Did you read the "recommended serving temperature" from gourmet coffee houses? What are they, chopped liver?

One would expect different things from a "Gourmet coffee house" than they would from McDonalds, wouldn't you think?

In terms of quality of coffee, sure, but not temperature. Cheap coffee brews at the same temperature as the good stuff.

Evidently, this is not the case. Fast food chains, diners, family restaurants, etc. serve their coffee 140-160. Gourmet houses (according to your research) serves coffee at 185+.

All I can say at this late point in the evening (late for me, at least) is this:

You go, OldDude! I give up!

I had long since given up and gone to bed.

I am really not trying to minimize the issue; I understand the woman got serious burns. I just think that people are too quick to propose a solution that won't work very well. A lot of research points to the need for very high brewing temperatures and serving immediately at almost the same temperature to have satisfactory product. I think people proposing that coffee be served at 130 seriously need to brew a cup, pour it black, let it cool to 130, then add cream and sugar if they use it, and drink it. I pretty well guarentee they will be dissatisfied, and not repeat the experiment.

I don't think there is a market for "safe" coffee. Now I think we need to look at the fact that drinkinging dangerously hot coffee in a moving vehicle, even as a passenger, is inherently more dangerous than sitting in a restaurant (except in California where there might be an earthquake). Maybe coffee shouldn't be sold at the drivethru window, only indoors, (and shouldn't be sold at all in California). Maybe coffee drinking in a vehicle should be prohibited. I just don't feel this woman's suit should ruin coffee for everyone else, especially when in a restaurant, not their cars.

It also looks like McD's lawyers "phoned it in" by failing to challenge "incorrect facts" (usually called lies, except in legal proceedings) presented about home coffee makers, just as I guessed.

Hardee's, another gourmet coffee house.
Now there are two dangerous chains.
Do you have independent data for this or are you just believung the same lawyers who submitted "incorrect facts" about home coffee brewing?

Seriously, based on my measurements 155-160 is probably hot enough at the moment it is poured. I think 140 would be very unsatisfactory, I found 133 to be the temperature at which I would demand a warmup. These numbers will vary a little from person to person.

Note that law is unlike science. Only people with "standing" in the case can submit material. If one lawyer submits "incorrect facts" and the other lawyer fails to challenge, they don't get corrected. That doesn't make them true. In science, anyone can run an experiment. If the results are reproducible by others (and I certainly encourage you to make your own measurements), then they are generally excepted as true until someone does a reproducible experiment that shows they are wrong, at least under certain circumstances. This will always cause a little tension between the two viewpoints.

How would a warning not work to put people on guard? It's been said numerous times by people here that they don't really expect to get third degree burns that quickly from a mere coffee spill.

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I don't think there is a market for "safe" coffee. Now I think we need to look at the fact that drinkinging dangerously hot coffee in a moving vehicle, even as a passenger, is inherently more dangerous than sitting in a restaurant (except in California where there might be an earthquake). Maybe coffee shouldn't be sold at the drivethru window, only indoors, (and shouldn't be sold at all in California). Maybe coffee drinking in a vehicle should be prohibited. I just don't feel this woman's suit should ruin coffee for everyone else, especially when in a restaurant, not their cars.

So how does it ruin coffee for everybody else? There's nothing about the lawsuit that said McDonalds had to lower their coffee temperatures. That may be the route McDonalds chose, but they have other options available to them. There were two elements to her lawsuit, both needed: a dangerous temperature, and no warning. McDonalds chose to get rid of the former, rather than providing the latter. Blame McDonalds.

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It also looks like McD's lawyers "phoned it in" by failing to challenge "incorrect facts" (usually called lies, except in legal proceedings) presented about home coffee makers, just as I guessed.

Again, if we go by your information without acknowledging that there might have been more going on behind the scenes, then it does make McDonalds lawyers look bad. But how does that make this a bad case, or a failure of justice? McDonalds, by your version, had a VERY easy way to defeat the arguments of Mrs. Liebeck. They didn't, and it's their fault, not hers, or anybody else's. That's the whole point of a trial; it's a fact finding expedition.

I also would like to point out that "incorrect facts" aren't called "lies" all the time, in legal proceedings or otherwise. They're also merely called "errors." Or do you think now that her lawyers purposefully misrepresented their facts, without the benefit of actually hearing them, or how they were presented?

