Important recommendations from the article: don't eat, drink, or put in the eye most parts of a Covid test. The article doesn't mention the paper package, you might be safe eating that.
> Mrs. Liebeck was not driving when her coffee spilled, nor was the car she was in moving. She was the passenger in a car that was stopped in the parking lot of the McDonald’s where she bought the coffee. She had the cup between her knees while removing the lid to add cream and sugar when the cup tipped over and spilled the entire contents on her lap.
> The coffee was not just “hot,” but dangerously hot. McDonald’s corporate policy was to serve it at a temperature that could cause serious burns in seconds. Mrs. Liebeck’s injuries were far from frivolous. She was wearing sweatpants that absorbed the coffee and kept it against her skin. She suffered third-degree burns (the most serious kind) and required skin grafts on her inner thighs and elsewhere.
McDonald’s coffee was and is served at about the same temperature as other locations. Starbucks coffee is nearly as hot. Recommendations from coffee trade groups is the same range.
Coffee served at the “right” temperature is dangerously hot. No one wants tepid coffee.
An equivalent lawsuit in the UK was dismissed, because it turned out that lowering the coffee temperature by the 5 or so degrees to make it match industry standards would have no meaningful effect on the burn risk. Similar lawsuits, including one against Bunn, have been dismissed in the US because this is standard coffee temperature. You can’t serve good coffee at 140 degrees as Liebeck's attorneys argued it should be. Just ban hot coffee at that point.
https://www.ehow.com/info_8682077_brewing-temperatures-mr-co...
Brewing Regulations
The standard brewing regulations of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (scaa.org) and the National Coffee Association (ncausa.org) require that coffeemakers brew coffee at a temperature between 197.6 degrees Fahrenheit and 204.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Most new coffeemakers will brew to these temperatures, but their performance wanes with extended and excessive use. Of the Mr. Coffee brand, the model JWX27, a 12-cup programmable coffeemaker, has routinely scored highest among tests done by coffee drinkers.
https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts
McDonald’s operations manual required the franchisee to hold its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
My point. Coffee is brewed hot. McDonald's coffee wasn't abnormally hot, it was in fact much cooler than fresh brewed coffee.
Now do you want fresh coffee or not? We really don't need to coddle people with common sense precautions.
As someone who gets McDonald's coffee quite a bit I'd rather not be worried about accidentally spilling it from kind of shitty cups and lids and burning myself to the literal bone. Not sure I'd call that coddling either.
I think McDonald’s was stupid to not settle and pay her medical bills. But the facts indicate that McDonald’s coffee was not significantly hotter than other coffee. 190 degrees is only 5 degrees hotter than is typical for the industry. Starbucks serves at 185.
It’s worth noting that as a result of this lawsuit, McDonald’s didn’t even lower the temperature of their coffee. This isn’t just because they’re stubborn assholes. Customers want hot coffee and hot coffee happens to be dangerous.
there's no photos on the site, and like any lawyer, they used an OR statement which evaluates ambiguously Other reports state skin damage (second or third degree burns) which are serious.
Remember, lawyers always use appeals to emotion and other tricks to overstate things to get the best possible outcome (a settlement in this case).
I could be wrong about the depth to which her burns penetrated, I can't find where I initially read that.
I offer instead a lesser argument: it is not absurd that a burn penetrate deep enough to affect bone, especially at the pelvis where bone is close to the surface.
I will not link photos, they are indeed horrifying and if you go look for them they are more persuasive than anything I can say
The McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit was widely portrayed as being frivolous, but it was not [0].
tl;dr:
The victim was an older lady who was a passenger; she was not the driver. She received third-degree burns because the coffee was very close to boiling temperature. She required skin grafts and was permanently disfigured.
So then the question becomes: Why do most people think this lawsuit was frivolous? That's not by accident.
I feel bad for that lady but that doesn’t mean the lawsuit had merit. Many similar lawsuits have been dismissed. Coffee is hot. Hot stuff can burn.
Her lawyers argued that coffee should never be served above 140 degrees. No one wants coffee at that temperature (certainly not anyone who’s going to add cold milk that would make it tepid). 140 degrees isn’t even “safe to eat chicken” temperature.
Plenty of people have given you the details on the McDonald’s case, but I’d like to point folks to the documentary “Hot Coffee”, which covers cases similar to the McDs case where the blame is unjustly pushed onto consumers.
Just be warned that you will be come out of it angry.
The problem was that the coffee was way, way hotter than it was supposed to be, which resulted in serious injury to the customer. The pictures are gruesome.
The blame was on McDonalds for negligently selling a dangerous product to a customer. You can look up the case for the details.
You are purposely conflating the temperature at which coffee should be made (~185), with the temperature at which coffee should be served (~160). Yes, some folks suggest they are drinking 175 degree coffee. Those folks are wrong.