No. It's not. And McDonald's didn't pay a cent for "her stupidity." (Although I would call it clumsiness at worst, not stupidity). The fact of the matter is that, whatever you choose to believe, over what the actual facts are, a jury found her only a fifth at fault as a matter of fact. McDonalds didn't have to pay anything for that fifth of guilt.

What McDonalds did have to pay for was serving a product at a temperature way, WAY over what any reasonable person should expect the temperature to be. Even if she hadn't been clumsy, and merely sipped the coffee (as the product was intended), she would have been burned. McDonalds doesn't get the right to do that. That's why they had to pay compensatory damages. And they had to pay the punitive damages because they knew exactly what sort of risk they were taking with people, and they still kept doing it.

You seem to be saying "if you expect it to be any hot, you shouldn't be able to hold somebody else responsible, no matter how hot it is." That's crazy. If I'm dealing with regular tap water, you know what? I'm not all that careful. Because I know what my risk would be if I spilled it. Same thing if I pay somebody for tap water. If the water is a little bit warmer, I'll reasonably be a little bit more careful. Same for hot. But it's completely unfair to expect a woman to treat a liquid she should be able drink if bought from anywhere else, in reality, with the same amount of care she should treat boiling water.

The only miscarriage of justice was that the punitive damages were reduced. Those are meant to hurt McDonalds and make them change their practices. And I don't think they were enough.

I'm not talking about a change of a product that she had consumed before. I'm talking about a rogue brewery (not *the* Rogue Brewery, which makes some fine beer) that doesn't serve the same beer as other places.

Also, do we know if she has had their coffee before? I have never seen that she did (or didn't). Did she have any reason to think their coffee was significantly different than the coffee of other places? Can a reasonable person be expected to know the medical implications of spilling coffee that is 140 degrees versus coffee at 170 degrees? Yes, both will burn, but can a reasonable person detect the difference in temp, and can a reasonable person be expected to know that one will just cause a minor burn, while the other can cause 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds?

Coffee should not be 160-180 degrees F. it should not take ALL the layers of you skin off and land you in the hospital for a week.

What if a 5 year old kid reached up and pulled a boiling cup of coffee off the counter and it hit her in the face blinding her for life. When you purchase food and drink you have a reasonable expectation that It will not maim you! If I spill hot Starbucks on myself I exepect a little pain for a few hours but It should not land me in the hospital! and rack up $20K in medical bills.

I think McDonalds should have had to pay the full amount awarded by the Jury.

Nearly every consumer of coffee makes coffee at home. Now, how does a coffee pot work - it boils the water to get it to the top and lets it drip down on the coffee. Granted it cools off a little bit, but if coffee is made by boiling water, guess what temperature it is at just after being made - almost boiling -duh!

If she wanted iced coffee should should have ordered it.

I really think this is more like your car analogy. I think any reasonable person expects coffee to be hot due to the process of making it, and is more likely to complain if it has been allowed to cool too much, especially after considering people who like to add cream and sugar which cools it further.

But that's not how it happens. First of all, automatic coffee makers don't boil the water, they just heat it up. Second, when I get a cup of coffee from my Mr. Coffee, it is about 140 degrees, not 212. It never was 212, not even right after brewing.

Right. As I already posted, if I pour a cup of coffee from my Braun on myself, it will hurt and I will regret it, but it will not take off skin. I have done this. More than once. I am quite the klutz.

My son was severely burned by a cup of coffee once. It put him in the emergency room when he was 4 years old for burns all over his head. It was an accident. But if that coffee was hot enough to take off the skin, and I could demonstrate that the temperature and it's effects were known by the vendor, I too would have sued.

As it was, the coffee was hot, but not out of my reasonable expectation.

Technically, I both agree and disagree. Automatic drip pots propel the water up the tube by heating it to just over 212 F, to get over 1 atm of pressure and propel it up the tube, otherwise the water couldn't move (process is called 'percolating', drip machines do it with the water, percolaters do it with the brewing coffee). It steams a lot and cools some as soon as it comes out of the tube. It cools further while trickle through the coffee, and radiates heat from the (insulated) plastic basket.

It has certainly cooled below 212 by the time it collects in the glass bottom. My drip machine claims to keep it at 160. Now I pour it in a ceramic cup, and the thermal mass probably cools it further. It is certainly too high to drink for a while.

All who think this suit has merit: Please do not come to my house for tea. The proper way to make tea is:
1) Boil lots of water.
2) Pour in teapot to pre-heat (3 minutes), empty teapot into cups to pre-heat them.
3) Put tea leaves in pot and pour new boiling water. Cover in tea cozy and brew five minutes. Due to pre-heating and tea cozy, pot will not cool down much.
4) Dump the hot water from cups and pour hot tea. When it cools enough to drink (your temp. may vary) enjoy.

