I did do something boneheaded with the gun, I fired it with someone standing in front of me, even if not directly in front of me. That's a no-no in gun land, I'm quite sure.

And, how is "too hot" not a potential defect? Every product has characteristics. For food products, temperature is a characteristic just as much as how a gun sights/aims is a characteristic for guns. Any characteristic of a product that causes injury could be a defect and lead to a products liability suit.

Hey, McDonald's KNEW it caused a lot of problems, but they determined that the hotter coffee would make them MILLIONS more after they paid out the settlements. I'm glad she sued McDonald's.

Correct. Had this one particular McD's been serving their coffee 20 degrees hotter, then you might have negligence. The fact that this was a company-wide suggestion/policy pushes it into the product liability area.

I sorta agree with you, but look at what would have happened if the coffee was the correct temp (i.e. she was 100% responsible). She would have had minor burns that would have stung for a few hours, maybe. McDonald's 20% responsibility, if we accept your view, leads to enormous damage that would not have occurred but for their error. That seems to weigh in favor of a percentage greater than 20%. And yes, I realize you could change things around in my hypo and say what would have been her injury if she hadn't of spilled. However, consider the fact that McD's surely knew that *some* people would spill (i.e. probability of harm was very high), yet still did nothing. That weighs strongly against McD's.

Exactly, it was a company policy. And that's why I pointed out that it was a products liability suit, not a simple negligence tort...

All i'm trying to say is when you fired the gun you had no way of knowing it would hit your friend. But, when you spill hot coffee on your lap - you should expect to get burned. I think your point is that she shouldn't have expected to get burned as badly as she did or she probably would have been more careful?

When I fire the gun, I should know that what I am doing is ill-advised, but will almost certainly lead to no damage. When she spilled hot coffee, she knew that doing so is ill-advised, but will almost certainly lead to only minimal damage. The 2 are exactly analogous. The actor has done something dumb that typically does little (coffee) or no (gun) damage, but for the defect of the product, which becomes the primary reason that the damages are significant.

Isn't it true that the award the jury gave was based on the amount of coffee sales that McDonald's makes in 1 or 2 days??

And that the company policy to keep the coffee so close to BOILING was so that customers wouldn't take advantage of the free refills policy?

Why doesn't anyone worry about McDonald's taking responsibility for its greed?

Your first point is exactly true. Evidence was presented that McD's makes $1.35 mil every day on coffee, and the punitive damages award was based, acoording to the jury, on 2 days of coffee profits. Some jurors apparently wanted to go for a week of coffee!

As for your 2nd point, I had heard that as well. However, I did not come across that as a reason in the research I did, although it may still be the case.

Following the logic of product liability - every auto make in the world should be waiting to get sued. They continue to produce cars that exceed the speed limit, and studies show that death and injury increase exponentially as speed increases above 55 mph. So if I'm doing 70 and slam into a tree, my family can sue GM because they made a car that is capable of going 70 mph. Now if I happen to drive a Corvette, and slam into a tree at 130 mph, they can sue for 10X as much because they blatantly built a performance car to make money and ignored the potential danger.

Yes but the purchaser knows that the car can exceed the speed limit. They choose to speed. The purchaser of McD's coffee has absolutely no warning or expectation that McD's serves their coffee at temperatures that far exceed typical coffee.

Poor analogy. It has to do with what one's reasonable expectations are about the product, and whether the product in question meets them. My reaonable expectation is that my car can go 70mph. Plus, my reasonable expectation is that if my car slams into a tree at 70mph (or 130mph ), I will be hurt. However, if I am on the highway, going 70, and step on the brakes and they barely work, and I can't hold the curve and slam into a tree, then I might have a suit, because my reaonable expectation is that the car can go 70, but also that the brakes will perform and I will be able to stop in a reasonable distance.

Not really, McDonalds coffee has always been hot, as shown by the previous lawsuits. Since their equipment is standardized, it seems safe to assume that it is true nationwide. Was this the womans' first time ever buying McDonalds coffee?

As for cars, my reasonable asumption is that if the car can do 130 the manufacturer has made it safe to do so.

It was said that McDonalds was negligent because they ignored the danger of serving extremely hot coffee because it meant greater sales. Therefore, GM is negligent because they build a car that is capable of 130 because it means increased sales and they ignore they danger.

When McDonalds sells coffee they don't intend for the buyer to spill it on themselves. They put a lid on the coffee to try and prevent this from happening.
When GM sells me a Corvette they don't intend for me to lose control. They put brakes on the car to allow me to stop it.

However, because McDonalds makes their coffee hotter, and GM makes their car faster they are at fault (to a degree)

She bought the coffee, she knew it was very hot, she spilled the coffee, she should have been responsible.

You have a choice about how fast you drive your car. She didn't have a choice about how hot the coffee was served. Following your logic McDonalds could serve boiling coffee which I hope you would agree is not safe.

Once again, I have to point out that this coffee wasn't just hot, it caused 3rd degree burns. This isn't just getting the roof of your mouth burned by a slice of pizza. As the jury decided, yes, she shared some of the blame, but McDonalds continued to serve the coffee even though they knew it was hot enough to cause someone serious injury if it spilled (which was very likely to occur some of the time).

Also, since the issue of her having it between her legs in the car came up for debate. Would it be any less worse if she were dining in and it got knocked into her lap by accident there?

I don't know that, and maybe that would be a valid defense, i.e. yes our coffee is unreasonably hot, but this person knew that. However, she can't be expected to know the *precise* medical danger posed by the temp (and they did), plus products liability suits are strict liability, IIRC, so such a defense might not work...

