any intelligent human being could reasonably expect”?
If it melts your tongue off, it’s too hot.
Don’t tell my wife. She doesn’t know she’s supposed to stop.
I just felt that, from the information available in that puny little article, that pizza hut did not appear to be malicious, fraudulent or aggressively negligent in making and serving jalapeno poppers. A company can do things in a reasonable manner, but should still be responsible to compensate people they injure while doing business.