I never said I opposed a warning, and nowadays everyone prints a warning on their lid (of course no one reads them) so "problem solved." Apparently this case started in '92. I have no clue when McD added their warning. If everyone else is happy with the warning, I am too. I just don't want lukewarm coffee because of this woman.

The date of the trial vs conditions today may unfairly color my opinion. The plaintiff's lawyers made a big deal that home machines serve coffee at 140. Via the Internet, there is so much info that says this is simply not true that the lawyers would have to either be suborning perjury or wearing their most myopic, tunnel-vision blinders and letting their expert testify erroneously. Admittedly in 1992, such data might not have been so easy to find. However, I can't find any data that suggests any home unit serves at 140 so I wonder where or how they made this fact up.

Editted to add: I found many law firms that give a "summary" of this case on their website. I would describe them as "ambulance-chasers," you would describe them as specializing in fee-contingent injury and product liability cases. At any rate they cling to this clearly incorrect claim that home machines serve coffee at 140. What about them, now that it is obvious this "incorrect fact" was never true?

I also have to admit in spirit of full disclosure that, while I don't oppose a "hot" warning on the coffee lid, I do get upset with the 20 pages of inane warnings in some product's instruction book before I can get to the real instructions on how to operate the product properly, instead of improperly.

As Namja stated, that was actually a review about how a coffee machine performed.

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Typical recommendations for brewing and serving temperature are in the range McDonalds used. They are not the exception you all are claiming them to be. If you want coffee served at safe temperatures (120 F) I believe you need to try it first. I also believe you will be completely dissatisfied with the product.

Now, it is absolutely true that at recommended serving temperatures, coffee is dangerous if you spill large amounts on yourself, it will burn, I am not disputing that. What I am disputing is that there is a commercial market for "safe" coffee.

Stop knocking down my straw man, please. Nobody is arguing with your assertion that coffee tastes better at higher temperatures, and I don't believe anybody is saying that you ccouldn't find a way to serve super-duper red hot coffee, if you want. The only thing people are saying (I think) is, if the coffee is hotter than normal (which, whether you think it's correct or not, was uncontested), and therefore presented a substantially greater danger than normal, there should be a warning.

From the Hardee's case you mentioned:
First, take any state court decision on a similar subject with a grain of salt; those judges are usually elected, and no judge wants to be the one who gets labelled as allowing another "McDonalds case."

Second, I question the judge's reasoning in that case:By that standard, since you're an engineer, not an expert in the food service or beverage industry, should we completely disregard your findings?

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In terms of quality of coffee, sure, but not temperature. Cheap coffee brews at the same temperature as the good stuff.

There's a difference between brewing temperature and serving temperature. Nobody's debating brewing temperature.

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I never said I opposed a warning, and nowadays everyone prints a warning on their lid (of course no one reads them) so "problem solved." Apparently this case started in '92. I have no clue when McD added their warning. If everyone else is happy with the warning, I am too. I just don't want lukewarm coffee because of this woman.

I'm fine with a warning too. I tend not to drink coffee at any temperature, because I'm sensitive to burns on my tongue. As long as the warning is sufficient (ie. not "may cause burns"; even "may cause serious burns" is okay.), I have no problems. I do question the wisdom of placing the warning on the cup, in tiny print. It seems to me you create more of a burn hazard that way, just from people trying to read it. It would strike me as smarter to put a warning on the drive through, but I'm sure that's not the only way.

While looking for the year the warning was added, I ran across this: That's the sort of thing that just drives me nuts.

I really wish people would stop making assumptions about me, and what I believe or would say. If you knew me in person, you'd know that I'm sharply critical of opportunistic lawyers.

I'll try to be less inflamatory. I really meant any lawyer or aspiring lawyer would use the second term as the legally correct term for this particular specialty.

What do you think about them continuing to misrepresent the temperatures at McDonald's vs home coffee brewing machines? Ethical? Violation?

I'm sorry. This thread is so long I have no idea what straw man I'm knocking down.

At my company, we always said we threw straw men out there to be burned, so if I knew, I probably wouldn't respect him, but in this case, I can't even identify him.

Again, I can't argue with any certainty what's "normal", and we don't know how those facts were argued in the case. But if you're totally willing to discount the findings of one court, at least bear in mind that those numbers for Hardee's serving temperature come from another court's findings.

