"Bob (this one)" > wrote in message
...
Vox Humana wrote:

> "jmcquown" > wrote in message
> .. .
>
>>Kyle Phillips wrote:
>>
>>>"Vox Humana" > ha scritto
>>>
>>> I think it will be an interesting case.
>>>
>>>>Hopefully people won't distort the facts like they always do with the
>>>>McDonald's litigation resulting from burns from insanely hot coffee.
>>>
>>>You're referring to the woman who got a cup of coffee from the
>>>drivethru window and couldn't think of a better place to put it than
>>>between her thighs? A bump and... Ouch!
>>>
>>>Kyle
>>
>>IIRC the elderly woman who filed the coffee lawsuit did not go through the
>>drive-thru. She just spilled coffee in her lap.
>>

Look here for a synoptic recounting of the story:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Corporation>

And it looks like others want a piece of that kind of action:
<http://tinyurl.com/48ypv>

> Actually, she was a passenger in a car. She ordered coffee with cream.
The
> drive parked the car so she could add the cream.

Let's stop here for a second. She had the coffee cup between her legs
to remove the top to add other ingredients.

> The coffee spilled,
> causing 3rd degree burns to her genital area.

It's not so simple as "the coffee spilled." The cup was crushed in the
process of removal of the lid. She did it. It didn't just happen by
itself. Styro cups are weak-walled. All of them.

> The woman was hospitalized
> for about two weeks, suffered immense pain, and had to have therapy
> afterwards. She initially only asked to be reimbursed for her medial
bills
> which amounted to about $20K. Over 750 other people had reported burns to
> McDonalds.

How about get real here...

The premise of her not being responsible operates on the basic
assumption that McDonald's (and everyone else) has to provide you what
you want without your having to take any responsibility for its
disposition. They give you a cup of coffee. What you do with it after
that is up to you. The assumption here is that McDonald's had the
*obligation* to remove *all* hazard from the environment, even in the
case of stupid actions by its customers. According to this, McD should
have tried to get to zero possibility of injury, NO MATTER WHAT THEIR
CUSTOMERS DID.

Some facts:

McD's sells something over a million, three hundred thousand cups of
coffee a day. In the 10 years referred to in court, they had 700
complaints. 3,650 days times 1.35 million and they got 700 complaints.
4,927,500,000 cups of coffee and 700 complaints. Almost 5,000,000,000
- BILLION - cups of coffee and after every SEVEN MILLION one person
was burned..

Nearly one seven-millionth - 1/7,000,000 - of the coffee cups served
burn someone because they don't remember that hot coffee is hot. One
out of every seven million. You have a better chance of winning a
lottery than burning yourself at those odds.

Coffee is routinely brewed between 195 and 205F in restaurants. Any
lower temps and the complaints skyrocket about weak-tasting coffee.
Commercial coffee makers are designed to work at this temp range
because the results are what Americans expect and demand. Espresso is
hotter still because of the steaming.

Food held hot for sale in the US must, by law be hotter than 140F.
That's plenty hot enough to cause burns. Every hot buffet line has to
keep the food above that temperature to be legal. You risk burns every
time you hit the allyoucaneat bar. I bet more than 700 people get
burned every decade. But, since no international chains operate
buffets, the pockets aren't so deep.

Coffee makers for home use brew up at nearly the same temps as the
commercial ones. Any one that bubbles water up and into a coffee pot
has to boil the water before it will drip into the ground coffee.

A styrofoam cup is a fragile thing. Consumers demanded them over the
stronger (and more dimensionally stable paper cups) because they keep
coffee hotter longer. Note: they keep coffee hotter longer.

This whole case mixed apples and oranges. Who the hell puts hot food
between their legs? Do the demand of a well-flavored cup of coffee and
the desire to have a hazard-free environment contradict each other? Is
it not reasonable to take prudent precaution to avoid coming in
contact with hot, corrosive, sharp or otherwise potentially harmful
conditions? Would this woman have put a cup of coffee between her legs
at home? Would she have let a child do it? Does that maybe imply that
she might just have figured it out with a moment's reflection?

All the "admissions" from McDonald's were and are the real-life
standards that virtually all restaurants and, indeed, mom's home
kitchen, have to live with. The laws of physics. Of course hot food
and drink will burn you. Of course coffee fresh out of the machine is
too hot to drink., Of course no one knows about the degree of burning
possible from McD's coffee. Just like they don't know about anybody
else's coffee.

The expert testimony was interesting, too. According to them, if the
coffee had been at 155, it wouldn't have hurt her. Try this. Get your
hot tap water running for a while and stick your finger in it. It will
burn. Almost no one's kitchen sink water is over about 125F. Now take
a 12 or 16 ounce cup of it and pour it in your lap. Tell me how much
burn ointment it takes to get you to stop saying those bad words. Hey,
your home coffee maker according to their testimony is only running at
135 to 140. Pour a cup of that in your lap and tell me how it feels.
But the great reality is that I've never seen a coffee maker that
delivers 135° - 140° finished coffee. In 30 years of professional
foodservice, not once. In making coffee for my parents in their
restaurants in the 50's, not once. At home using everything from a
Chemex pot to a Mr. coffee, not once.

She had a 20% fault in the process. Puhleeze. Vulnerable defendant in
these times of zero-consumer-risk lawsuits and a nice old lady who
forgets that hot stuff burns. Puhleeze.