Actually oldone, I might expect that with homemade tea. I will also boil the water.

Again it falls under reasonable expectations. And it's not reasonable to be concerned about coffee from a fast food place sloughing off your skin if it gets on you.

I wonder if the effects from the coffee would have been less if this were a younger person. I assume her old skin was much more delicate than a man of say 30 or so.

here's an analogy for you.

Say I drive around in a Jeep Cherokee whose engine runs much hotter than a Geo Metro. If I slip while checking my oil and burn my hand am I entitled to money? Just because the Geo Metro wouldn't have burned me in that situation doesn't mean that Jeep has made a defective product. Sure I expected it to be hot, but maybe I didn't expect to get burned because I had owned a Metro and touching the engine resulted in no burns. This lady assumed all coffees should be the same temperature.

Point being no matter how hot the coffee was she should be old enough to know how hot a substance is that she has recieved. If it appears to hot for her liking send it back, if she accepts the product and then spills this "defective" (as if there are standards as to how hot coffee should be) cup of coffee on herself, it is now her problem.

here's a more simple analogy

If I buy a set of knives, trip fall and cut off my finger should the company be responsible? The last set of knives I owned wasn't sharp enough to cut a finger off. The company should have warned me that these knives were much sharper than ordinary knives. People would then yell don't run with knives.

If this had happened to a man in his 40's who was an ******* about it, nothing would have happened.

She assumed all coffees made for consumption should all be fit for consumption, not necessarily all the same temperature. Again, what RandyC said about reasonable expectations holds. If no other car made by the industry would have caused the burn, and if the company that made the Jeep knew their product had already caused numerous injuries (yet chose to do nothing about it), then I wouldn't have a problem saying the company was liable for not, at least, putting a warning sticker there. But if your expectations are based solely on what has happened with one other car, those expectations are not necessarily reasonable, and a much better argument could be made against recovery.

Quote:

Point being no matter how hot the coffee was she should be old enough to know how hot a substance is that she has recieved. If it appears to hot for her liking send it back, if she accepts the product and then spills this "defective" (as if there are standards as to how hot coffee should be) cup of coffee on herself, it is now her problem.

And how exactly do you think she should have determined that this coffee was too hot, in order to send it back? She was taking the lid off of the cup to add cream and sugar when it spilled. Who's in a better place to prevent the harm? The company that KNOWS what temperature the coffee is, and that's on notice that the temperature caused injuries, or the woman who's just been handed an insulated cup and is in the process of removing the lid?

Quote:

If I buy a set of knives, trip fall and cut off my finger should the company be responsible? The last set of knives I owned wasn't sharp enough to cut a finger off. The company should have warned me that these knives were much sharper than ordinary knives. People would then yell don't run with knives.

Again, you're using "expectations", not "reasonable expectations." If the last set of knives you owned indeed wasn't sharp enough to cut off fingers, that's somewhat of an anomaly. A reasonable person's expectations, when using knives, is to be extremely careful, because a mishap could result in anything from no injury up to death. No further warnings are needed. I don't know how many people would reasonably expect to die from drinking coffee, but because of the risk of infection (especially with the elderly), that actually could be a risk from the 3rd degree burns suffered. If I knew I could die, or even be scalded down to the bone from drinking coffee, even if somebody bumped me through no fault of my own, I would never drink coffee.

Quote:

If this had happened to a man in his 40's who was an ******* about it, nothing would have happened.

Then that would be a failure of justice, assuming the injuries were the same. He should recover just as much as the woman did.

In my earlier posts I had acknowledged the fact that McDonalds had contributed by virtue of the temperature settings on their machines which had been the cause of earlier problems. My beef was the apparent effect it had on me. Perhaps I should ask the eateries I patronise why they so often serve me with a lukewarm beverage: before now I have wondered if their machines had been adapted to avoid the risk of a lawsuit.

Sometimes out of laziness through wishing to conserve energy I will boil a single cup of water in the microwave. I'll then add instant coffee and will occasionally drink this without milk. It is hot. FYI I do not nestle this beverage between my legs.

Anyway, enough of this legal chit-chat: I'm off to OldDude's for a cuppa

Actually, that was a point that McD's raised. As you can probably imagine, however, it didn't play well with a jury. "What we did was ok because she's old" Besides, they had notice that the coffee could cause such serious burns, regardless of age...