In any case, even if the serving temperature of coffee everywhere IS that high, I don't believe it's "normal" for people to expect to get burned that seriously from coffee. McDonald's knew their coffee, served at that temperature, in the confines of a car, had caused serious injuries before (well above what I would expect a reasonable, average person would expect), and they did... nothing.

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It was only to make the point at least two major chains serve at this temperatures. Again calling into question whether the lawyers had good testimony about serving practices. I'm certainly qualified to measure temperature with a thermometer. When it comes to offering a studied opinion on whether a restaurant could serve coffee at 130° F and satisfy their customers, I am aware it is not my field and would not offer a professional opinion, as that would be an ethical violation. My personal opinion is obviously that the idea is complete BS. I believe this expert admitted he was not qualified in that particular area and the judge dismissed his testimony.

We don't know how they reached the conclusion that Hardee's served coffee at that temperature; as you've pointed out, facts CAN be wrong in cases. The guy in the other case was certainly qualified to tell whether a person would be burned (he was admittedly an expert on that matter), but they threw all of his testimony out for the reason he wasn't an industry expert, which none of us are.

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But the many brewing links I overwhelmed you with point out that it should be served only "a few" degrees cooler and served immediately (and the one site you felt was irrelevant specifically touted the serving temperature it could achieve, presumably as a "good thing" since advertising normally addresses good things. If brewed properly, it would not have time to cool naturally within the "immediately," you would have to add approximately 0.3 lbs of ice per pound of coffee to reach the claimed "acceptable" temperatures quickly.

I'm not arguing with you about the temperature coffee should be served at. But if you think that $70 coffee maker is what's normal, I would suggest otherwise; another one of your links mentioned that the normal coffee machine costs around $30, and has a lower temperature. If you look at the rest of that site, it becomes clear that it's a gourmet coffee oriented website (see their tutorials on "the science" and "the arte" of making coffee). It's highly unlikely that a gourmet site would give a "normal" coffee maker an "A" rating. And again, nobody is debating that, for sure, gourmet coffee drinkers expect hotter coffee. At the very least, maybe people are a little more aware of how seriously they can get burned from coffee, if only because of the warnings.

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What do you think about them continuing to misrepresent the temperatures at McDonald's vs home coffee brewing machines? Ethical? Violation?

Again, since we don't have the record of the case (and the judge who felt it was appropriate to criticize the jury's findings didn't have the record of the case), I'm still, in spite of what you said, not 100% convinced that their findings of the home coffee temperature HAD to be unreasonable. We don't know WHAT evidence they put on to support that finding; for all we know, they had the actual engineer who designs each and every Mr. Coffee up there saying that. I don't have a problem with most of the sites (that I see) that mention it.

The point of some of those sites seem to mention what really happened in the case, not Tort Reform's version of it. That was actually part of how the case was decided, so why not mention it? It isn't as if anybody could use their website as evidence in court (and have it be respected).

For years, the insurance companies and tort reform proponents have endorsed the myth that this lady drove herself up to the window, bought coffee, spilled it on herself while driving, got a little burned, got in front of a crazy jury, and won millions of dollars. When what happened was completely different; you and I may not like the numbers they had to work with, but with those numbers, do you really think the jury was wrong to decide as they did?

This case is always brought up as an example of the tort system out of control, and it just isn't. At worst, it's an example of a bunch of corporate lawyers screwing up by allowing some (maybe) erroneous information to go unchallenged. At best, it's a message to big business not to underestimate the value of humans in their cost-benefit analysis.

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I'm sorry. This thread is so long I have no idea what straw man I'm knocking down.

At my company, we always said we threw straw men out there to be burned, so if I knew, I probably wouldn't respect him, but in this case, I can't even identify him.

Sorry. It seemed to me that you were intent on debating me about whether coffee is better hot or not. It seemed like you were acting as if I was saying "coffee would be okay a little colder", and then you were tearing that position apart with references about how coffee is "better". I think that was a misunderstanding between us, because you (apparently) didn't know (at that point) that I was okay with leaving all coffee that hot (provided there's a reasonable warning).

My fiancee is going to kill me if we don't go out to eat now, and we'll be out of town tomorrow. If there's something you want me to reply to, please make it clear that that's what you want, and I'll do it Monday after I get off work. Otherwise, I guess the last word is yours.

I think this is about played out. However, you seem to think that I am focused only on gourmet home coffee units. That is just what I found first. I also found this site which makes commercial units in various sizes (follow the link, its too long to post)

They stress even in a commercial setting the need to brew at 200° F and hold the brewed coffee at a 185° F serving temperature.

