[crusso]

Sorry, I'm still someone who doesn't get it. Coffee is brewed hot (195 - 205 degrees F), and I personally like it to be freshly brewed as I drink it. As I very carefully sipped my fresh Starbucks coffee today at the mall, I was very conscious of the fact that I had a hot beverage in my hand. If I had accidentally spilled the coffee on myself or others it could have caused some serious burns... who else's fault would it have been but my own? Would it have been Starbuck's fault? I just can't adjust my thinking to making that so.

If I had gone into Williams & Sonoma and carelessly stabbed someone with a kitchen knife. Would that have been W&S's fault? It just makes no sense to me how we want to hold others responsible for giving us what we've asked for.

[nemo]

Read the actual trial history. Your analogies don't reflect what actually happened, which is why you can't understand it.

Liebeck was hospitalized for 8 days with multiple skin grafts. She asked asked McDonalds for medical expenses from the injury from the coffee and lost wages (<20k). McDonalds offered $800.

At that point she got an attorney. They tried to settle. McDonalds refused. In the trial it came out that McDonalds had more than 700 reports of medical injuries from the coffee that they were aware of. Their internal quality control manager reported that they recognized that they were posing a burn hazard to customers with the heat of their coffee, but that it was a minor concern that they were unwilling to adjust.

McDonalds admitted that not only were they burning customers who drank the coffee straight from the cup, many of whom needed medical treatment, but that this was something they were unwilling to change.

That's why the jury hit McDonalds with punitive damages of the profits of two day's sales of coffee (which the judge reduced). Through the whole process McDonalds was acting like a criminally negligent bully unconcerned with injuring customers. Punitive damages did correct this.

[sumedh]

> punitive damages of the profits of two day's sales of coffee (which the judge reduced)

Why did the judge reduce the penalty and what is the point of the jury giving a penalty fee which the judge can reduce later?

[chimeracoder]

I'm not sure of the judge's reasoning here, but in some cases there is a statutory limit on the damages that can be awarded[0]. So a jury can award any amount that they see fit, but that will be reduced to the maximum amount permissible by law.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7727175

[marcosdumay]

You mean, from the several million people they served coffee every month, 700 accidents happened?

What coffee is not a burn hazard?

[nemo]

Something like that. Perhaps you might like to read all about it? I am sure you are aware that cases like this are primarily significant in their individual details, and not in vague generalizations.

"What coffee is not a burn hazard?"

All coffee is a burn hazard, though the higher the temp. the greater the hazard.

Please, if you'd like to reply, and want to refer to burns, do me the huge favor of referring to "third degree burns." It's one of those things that indicates the difference between discomfort and hospitalization, very germane here, especially in the distinction between specific facts and vague generalizations.

[marcosdumay]

I've suffered 3rd degree burns more than once, I'm luck they were small. I've burned myself with boiling water, hot pans, soldering irons, weird kinds of fire... I've been inside an ethanol explosion. I can begin to understand how large burns feel, and the little that I can imagine is already plain horrible.

But none of that changes the fact that coffee is a hot drink. When you go into some store, and order some potentially harmful item, you should expect to get a potentially harmful item, and handle it accordingly. It's not the store's fault if you fail at doing so.

(As an unrelated note, insulating cups are dangerous in that they enable careless handling. It's again not the store's fault, consumers demand those cups, but it's something worth warning people about.)

[TheCoelacanth]

Coffee is a hot drink, and it can reasonably be expected to cause burns. However, McDonalds served its coffee at a higher temperature than anyone else in the industry and had been previously warned that their coffee caused more severe burns that would be reasonably expected.

Had McDonalds served their coffee at a temperature that a reasonable person would expect it to be served at, they would not have been liable for any burns caused by the coffee. This is why you don't see Starbucks getting sued for coffee burns.

McDonalds wasn't sued for serving coffee that is hot enough to cause burns. They were sued for knowingly serving coffee hot enough to cause burns far more severe than a reasonable person would expect and far more severe than the burns caused the coffee served by the rest of the industry.

[chimeracoder]

Before you jump to that conclusion, please take a look at the actual pictures of Liebeck's burns.

I'm not going to link to them directly because they're very gruesome (as well as slightly NSFW[0]), but if you Google "mcdonalds coffee burn", they're the first things that pop up. We're talking burns far beyond anything I assume (hope) you've ever experienced.

