[soared]

Consider if kuerig sells a commercial coffee maker to McDonald’s. McDonald’s modified the machine’s hold time to prolong the lifetime of coffee. McDonald’s serves scalding hot coffee to a customer, it spills, she sues.

From kuerig’s perspective it’s a better decision to build a machine that cannot be modified, as they may be at blame and will have to spend millions on lawyer fees proving McDonald’s modified and misused their product.

[deckeraa]

In that case Kuerig's legal argument would be straightforward:

- The injury due to the coffee burn was due entirely to the elevated temperature.

- The machine would not have served at the scalding temperature had McDonald's not made the modification.

- The modification was specifically made to raise the temperature to a level that turned out to be unsafe.

The question of whether a modification was made would almost certainly come out in court because a McDonald's employee would be unlikely to perjure themselves over it.

Therefore, all the liability would be on McDonald's.

Though I do see your point about legal costs being incurred even if the case of Kuering being completely innocent. It seems that having a culture instilled with a nebulous concept of "liability" encourages people to limit other's ability to take their own risks.

(Edit: formatting)

[blobbers]

I’m not even sure the liability should be on McDonalds. In stupid America, everyone tries to blame someone. Sometimes it’s just you spilled your own coffee on you. If it was a McDonald’s employee that spilled it on you, different story.

There doesn’t need to be “walk don’t run” signs everywhere, and liability waivers for every activity.

[coredog64]

Contemporaneous with the McD coffee case, there was a lady who sued Bunn-O-Matic as the deepest pockets in a similar coffee from a convenience store case. So there’s even settled case law WRT equipment manufacturer liability.