[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