This case in particular is one that irks me, because it's very easy to distort the facts (and ignore McDonald's wilful negligence, which was mentioned above[1]).

[0] You can see her vagina, because the burns were between her legs - though trust me, that's not the part of the picture that will grab your attention.

[1] Note that the jury awarded punitive damages - this means that above and beyond the damages owed to Liebeck, they determined that McDonalds needed to be punished financially for their actions; this is a much higher bar than the "typical" civil suit.

[crusso]

Before you jump to that conclusion, please take a look at the actual pictures of Liebeck's burns.

At least two people in this thread want me to stare at grisly pictures. Yes, they're awful. I sympathize with the lady for having to go through that pain.

That said, I can point you to grisly pictures of car accidents, gun accidents, and animal attacks all day. What does that have to do with understanding the nature of responsibility in our society and the impact of transferring responsibility for all accidents to the providers of products and services that are giving consumers exactly what they're asking for.

Good to-go coffee is served hot. That's what consumers want. That's what I want. What do you think that lady would have done all those years ago if McDonalds had served her some 115F coffee? My guess is that most people would take it back and ask for hot coffee.

As a matter of ethics, I espouse maximizing individual liberty and consumer choice. It's a bad thing to saddle everyone with lowest-common-denominator products and services because an extraordinarily small minority of people are unable to make decent decisions.

[DanBC]

Good coffee does not come from McDonalds.

Other places were sucessfully selling coffee at a lower temperature than McDonalds. While burns are still possible at those lower temperature a few extra seconds would have given her time to remove her clothing which would have eeduced the severity of the burns.

People are not pushing personal responsibility onto McDonalds - McDonalds took responsibility when they admitted that they preferred to settle 700 cases (some including full thickness burns) out of court than adjust their procedures.

Your personal preference is for undrinkably hot coffee. McDonalds could have offered two temperatures - regular and extra hot. Someone asking for extra hot is taking personal responsibilty for that choice, and is declaring that they know the liquid is very hot.

(About those 700 burns, including full thickness burns: full thickness burns are a medical emergency. They can be fatal. They require specialist medical attention involving painful procedures that leave scarring and possibly loss of function. McDonalds made a careful conscious choice that allowing these burns to continue and then settling costs out of court was preferable to complying with national advice about beveridge temperature. You are asking people to take responsibility for their actions: the jury decided to make McDonalds responsible for that choice.

[crusso]

Good coffee does not come from McDonalds.

Well, okay, we can agree on that; but "safe temperature" McDonalds coffee is even worse than hot McDonalds coffee.

when they admitted that they preferred to settle 700 cases

There's no business on earth that does McDonald's level of product distribution that doesn't have hundreds or thousands of attempted baseless suits. It still says nothing about whether or not McDonalds was distributing a product that its customers wanted in the way they thought their customers wanted it - and whether or not they're responsible for resulting mishaps.

McDonalds could have offered two temperatures

As though the woman didn't have the choice to not order coffee at all? The woman could have made the decision to go into McDonalds and cool it herself by putting cream in the coffee or even a piece of ice. McDonalds did not force her to buy coffee on that day.

full thickness burns are a medical emergency. They can be fatal

A car accident over the speed of 50mph (for argument's sake) can be fatal too. Would you suggest that any auto manufacturer that offers an automobile that goes over 50mph is responsible for any accidents that occur at that speed?

[mirkules]

Thank you. I simply cannot fathom why people seem to believ that service providers can be held liable for their own stupid decisions. Putting hot coffee in your lap is a stupid decision.

When I was a kid, I got a pretty decent electric shock from a neighbor's improperly mounted doorbell. The doorbell did not work, so I flipped it over (it was dangling on some wires) and tried to fix it on the spot (as if I knew what I was doing...) and got shocked.

From that moment on, I knew not to touch exposed wires. I knew that it was my own damn fault for touching the wires and getting shocked. My parents got really angry at my neighbors for having exposed wires like that, but I was scolded too for doing something I had no business doing.