As a side note, I would just like to point out that a skeptical jury (many of them admitted they were predisposed to dismissing the complaint at first) ended up awarding her this much, AND a judge serving as a mediator recommended to McDonald's that they settle for $225k. Why? Because the legal theories support her claim, and I have a feeling that if any of you who think she shouldn't recover did your duty on a jury in this case, I bet you would give her the cash too...

• McDonald's determined that the hotter coffee would sell a lot more.
• McDonald's knew that the hotter coffee would cause more severe injury when spilled.
• After implementation of the hotter coffee, there were hundreds of complaints due to the coffee being too hot.
• McDonald's decided to ignore the complaints since they figured that they would still make more money, even after settling all the lawsuits.

McDonald's got off too easy. They should have been stuck with all the punitive damages.

I should preface this by saying that I am usually against the cynical actions of XYZ Megacorp.... but does that first bullet point mean that people, generally, liked the hotter coffee or does it mean something else?

McDonald's internal marketing research found that they could sell more coffee if they made their coffee 20 degrees hotter than everyone else's. I don't know their research methodology, but this is the reason why they refused to lower the coffee temperature despite the hundreds of complaints.

I think you're dead right; customers tend to like hotter coffee than colder coffee. That doesn't make any difference, does it?

True people like their coffee hotter and more people may have bought the coffee as a result. Because of this the number of complaints and injuries also would rise in proportion. BUT there's a point where you decide that the danger of the coffee outweighs the positive reaction to it.

i initially think this is a silly case, but there was obviously some kind of evidence to suggest otherwise.

All right, you've heard the cliche about the picture and the kiloword. I'm an engineer and I believe an experiment that produces relevant data is worth pages of pointless, factless arguing, too, so I ran one. I brewed both tea and coffee and measured temperatures with my electronic meat fork theromoeter, which has been previously calibrated in boilijng and ice water, and is accurate. I didn't really brew the coffee, I just ran the water through in a simulation, but i brewed and drank the tea.

Coffee: Ran 10 cups through Mr Coffee. Measured temperature in brewing basket after five cups had run into pot, measured temperature in pot when it finished brewing, poured a cup and measured cup. Results: Basket, 180° F; Pot, 174° F; Cup, 162° F. Guess I'll refuse service to little old ladies.

Tea: Preheated cup and tea-pot per my earlier note. Brewed tea and recorded temperatures, poured in preheated cup and measured initial temperature (too hot to do anything more than slurp) and measured again when it reached the temperature where I could take small sips. In my judgement, I would complain if it were served colder than this.
Results: End of pre-heat, pot 191° F, cup, 162° F.
Brewing in preheated pot, Initial 206° F, at end of 4 min. brew, 194° F.
Poured cup of tea into preheated cup, initial, 183° F, sipping temperature, 155° F (and min. temperature I would expect to be served).

Of course, individual preferences for drinking it may vary. I think the preparation temperatures are typical, and reflective of service temperatures unless it is left to sit around and cool. Service at 140° F would clearly be unacceptable to me, so any restuarant which does it loses my business.

As a stats professor said, "In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data."

God, I'm a tool.

I hope you don't boil the water in the microwave without something esle in the cup other than the water. There is a good chance of serious injury if you do.

jr

Umm, superheated water. Brews great tea from teabags, but you do have to watch for sudden boilover when you drop it in.

For those who think McDonald's isn't at fault at all, how about this analogy.

If all those people who drove Ford Pintos weren't careless and ended up in an accident then their cars wouldn't have exploded. Therefore, Ford shouldn't have been liable.

See my experiment. Recommend you measure with reliable thermoter instead of guessing. I believe you will find your coffee much warmer (especially if poured into styrofoam cup with low thermal mass to cool it. My experiment was heavy (room temperature) ceramic cup, and was still much hotter than your assumed 140.

I wish you'd tried the experiment with actual coffee, instead of just water. I'd imagine the presence of coffee grinds would make a difference in the temperature.

Also, there's a difference between the brewing temperature of coffee and the holding/serving temperature of that coffee. Nobody is claiming that McDonalds should have changed their brewing temperature, but the holding temperature (what the temperature drops to while on the burner) is too high.

In any case, I can't argue with you about the temperature that much. Those are your specific findings of fact, but the court apparently found otherwise. McDonalds had every chance to disprove those factual findings, but it obviously failed to do so.

Coffee. Krups. 159 degrees in the cup and it's freakin hot.

Just another data point. I have always operated under my the perception that around 145 degrees is where is uncomfortable to put your hand in it. That should be less than a hot beverage and more than a bath.