Your assumption would be, I think, that the manufacturer has made it as safe as is reasonable, not perfectly safe. Of course, the fact that driving 130 is against the law might play a role, since the law is a safety law. Nevertheless, it wouldn't give them license to skimp on the brakes. You expect the car to stop in a reasonable distance, to handle in a manner reasonable for that speed, etc. You don't expect the car to be perfectly safe at that speed, just as safe as is reasonable given the conditions.

Again, I think you are ignoring what the reasonable expectations of the consumer are. First off, anyone driving 130 is in total violation of the law, so contributory negligence will almost surely bar any recovery. Drinking coffee is not a violation. The expectations of the coffee drinker are vastly different than the speedster. That is one clear difference. Furthermore, it's all about expectations. What do you expect when you buy coffee? What do you expect if you accidently spill it on yourself? I expect it to be hot, and expect to be mildly burned when I spill it. I don't expect 3rd degree burns. What do you expect when you buy a car, say a sports car? You expect that it can go fast, sure, but you also expect that if you go fast your risk of accident will also go up. You expect that its brakes will work reasonably well at that speed, and it will handle as well as can be expected at that speed. What you don't expect is that the brakes will fail, or some other defect, not connected to normal driving, will force you to lose control.

Reasonable expectations about the performance or failure of a product are what differentiate your example from the coffee...

Is is about expectations. I drive with coffee between my legs very often. Damn_MR2s do not have cup holders. And I have spilled coffee on myself, and I expect some pain. I can right now pour the coffee from my office coffee pot on my skin and expect it to get red and slightly burned. Stupid me for doing so.

But nobody expects the coffee to take your skin off. That was much hotter than it was supposed to be.

And if you get tepid coffee now, it has nothing to do with this. That is just someone messed up. I get very hot coffee to go all the time. Starbucks for example does not serve tepid coffee.

We keep having this thread, and the last time I linked to some articles about the case and the graphic description of her injuries.

Glad you're wrestling with the legal arguments... How would you respond to my gun hypo above? Is that different to you? How do you address the fact that she knew it was very hot, but didn't know exactly how hot, as compared to other coffee people drink, and didn't know the tremendous medical difference such a difference in temp posed? Especially in light of the fact that McD's knew exactly how much hotter it was, and knew exactly what the medical consequences of that were?

She received THIRD DEGREE burns? Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but can't you only get third degree burns from a chemical?

(Seriously, except for the "Have you ever tasted McDonald's coffee?" chemical jokes, can anybody confirm this?)

And the car was still at the time of the accident. Here's a post I made in another thread about this, when people brought up the case:

If the coffee had been regular temperature, of course it would have been ridiculous to award her damages. But they were selling coffee, for consumption, at a temperature WAY too high for consumption. That's where they screwed up. If she'd tried to drink it at that temperature, it would have done damage too.

If anything, the punitive damages were too low.

Here's a recap of the case, for those who've only heard about it through the grapevine: http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

You can get them from just about anything, I believe. I think it only means that all the layers of skin are destroyed. One of the med students or actual doctors could undoubtedly answer in more accurate detail.

"Usually third degree burns are caused by contact with hot liquid, flame and electricity."- From http://www.shands.org/find/service/burn/third.htm

Guns are expected to shoot straight. Coffee is expected to be hot. She got what she ordered, you didn't.

Her stupidity is no more the fault of McDonalds than her carelessness.


So, if someone makes a whisky that's stronger than most others, they are to blame for the person who kills themselves, or someone else, because they drank too much? I think not.

She screwed up and she wanted someone else to pay for it. McDonalds screwed up by playing corporate lawyer hard ball with her both in the court and in the eye of the public. Thankfully the courts later reduced the laughable original award to something, that while still more than reasonable, wasn't the gross miscarriage of justice that the original decision awarded.

Again - that analogy does not work either. The alcohol % of the liquor is on the bottle. That is sufficient warning. If McD's had a sign posted a the drive-thru that said our coffee is brewed at 160 degrees then that would be sufficient warning.

Guns are supposed to shoot straight, and coffee is supposed to be hot. Not very helpful. How straight is straight? What is "hot"? What if I aimed 2 feet to the right of my friend and the gun fired 2 feet to the left. Thus, the gun is defective, it didn't fire straight, but at some point you would have to say that it is my fault and not the gun manufacturers. And the converse, that at some point it is the manufacturers fault for making a gun that fires off target.

So, Yes, coffee is supposed to be hot. But how hot is hot? Can McD's serve boiling coffee to their customers, with no possibility of liability, even though my Mr. Coffee at home prepares coffee about 80 degrees cooler? If you think they can serve boiling coffee, then our argument is over. But if you don't, then you have to decide at what point the coffee passes from "hot" to too hot.

In other words, "straightness" and "temperature" are characteristsics of the 2 products, respectively. Each of these characteristics has a range of acceptable values, and when the characteristics of a single one of these products falls outside that range, then liability should follow. So, how hot is hot, and how straight is straight? Simply throwing out those adjectives without definition doesn't advance the argument.

Bad example. Yes, they would be to blame if their whiskey did not indicate it's strength clearly on the bottle. Let's assume that regulations about alcohol didn't exist. If every brewery, and every can of beer, is about 5% alcohol, and one brewery serves beer that is 15% alcohol (I know, beer isn't beer at 15% ) without informing folks, then someone who went in and drank three beers thinking it was OK, and in reality it was the equivalent of 9 beers that they and everyone else were used to drinking, yes, the brewer would be to blame.

Eh, remember, this isn't a first time drinker here. She knew the coffee was very hot. So, it's not the case where the proof has been changed without her knowledge.