The point is if the coffee lady had any common sense she would not have put coffee between her legs (I feel bad for her injuries as any person would, but I still fail to see McDonalds' responsibility here). The worst thing to happen to our judicial system isn't the hot coffee case - it's shifting the onus of personal responsibility to the service or product providers.

edit: I'm speaking strictly about the hot coffee case and ones similar to it. The article goes on about medical cases which are obviously much more complex

[oneeyedpigeon]

People take risks. No-one is going to eliminate all risk from their life. People modify their behaviour according to the risk involved. Putting hot coffee in your lap is a risk, but the level of risk depends on exactly how hot that coffee is. No-one wants coffee of any temperature soaking their lap, but coffee that causes 3rd-degree burns is a lot different from coffee that hurts a bit. I would personally try to avoid spilling coffee in my lap, but I would treat coffee very differently if I knew it would cause 3rd-degree burns, and I would not expect any coffee served to me to ever be that hot. Maybe I'm partly to blame for my own ignorance, but it also seems reasonable that McDonald's either a) remove that risk by serving coffee at a lower temperature b) mitigate that risk by informing customers just how dangerous the coffee they're serving is when in contact with skin.

[chimeracoder]

I asked you to look at the pictures because you seemed unfamiliar with the details of the case - and when you're drawing an opinion about a legal case, details really matter.

The fact that you say that this is a matter of "an extraordinarily small minority of people [who] are unable to make decent decisions"[0] leads me to believe that you still don't understand the details of this specific case - including details pointed out elsewhere in this thread (let alone available elsewhere online).

We're not talking about some hypothetical woman with hypothetically hot coffee from a hypothetical company - we're talking about a specific incident in which the facts are actually very readily available.

[0] You also draw a completely false dichotomy when it comes to "individual liberty and customer choice", since that's actually not the issue that was litigated here. If you want to find out the issue that was actually litigated, I'd invite you to read up on the case to the point where you understand that the temperature of the coffee itself wasn't actually the reason that the jury awarded the punitive damages (the civil damages, yes, but not the punitive damages).

[Tuna-Fish]

> Coffee is brewed hot (195 - 205 degrees F), and I personally like it to be freshly brewed as I drink it. As I very carefully sipped my fresh Starbucks coffee today at the mall,

Starbucks coffee is not served anywhere near that hot. By their corporate guidance, the normal acceptable range of temperature for coffee served to customers is 145-165F. If you poured that in your lap, it would be very unlikely for you to receive third degree burns. The burn risk of water goes up very rapidly as temperature is increased above that. This is the entire point of the court case -- nearly everyone else in the country served coffee ~30-40F cooler than Mac, due to having found the risks too great, yet even after hundreds of complaints, MacDonalds decided to keep their temperature higher.

[travisp]

>Starbucks coffee is not served anywhere near that hot.

True, it's usually not, although it's considered a "hack" to get better coffee to ask for hotter coffee from Starbucks (so that your drink stays warm in the cold and when you are taking your coffee with you): http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-drink-extra-hot-201...

The National Coffee Association recommends brewing between 195 and 205 and holding around 180 to 185 if not serving immediately (which it recommends). Source: http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71

Many people who brew coffee at home have coffee that can be as hot as 205F. Fancy fresh pour over coffee from a nice coffeehouse will have just been brewed with water around that temperature.

And it also raises the interesting question of what these places are supposed to do about tea: if they serve you hot water and a tea bag, the water served should be close to boiling if it's herbal or black tea to get a proper extraction.

Either way, it's not quite so simple as "McDonalds was careless".

[vidarh]

> Either way, it's not quite so simple as "McDonalds was careless".

No, it's far worse than McDonalds being careless: They knew that their practice was dangerous, and regularly resulted in medical treatments, yet did not change their procedures.

[Dylan16807]

Unless they serve the coffee at a completely unrealistic temperature, someone out of millions will be regularly injured. So how many people are still injured at 160 degrees?

The fact that someone gets hurt does not prove that there was negligence. Compare how many people get into car accidents on the way to McDonalds.

[colomon]

Tea really is the perfect counterexample, isn't it? If you try to serve me water for tea at a "safe" 160F, I'm never going to buy tea from you again.

[aaronem]

Have you ever had McDonalds coffee? It's not as though we're talking about the stuff you get after it's been through a civet cat's digestive system, where it's scarce and expensive and you really want to extract it at the recommended 200 degrees Fahrenheit to get every last molecule you can of the volatiles out of the beans, so that you aren't wasting your investment.

