[lm28469]

Ah yes because people in Europe and the rest of the world are lawless and don't like to defend their rights

The truth is that this system profits to a lot of people and "profit above all" is also a corner stone of american culture, other places have regulations against these as a lot of it is deemed abusive.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/12/27/blame-and-claim-can-we-...

If you burn yourself with coffee and sue the restaurant, or crash your e scooter and sue the city for having ... sidewalks you're not defending you're rights, you're being a clown

[brigandish]

A civil law system in high use suggests it's more affordable and accessible and hence, useful than one that is not.

As to the coffee, it seems you've fallen prey to clever PR by one of those "profit above all" entities you seem to despise. From [1]:

> There was a famous lawsuit in the 1990s, Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, in which a 79-year-old woman sued McDonald’s because the coffee she had bought, and spilled, was too hot. Thanks to some very good PR by the chain, it was widely seen as a ridiculous suit — a sign of how crazily litigious the U.S. had become, and how everyone was desperate to sue themselves rich. People thought the litigant was driving at the time of the spill, which she wasn’t, and that she was unharmed and just out to make a buck, which also wasn’t true — she required skin grafts for third-degree burns and was permanently disfigured by the incident, plus only took it to a lawsuit after McDonald’s offered her what she saw as an insulting $800 sum.

> McDonald’s were selling their coffee at completely bonkers temperatures — an undrinkably hot 190 degrees, close to boiling point and guaranteed to burn any human flesh it came into contact with (but also guaranteed to keep it fresh in the store longer, a money-saving move).

[1] https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/5-coffee-myths-legends

[vineyardmike]

Maybe there’s something different about Europeans where it’s not necessary to sue, and lots of people DO profit from it. BUT I actually met the lawyers for that McDonald’s coffee case and the woman involved was not being a clown, she was a victim of a corporation that put her in harms way to make a few bucks.

The coffee was dangerously hot (hotter than is safe, so hot that regulations would require wearing safety equipment to hold) and she got burned at McDonald’s when it spilled and gave her third degree burns. I think a more likely reality is that Europeans drink coffee at a safe temperature (and not to-go) and European companies don’t overheat their coffee for their car-centric culture to ignore until their morning commute is over.

[sturza]

Sueing and defending your rights are different things. Let’s not generalize and motivate with profit seeking, as there are a lot of people who should sue to defend their rights and win, but don’t. So to simply state “for profit” is not accurate.

[lm28469]

It's an "only in America" thing, I'm telling you this mentality and "defending your rights" are exclusive

[sturza]

People in western Europe do it too, that's why you can get liability insurance, to protect you if you get sued: https://www.simplegermany.com/legal-insurance-germany/