Where's that whole business of being responsible for one's own
actions. Stupid or otherwise.

> Their own consultants told them to turn down the temperature
> (from almost boiling) to 140F but they felt they would lose money if they
> reduced the temperature to a normal 140F which is about what your home
> coffee maker is set to.

Sorry. You've loaded your description with all sorts of emotional and
uninformed bullshit lifted directly from web sites that are utterly
unbalanced in presentation.

That "normal" you suggest is exactly *not* normal. I just went to the
kitchen and made a pot of coffee in my Proctor-Silex drip machine. It
registered 180° on my Polder tip-probe thermometer and on two
quick-reads. I looked at a package of Folger's little individual cup
coffee packets and it asks for the brewing water to be "near boiling."

And you're choosing to ignore much too much about brewing coffee in
the world at large.

All those machines that let you fill the reservoir with water that
later is pumped up and over ground coffee work at near boiling
temperatures. They have to in order to get the water to flash over to
steam to make it go uphill to the drip head.

Percolators boil water to get it up to the top.

Stick a thermometer into a cup of coffee at your closest Starbucks and
tell me how hot it is.

> It was a calculated risk that had already resulted
> in hundreds of known burns. McDonalds also claimed that the reason they
> served he coffee at such a high temperature was because people bought it
to
> drink when they got to a their destination - except that internal
documents
> showed that they knew most people drank it in the car. Therefore, they
knew
> that the coffee was dangerously hot, most people drank it in moving
> vehicles, and that the lid would have to be removed to put in cream and
> sugar.

In another post to this subject, you said:

>If the coffee was served at a normal 140F temperature, she wouldn't
>have received 3rd degree burns.

You've rather blindly accepted that 140°F as fact. Nope. It's just not so.

>McDonalds knew that 750 other people had been burned. They also
were >advised to reduce the temperature of the coffee.

They were advised of many things, including the numbers of complaints
from people who would complain about weak-tasting coffee is
brewed/served at lower temperatures.

>They also knew that most people were drinking the coffee in their
>cars. They also knew that the lid would have to be removed to add
the >cream. Where does one put a cup of coffee when they have to
remove >the lid while in a car?

Since the 80's, virtually every car available in the US has had drink
holders. Stella was sitting in the passenger seat. Additionally, the
glovebox door is right in front of her to swing down and rest a hot
cup of coffee on; I mean the car wasn't moving at the time, they said.

>If you knew that you burned hundreds of people with your product,
yet >you decided to ignore warnings because you could squeeze out a
few >more dollars by jacking up the heat to near the boiling point,
then >don't you also share responsibility? I'm just turning the
situation >around.

You're talking emotional shit. McD's didn't "jack up the heat." They
use standard Bunn or comparable commercial coffee makers. They hit the
door pre-set to industry standards. Most don't let users adjust the
temperature settings beyond a small range because the machines
wouldn't work as well at lower temps.

>You say that the woman shouldn't have put the cup between her legs.

I note you haven't said you though it was reasonable for her to have
done so.

>I say that McDonalds shouldn't have served boiling hot coffee to
>people in cars, particularly when they knew the top had to be removed
>to add the cream.

McD's served coffee exactly the same as virtually *EVERY* other
restaurant, convenience store and ammo shop that sells coffee. The
machines come with temps designed into them.

>Had the woman immediately sued McDonalds, then I would think that
she >was an opportunist. (Although I can't imaging putting our
genitals >in near boiling coffee in hopes of collecting some money.)
In fact, >she only asked to be reimbursed for her costs. I would have
been the >smart thing for them to just have paid the hospital bills
and thrown >in a few dollars for pain and suffering.

It would have been the thing that would make it go away. But *SHE* put
the cup there. How does one get to be 79 years old and not know that
fresh-brewed coffee is hot enough to burn? Has she never before had a
cup of coffee? Did she never make it at home?

Pastorio

Not to prolong the discussion, but I will simply restate my point.
If you know that 700 people have been burned by your product and you have
not looking into the safety of your operation; you know that you are
dispensing coffee in a flimsy cup to people in cars; and you know that the
lid has to be removed to add the cream; and you choose to do nothing, then I
think you are at fault. You have made a calculated decision to operate in
such a way to maximum profits knowing that a certain number of people will
sustain serious burns. You can't have it both ways. The net cost of your
decision has to include the increased revenues and also the cost associated
with the injuries resulting from your decision. While no one can completely
eliminate danger, I think there is a moral obligation to reduce risks when
possible. Assuming the woman should know better based on her life
experiences is no different than my expectation that McDonalds should have
known better from their actual experience. I think both parties are at
fault. The woman for spilling the coffee, and McDonalds for dispensing
coffee at such an elevated temperature that it caused sever burns. Never
the less, had the coffee spilled on the woman at a table inside the
restaurant, she would have been burned. The majority of the responsibility
is McDonald's. I'm sure we will never agree on this. Funny thing though,
when strangers are injured, then it all very clinical. When it is your wife
or mother, then things look different. One of the leading proponents of
torte reform to limit jury awards in personal injury cases is Rick Santorum,
(R) Pennsylvania. However, his wife claims that a chiropractor injured her
and the injuries prevented her from campaigning with her husband. They sued
the chiropractor for $500,000 and won a judgment for $350,000. So for you,
$250K is all you deserve for non-economic damages, but for him, $500K is
about right. Some would say that any fool should have known better than to
go to chiropractor in the first place.