McDonalds coffee, conversely, is just plain old shit. It's the worst coffee I've ever had, and that is saying quite a lot. If you've ever tasted it, you know that they could brew it at 200, 180, or 140, and it's still going to taste just as godawful. There is absolutely no reason they need to be passing it out the drive-through window at temperatures high enough to peel skin and poach flesh if the half-awake minimum-wage worker who poured it didn't pop the lid on quite right -- or if, while taking the cup and getting it settled into the console, you fail to pay the sort of attention commensurate to a potentially life-threatening process which you probably didn't realize was potentially life-threatening.

[unreal37]

All the hyperbole is not really adding to the conversation.

[pekk]

The underlying point that this really isn't about gourmet extraction of flavor is relevant, however. If Starbucks can serve lower-temperature coffee, McDonald's can, its coffee is not even as good as Starbucks'.

[crusso]

Okay, so let's say it's 165F and I spill a cup on someone. There's still going to be an injury. Scalding burns can occur at temperatures down to 125F or so.

Whose fault is it?

Does Starbucks have to lower the temperature of the coffee they're serving to maybe 115F in order to avoid responsibility? If I spill it in someone's eye, that may still cause an injury. Does Starbucks need to serve their hot coffee at 98.6F?

I don't know. It just starts to sound ridiculous on how sellers are supposed to completely protect us from ourselves when we misuse the products we buy.

WalMart sells guns, and those can be horribly misused quite easily.

[tbrake]

I think it should be made clear that someone sympathetic to Liebeck's case is not necessarily in favor of treating all coffee spills the same nor in favor of this transparently constructed slippery slope towards nanny-statism you're building. Nor are they under any compulsion to defend it.

The details of the case are there for all to see and in no way do they paint a picture of common coffee incidents, despite the gratuitously oversimplified and cliched versions pandered to us by a generation of comics.

[avalaunch]

I think it comes down to expectations. There's an expectation when you buy a drink that it will be served at a drinkable temperature. True, there's also an expectation when you buy coffee that it will be served at a temperature hot enough to cause injuries if you spill it on yourself. But the expectation is that those injuries will be first or perhaps second degree burns, certainly not third. Had that been the case, I don't think any jury would have awarded her any money. I also don't think she would have sued.

To continue your Walmart analogy, the expectation would be that the guns are sold empty. But if instead Walmart were selling guns preloaded without warning the customers that there were bullets already in the guns, I would argue that Walmart would be at least some percentage at fault when some percentage of their customers inevitably shot themselves or others, just as it was some percentage McDonald's fault when their customers spilled the dangerously hot coffee on themselves.

[nthj]

> But if instead Walmart were selling guns preloaded without warning the customers that there were bullets already in the guns, I would argue that Walmart would be at least some percentage at fault when some percentage of their customers inevitably shot themselves or others

I see your point, but I think it might be worth clarifying that despite Walmart's probable liability, this would in no way indemnify their customers; the first rule of gun safety is RESPECT EVERY GUN AS LOADED until disassembled into its component parts, no exceptions.

[Crito]

> But the expectation is that those injuries will be first or perhaps second degree burns, certainly not third.

That expectation is unreasonable. If you go to Starbucks today and get a black coffee, that coffee will be hot enough to give you third degree burns. If you buy black coffee from Mcdonalds today, it will likely be just as hot as the coffee was that burned that woman two decades ago.

The industry standard was and continues to be serving coffee that can cause 3rd degree burns. You would do well to expect that.

[sitkack]

Why don't you go look at the pictures.

[gambiting]

They would be just as bad if she spilled home made coffee using water from her own kettle. But then there would be no uproar then, would there? Or would she go and sue the maker of the kettle for making water so hot?

[DanBC]

Your comparison is flawed.

She did not get a McDonalds kettle and pour just boiled water onto herself. She asked for a cup of coffee, paid, took the coffee out to the car and got in the passenger seat. They drove for a short while. They stopped the car. She removed the lid and spilled the coffee.

A more fair comparison would be if she had poured her boiled kettle into a mug, carried that through to another room, and spilled it on herself as she sat down.

It's likely that in the latter case the water which would have been cooled by the mug and a metal spoon would have been less hot. That would have given her a few more seconds to remove the scalding clothing, which would have helped to reduce the severity of her injuries.

Part of the problem is that McDonalds was serving coffee hotter than people would have it at home because McDonalds wanted it to stay hot for the duration of the journey.

