No, there's hot and there's "almost boiling" and they'd been told several times to stop keeping the coffee that hot but somehow it saved time. Key words from the lawsuit "fused labia." It was not minor burning.
Well there was some mention of the cups not being fit for purpose and the temperature not being the standard which are valid points, but I do not think it is fitting to stress or mention the severity of the injuries (as many people here are doing) when debating the issue at hand. How severe the injuries are is immaterial to any negligence on the part of McDonalds. That is just logic. To illustrate: I could buy a "harmless" marshmallow from a sweet shop and then kill myself with it, by using it to block my airway.
The severity of the injuries is important because McDonalds had ignored many previous accidents and had ignored a CDC request to reduce the temperature.
Reducing the temperature reduces the severity of the injuries.
Using your marshmallow analogy: if you sold the marshmallows in individual plastic shells and children started eating the marshmallows by sucking them out of the shells, and children were sometimes choking because they were inhalling the confection, and you were told about this but ignored it, then yes you probably should bear some responsibility.
> The severity of the injuries is important because McDonalds had ignored many previous accidents and had ignored a CDC request to reduce the temperature.
That and also it was a very important element in the PR campaign that was waged. Hiding and obscuring the extend of damages was crucial to its success. It would be hard to paint it as "oops someone burned themselves with some coffee, how silly" it they had to mentioned those were life threatening burns.
But "being at an unsafe temperature" is not integral to coffee being coffee(or good). A marshmallow is not being served in an unnecessarily(and unconventionally) unsafe way. If you bought a superheated marshmallow you could get hurt too.
If you define 'unsafe' as capable of causing third degree burns, it actually is integral. McDonald's could have served significantly cooler coffee, but it still would have been capable of such burns.
Also, from the article, the burns were so severe that she went into shock.
> “All I remember is trying to get out of the car,” Liebeck later related. “I knew I was in terrible pain.” She went into shock and her grandson rushed her to the emergency room, where she would undergo surgery and receive skin grafts.