I also found some 40 year Navy coffee directions (Navy coffee is not gourmet) which specify 185° F holding temperature.

This of course is the temperature of the coffee as leaving the pot and flowing into your cup. The thermal mass of the cup and whether you use cream or sugar will affect the temperature in the cup.

If McD's lawyers didn't challenge wrong data, I don't blame the jury - how are they to know. At the same time, that doesn't make wrong data true; wrong data will never become true. That gets back to a comment I made earlier about law vs. science. I feel plaintiff lawyer misrepresented the facts; in court, it is up to defendent's lawyer to challenge. After court, it is "jump ball" and anybody can call "shennanigans." I have found zero data supported their claim (I would have posted it if I did) and a ton that didn't. I recognize it would need some real verification to be used in court.

No need to respond as I think we are agreed they should warn, and not much left to debate after that except that I emphatically disagree with plaintiff's lawyer about "normal."

My sister in law school said that the lady ended up getting a lot, lot less than $3 million after all the litigation and court stuff was finished. McDonalds probably appealed the decision and got the amount dropped to under $500k.

Matt

If you get their coffee everyday, you know exactly how hot it is. If you've complained and they still make it too hot, don't get it. No one is forcing anyone to buy and drink their coffee.

My point was that she should have just been awarded her costs for medical and court expenses and nothing more. She still *chose* to buy and consume their coffee knowing how hot it is. She *chose* to do this in an environment that can easily lead to spilling it on yourself. She did not have to accept *any* responsibility for making these choices.

I think this side of the affair was all discussd in some depth earlier in thread.

And to link with elektra's post - and the quote therein - concerning the situation of the "accident", someone mentioned before that it is the heat of the liquid combined with the duration it comes into contact with the skin that accounts for any particular degree of burning.

OldDude's excellent empirical research shows the kind of product-heat certain machines produce. Coffee spilling over (pooling?) in one's lap/groin area when seated is more likely to stay in contact with the skin for longer and so the injury would have been exacerbated precisely because of that, IMO.

Also, the skin in the inner thigh is thinner and more prone to injury(as opposed to the back).
This woman put the cup in her lap. Your analogy should then say "If all people who drove Ford Pintos after having a 12 pk. of beer..." If you want to accurately portray what happened here.

Well, I'm off to sue GE, they don't have any warning on their stoves telling you not to sit on them while they are hot.

I manage to make reasonable coffee out of the cheap stuff, because it's all I can afford, and my technique involves superheating a cup of water to "prime" my coffee maker.

The person in question should have known better than to put a cup of coffee between her legs.

BTW I got scalded by a cup of hot water at 17 that had come out of an electric kettle, and had second-degree burns over a large portion of my forearm.

RD

I almost dread posting in this thread again, and would like to avoid the too hot/too cold/just right aspect of the case and focus on another issue.

Without an exact temperature,can we agree good coffee is pretty hot and will hurt like hell and possibly do serious damage if it spills?

If it hadn't spilled, this wouldn't have been a case and that is an element we haven't discussed. The coffee is served with a safety cap that actually makes it hard to spill large quantities, it grips tightly and it has a little "sipper" flap that limits how fast it can come out. In spite of this design the lady seriously injuried herself. Why? The safety lid is dangerous Why?

Because if you like cream and sugar in your coffee, you have to remove the cap to add it. The tighter the cap, the harder it is to get off and the more likely you are to lose your grip and spill it while struggling to get it off, causing a serious burn. This is true even in the store, but more so if juggling it in a car. Yet if the cap is loose fitting, if the cup tips, the lid will come off and a serious burn could result.

This dilemma can be solved in at least a couple of ways.
*Perhaps sugar and cream should be added by the server (to the amount you request) before the lid is put on. This is done in vending machines, not that they are a model for good coffee. Then it is not necessary to remove the lid and it functions to intent; it limits the rate of large spills.
*Perhaps the lid should be secured in a different way, easy to remove, but still secure when tipped, for example, screw-on.

Yeah, I hesitate to post in this thread again, so I guess I won't...


D'OH!!!

I never found removing those lids all that difficult, but then again, what would I know?

RD

You're not an 80-something year old woman with arthritis. I have seen people spill them while fumbling, but I don't have much personal experience as I drink coffee black. Its just a theory, but to me it makes more sense to focus on this issue than selling tepid coffee.