[crusso]

McDonalds wanted it to stay hot for the duration of the journey

Because McDonalds customers want the coffee to stay hot for the duration of the journey and all customers know that coffee is very hot and they need to be careful with it.

[yew]

I've found various sources claiming that Starbucks serves coffee at temperatures ranging from ~140 degrees F to ~190 degrees F. Most of these sources claim that their temperature is 'industry-standard'. I haven't been able to find an origin for any of these claims beyond the Specialty Coffee Association of America [0], who claim a standard 'cupping temperature' of 200+-2 degrees F.

Can anyone provide a reliable source for whether or not there is a standard temperature for coffee (and what that temperature is, if it exists)? Obviously, a certain degree of variance is expected based on the time between brewing and serving - if the variance really is ~50 degrees F, I don't see anything wrong with that answer if it's sourced.

[0] http://www.scaa.org/?page=resources&d=cupping-standards

[icantthinkofone]

I don't feel like finding a link to a source for you. After 10 years of roasting my own beans from home, I can assure you that the temperature range for brewing is 195-205 as shown in at least one other post and in your link. To do so in a lower temperature impedes the flavor extraction process and provides a poorer cup of coffee no matter the quality of the bean.

To do so is a disservice to the customer. (I also own two restaurants.)

[ams6110]

Hm that must be why Starbucks drinks get cold so fast. Or maybe it's the paper cup. McD coffee in an insulated cup is still nicely hot by the time I get to work. When I make tea, or coffee with my Aeropress, I use boiling water right out of the kettle. I agree with GP, coffee should be HOT.

[Noishe]

It will taste better if you use water that is at 90C or 194F.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Have you read the Aeropress instructions? They recommend water at 175F (80C) [1]

[1] http://aerobie.com/images/AeroPress%20Instructions%20for%20W...

[pekk]

You can personally opt to drink boiling water directly from the kettle if you want to and there will be no lawsuits, but that's not a comparable situation.

[DanBC]

McDonalds had ignored requests from CDC about correct brew temperature of coffee. They were serving extra hot coffee despite being asked not to, and despite having had several previous accidents where people were injured.

She initially asked for her medical costs to be covered. McDonalds declined, so she went to court.

Full thickness burns are not a trivial injury. She was at risk of death. Treatment is painful and takes a long time. She would have been left with scarring and perhaps loss of function - because a fast food chain didn't care about customer safety.

Do you have access to a thermometer? Try measuring the temperature of a cup of coffee that you make at home tree minutes after you've made it.

[ams6110]

Most McDonalds use standard commercial Bunn coffee makers. Their coffee is about the same temperature as any other restaurant that uses those.

[joezydeco]

Having worked in an actual McDonald's store back in those days, the holding temperatures on the coffee pots were set higher than normal drinking temperature.

The reasoning for this was because people would buy their coffee in the drive-thru or lobby and take it home to drink. The whole concept of actually drinking it in the car was not considered when the holding temps were specified by corporate, not to mention spill-type accidents.

[phyzome]

That may be why the temperature was set the way it was initially, but a big part of the court case was that they had had many instances of people burning themselves on the coffee and had decided it was cheaper to settle repeatedly.

[joezydeco]

Sorry, I was only rebutting the parent comment about how the coffee urns were not set to a temperature different than any other restaurant.

[aaronem]

Your opinion isn't unreasonable per se, but the jury which evaluated the merits of Liebeck's claims disagreed, and it's as simple as that; the opinion which matters, from a legal perspective, is that of the jury which considered and ruled on the case.

It's hard to blame them, too, given the facts of the matter; even the Priceonomics article considerably understates the severity of her injuries, as is common even in the most sympathetic recountings of the tale, because phrases like "external genitalia essentially destroyed" aren't pleasant either to write or to read -- or to imagine; of all the places on the human body where it's possible to sustain full-thickness third-degree burns, that's got to be the most awful. (Which says nothing of the expenses involved in surgical repair and follow-up care; given the extent of both which Liebeck's injuries required, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that her total medical expenses were pretty closely comparable to the total figure awarded her by the jury.)

Had I been on that jury, I feel certain I'd have argued for finding in Liebeck's favor from the start. Had you been on the same jury, perhaps you'd have argued otherwise -- or perhaps not; it's awfully easy to play Monday-morning quarterback on stuff like this, when everything looks so much simpler than it does from within the jury box.

[SilasX]

>Your opinion isn't unreasonable per se, but the jury which evaluated the merits of Liebeck's claims disagreed, and it's as simple as that; the opinion which matters, from a legal perspective, is that of the jury which considered and ruled on the case.

Perhaps I misunderstood you, but it sounds like you just defined away the possibility of systematic, correctable jury error, the very thing we have eg rules of evidence for.

[coolsunglasses]

I read an overview of the facts of the case a few years back, so I'm recalling from a possibly faulty memory.

This coffee was being over-brewed at higher-than-normal temperatures because the McDonalds franchise was being greedy and attempting to extract more coffee out of the grounds.

This exact same franchise had gotten past customer complaints about the dangerously hot coffee burning people.

I and my father have spilled decent amounts of normal temperature coffee on our laps in the car, it barely caused any burns at all, let alone third degree.

The coffee was excessively hot and the franchise was negligent.

[Karunamon]

Likewise with the memory thing, but I think they were brewing it at the National Coffee Association recommended temperature.

Anyways, I don't think the 'greedy' angle has any merit to it. One pack (mcdonalds coffee comes in these premeasured packets) is good for exactly one urn of coffee, and you (and the customer..) will instantly know if you reused it because the result is terrifically light and unpleasant to drink (but this implies McDonalds coffee is pleasant to drink in the first place...)

As far as customer complaints go, McDonalds themselves had hundreds of complaints about hot coffee and burns for many years before this case ever saw the light of day. Those hundreds are a statistical rounding error when you consider how many cups of coffee the restaurant does in a single day that don't result in any problems, let alone years.

[aaronem]

Well, you know, you can get away with poor trigger discipline for years on end without hurting anyone, and then one particularly careless day you negligently discharge your firearm into someone's head. In what way does the former make up for the latter?

[Karunamon]

The fact that 700ish burns in a few years compared against 10ish million cups of coffee a day is a statistical anomaly that doesn't require the intervention of the legal system?

I still disagree with the ruling in that case. They still brew the coffee at the same temperature but now with lawyer safe "Caution: Hot stuff is hot!" markings on the cups. As if anyone with functioning brain cells wasn't aware of this.

Yes, 700 people manage to burn themselves in a few years and meanwhile 3.5 billion in a single year don't have any problem and the problem is obviously with the company selling the coffee instead of the 700 people who mis-handled a cup of scalding hot liquid. Give me a damn break.

[aaronem]

I've argued the substance of the issue elsewhere in this thread, and don't feel a need to restate points which you so evidently have no interest in considering. From a purely pragmatic stance, though, may I suggest you hang your argument for tort reform off some case other than one in which someone's genitals had to be rebuilt more or less from scratch?

[Karunamon]

That tends to happen when you dump hot things where hot things shouldn't go. The same kind of idiocy that leads to the absurd list of obvious warnings on products that we all like to make fun of. Irons warning you not to use them on clothes you're wearing. Baby strollers telling you to remove the baby before collapsing it. Coffee cups telling you the contents may, indeed, be hot.

Is the severity of the self-inflicted injury the rubric by which we judge frivolous lawsuits now?

What cements the case as being meaningless in my mind is the fact that they were not ordered to strengthen their cups or to brew at a lower temperature. That alone tells me that the "danger" here is only encountered by people doing otherwise stupid things. Such as sticking crushable cups of scalding hot liquid between your legs in a situation where your legs will not remain static.

The fact that 12 people could be convinced that a faceless corporation was doing something negligent (which isn't exactly hard on a good day) due to a horrific, but ultimately self-inflicted injury that 99.99999% of people manage to avoid holds precisely nil value in my mind because of the sheer statistics in play.

[mertd]

Coffee is brewed at ~200F. Water boils at 212F. There is not much room there. Most likely, their containers were too hot, not the brewers.

[rtpg]

third degree burns are extremely serious, it's not a "put an ice pack on it" issue, it's a "rush to the hospital" issue.

Considering the likelyhood of people spilling coffee, it's not unreasonable to expect coffee servers to take that into account (just like cars are designed to take into account bad driving and accidents).

[stormbrew]

That coffee you carefully sipped on probably wasn't as hot as the coffee she spilled on her lap. It's pretty unlikely it was hot enough that if you'd spilled it you would have required re-constructive surgery on your genitals.

[michaelochurch]

That coffee you carefully sipped on probably wasn't as hot as the coffee she spilled on her lap. It's pretty unlikely it was hot enough that if you'd spilled it you would have required re-constructive surgery on your genitals.

He said 195 - 205 °F, which would do that kind of damage, pretty much instantly. That said, I find it unlikely that most people actually enjoy coffee that is that hot. When coffee burns your tongue and you have that annoying (thankfully, temporary) lack of taste for a couple days, that's typically around 180 °F.

[akira2501]

The jury made a number of findings in the case, one of which was that the warning on the cup wasn't large enough nor sufficient enough to convey the dangers of the temperature of coffee that they serve.

I'm sure they also took into consideration that Stella Liebeck originally asked for $20,000 for damages and had tried to negotiate several times before the case went to trial; she clearly went to some length to avoid this.

[SilasX]

>The jury made a number of findings in the case, one of which was that the warning on the cup wasn't large enough nor sufficient enough to convey the dangers of the temperature of coffee that they serve.

So what warning difference resulted from this case? And would Liebeck really have acted any differently had that been the warning all along?

[akira2501]

What warning difference? It's hard to find any definitive answers, but the case happened in 1992. Based upon my own recollections, this was the time where every fast-food chain started putting warnings on everything. McDonald's even added warnings to their hot apple pies and other "served hot" foods.

Would Liebeck have acted differently? That's not the objective of the jury in this case, especially considering that McDonald's conceded that their warnings were likely inadequate. To the extent that it is relevant, the jury did find Stella Liebeck 20% at fault for the accident and so the damage award was adjusted accordingly.

[SilasX]

I'm just asking the natural follow-up question to the claim that McDonald's is partially at fault for insufficient warning.

If you believe that Liebeck would have done the same thing with or without the improvement to the warning, you can't really blame the substandard warning.

[orbitingpluto]

I think the crux of the matter with regards to the coffee temperature is that it's a drive thru restaurant.

While handing over a live chainsaw is at best inadvisable, it is all the more so to throw a live chainsaw into the juggling pattern of a clown on a unicycle.

[gscott]

Echoing your point, I can't tell you how many spilled soda's have happened at the drive through with me. Sometimes the lids are not put on right and when I go to grab the cup it collapses spilling into my lap.

[rayiner]

I think one fact that goes ignored is that McD's whole MO is selling coffee to people in cars, a higher risk situation. I think the reasonable temperature to serve coffee in that situation isn't the same as for when you're in a cafe.

[crusso]

I dare say that if you spilled even 130F coffee in your lap while driving down the freeway, you could easily cause a fatal accident.

As a society, do we expect McDonalds to make that decision for us and just not sell coffee in the drive-thru?

[andrewguenther]

But you're posing a theoretical situation completely different than the one actually involved in the case. McDonalds was grossly negligent in serving their coffee at a temperature well above necessary, hotter than anyone in the industry. Starbucks won't even brew your coffee that hot (if you ask for anything over 180 degrees they may say yes, but won't actually do it).

Much of these cases is based on reasonable expectation. Would you ever expect your coffee to be so hot that it could melt your skin? No.

[Crito]

If that coffee had been 180F, the outcome would have been the same. Perhaps slightly less tissue damage, but we would still be talking about third degree burns.

It think it is illuminating that so many people believe that Mcdonalds no longer serves their coffee that hot, but in reality, the only changes they have made in response to that lawsuit are changing their packaging, including adding warning labels. If you go to Mcdonalds and buy some coffee today, it could be just as hot as the coffee that that woman bought.

So to address this question:

> "Would you ever expect your coffee to be so hot that it could melt your skin? No."

You really should, because it still is!

[thinkcomp]

Have you seen the documentary?

[michaelochurch]

Sorry, I'm still someone who doesn't get it. Coffee is brewed hot (195 - 205 degrees F), and I personally like it to be freshly brewed as I drink it.

Detail often missed: she had a lid on the styrofoam cup, properly placed. It wasn't an open cup. The cup and lid were of low quality and, while they passed at lower temperatures, deformed at the serving temperature, enough that the lid popped off, causing the spill.

In addition to the serving temperature, one aspect of McDonalds's liability was the quality of the cups and lids: squeezing a coffee cup, with contents at the serving temperature, shouldn't cause the lid to pop.

[robryk]

> Detail often missed: she had a lid on the styrofoam cup, properly placed. It wasn't an open cup. The cup and lid were of low quality and, while they passed at lower temperatures, deformed at the serving temperature, enough that the lid popped off, causing the spill.

According to the Wikipedia article[1] the lid didn't pop off accidentally: she tried to remove it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaura...

[konstruktor]

How else would she add the sugar that was provided separately from the already closed cup? This was "by design".

[Dylan16807]

Using a cup holder or going inside so that it wouldn't be a completely full uncapped cup squeezed between her legs?

[malandrew]

Yup, establishments shouldn't even serve liquids in inadequate containers. Either the customer should provide their own travel mug (such as a zojirushi or thermos nissan mug) or they should provide much safer disposable mugs. The crap cups that McDonalds offers are simply not up to the task.

If necessary, they can do the same thing as SF does with the bag fee:

-- coffee in your own mug costs like 69 to 99 cents. -- coffee in a disposable mug that is adequately safe costs 99 cents plus the cost of the safe mug.

TBH, even for situations where safety isn't a concern, I'd love to see the bag fee concept extended to pretty much everywhere where disposable containers are used.

[mindslight]

As much as I'd like to see less general waste, it's important to keep in mind that any large disposable hot coffee cup is a flimsy piece junk with the lid removed, millions are sold per day, those lids even sometimes pop off, and yet we're talking about a 22 year old case for its remarkability.

[aaronem]

Is it remarkable because of how rare it is for admittedly insufficient disposable coffee cups to negligently discharge their contents all over their users, or because of how rare it is that such discharge results in life-threatening injuries and years of reconstructive treatment to try to repair destroyed genitals?

[mindslight]

Yes, people take care with dangerous/messy things. Is any possible source of danger to be considered a problem to be eliminated? If that's what you're after, please go join an appropriate lifestyle community, as your desire is an abstracted fantasy incongruent with reality.

[makomk]

The case isn't remarkable because she got third-degree burns all over her legs and genitals, it's remarkable because McDonalds didn't settle out of court like in the hundreds of other similar lawsuits against them around the same time period. (And this was after they'd received a number of warnings that their coffee was unsafe too.)

[andrewtbham]

The downside of cases like this is, if they stand, we end up with cold coffee. We end up with no products or services that have any risks. We all get treated like morons because of liability reasons. And we will have to pay a premium for any product that can be misused.

Thankfully, coffee is still served at the same temperatures, and the only change was added a warning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...

[andrewguenther]

No, we wouldn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

[mindslight]

Different people enjoy their coffee at different temperatures. Those who enjoy drinking steam should be able to make that choice without being "protected" from themselves.

I'd love it if the serving temperature of the coffee became more of a prominent option - I personally have to let freshly brewed coffee sit for ~20 minutes to be drinkable, and I even go so far as to delay adding cream (if I am going to) so that it loses heat quicker. But I still respect that my preference isn't universal.

[andrewguenther]

Did you miss the part where the coffee was hot enough to melt skin and incur third degree burns? If you want that, then yes, I would say you need to be protected from yourself.

[mindslight]

As will any boiling water, yet that's what much coffee is made with. Some people add a lot of cream and still want it hot, some people like to hold a hot mug for a while before drinking, some people like to sip and mix with air. My father will complain that the coffee is not hot enough, yet it is way too hot for me. As I said, people are entitled to have personal preferences even if you can't identify with them at all. What exactly do you gain from pigeonholing them as weirdos and asserting that their wishes should not be respected?

[oneeyedpigeon]

This is why I prefer to drink coffee in Italy (which can pretty much claim to be the origin of coffee in the western world) where they serve it warm-hot, but not boiling, and it's delicious. I tend to be on the libertarian side of the 'allowed to do things that might be dangerous' debate, but - in this case - the default (only?) option was 'extremely dangerous', which I don't think is wise.

[aaronem]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that such a person needs to be protected from himself. But, as with any other bizarre fetish revolving around self-harm, the proper place to indulge it is at home.

[andrewtbham]

I can assure you that business do quit selling products for liability reasons.

[unreal37]

Actually, my understanding is that McDonald's actually reduced the serving temperature of it's coffee for a decade or more after this lawsuit.[1]

[1] http://mentalfloss.com/article/26862/real-details-hot-coffee...

[andrewtbham]

My understanding is that is incorrect. Mental floss is not a reliable source, it's more for novelty than hard news.