[stuki]

Any coffee heated to the point where it is still drinkable at the end of a 20 minute commute, will be hot enough to kill if poured straight down your throat in one gulp. It is up to the customer to have some sort of clue.

I am pretty sure that when granny makes coffee herself at home, she makes it at least as hot as McDonalds serves it. Whistling kettles and all.

In a country of millions of people doing stuff, sometimes the stars align wrong for someone, and they get hurt. It doesn't have to, and in fact rarely is, someones "fault." It wasn't granny's "fault" that this one time she fumbled the lid and spilled coffee. Given enough tries, sooner or later anyone would, as it is a positive probability outcome. But neither is the probability of it happening large enough to say McDonald's was "at fault" of something. Stuff happens. Sometimes nice stuff, sometime less so. No need to feed a lawyer army either way.

It's the same silly obsession with finding who's "at fault" that underpins the enormously inefficient (except for, again, for lawyers) "at fault" car accident insurance schemes in place in most states. Despite most accidents and other mishaps being the result of all manners of complicated, best modeled as random, factors. None of which are a specific party's "fault."

But of course, there's the old adage about most people ending up in law school, do so because they couldn't hack math well enough to ever get into the complex systems classes....:)

[DanBC]

She didn't ask for coffee that would stay hot after a twenty minute commute. She asked for coffee.

She was served coffee hotter than other places served coffee. Other places had listened to and responded to the CDC's warning about beverage serving temperatures and had reduced the temperature of the drinks that they served while still allowing people to order extra hot drinks.

Yes, when a kettle boils the water is at 100 Celsius. But you pour that into a cup and add milk. Try it at home if you have a thermometer. Try taking the temperature of coffee that you find acceptable to drink with the temperature that McDonalds was serving their coffee at.

Do you realise that the McDonalds coffee case was used as propaganda by insurance companies? They misreported the case (they said she was driving; that the vehicle was moving; that she sued for and got millions;) they also said "of course coffee is hot"'and did not mention that McD's was serving coffee hotter than other places and had ignored many previous injuries and the CDC warning on temperature.

[stuki]

And as she didn't specifically ask for coffee served at a specific temperature, McDonald's had no way of knowing what temperature she preferred.

What McDonald's did have, however, was a way to estimate what temperature it's customers in general prefer their coffee served at. Roadside Coffee is, after all, a pretty competitive market. If you're too far off temperature wise, people go elsewhere.

Hence, by the standards of "the community", or whatever you wish to call them, McDonald's served coffee at the right temperature. Or at least close enough not to offend enough of them to lose measurable business.

Out of curiosity, did McDonald's manage to poor milk into the cup, and still have it end up that hot? Maybe I have weird ideas about coffee, but for someone all too used to lukewarm coffee once milk is added, that actually sounds quite impressive for such a decidedly low rent establishment.

[DanBC]

> What McDonald's did have, however, was a way to estimate what temperature it's customers in general prefer their coffee served at. Roadside Coffee is, after all, a pretty competitive market. If you're too far off temperature wise, people go elsewhere.

Yes. They had 700 previous burns cases that they settled out of court (including some very serious full thickness burns). They were serving coffee that they admitted was not fit for consumption (because they knew it would burn the mouth at the temperature it was served at). They knew they were serving coffee at higher temperatures than other places selling coffee. They knew they were serving coffee at a higher temperature than people have it at home.

[stuki]

And they did all this despite their paying customers not wanting their coffee that way? Simply because they wanted to, above else, be as nasty as they could to people, never mind lost sales, complaints, court fees and what have you?

In other words, the corporate culture of their coffee operation is not greedy, as often assumed, but specifically sadistic. Happy to suffer lost sales and revenue, higher legal fees, and a shattered reputation, just for the pleasure of burning people?

It would be interesting to see the kind of interview processes that managed to maintain that kind of a corporate culture despite all the churn inherent in minimum wage job environments.

[nemo]

Tort reform boils down to "I know better than the Bill of Rights, because sometimes I don't like the way people exercise their rights." It's not much different than the thinking behind the cheerleading for other amendments being eroded.

McDonalds was egregiously horrible throughout the trial which is why they were hit with punitive damages. "Granny" wanted $20k for the medical expenses of an eight day hospital stay and lost wages. The jury watched McDonalds consciously weighing more than seven hundred reports of customers with medical injuries against others customers having a hot cup of coffee at the end of a long commute and saying they would live with people getting 3rd degree burns.

Also, even if your coffee is merely warm, rather than hot it's still "drinkable." If you are some coffee snob who wants a really perfect hot cup of coffee, you aren't drinking the swill McDonalds serves.

[SilasX]

>Tort reform boils down to "I know better than the Bill of Rights, because sometimes I don't like the way people exercise their rights." It's not much different than the thinking behind the cheerleading for other amendments being eroded.

The right to defend yourself in a criminal trial does not imply the right to bring in all kinds of inflammatory, irrelevant evidence.

Likewise, the right to a civil trial does not imply total jury autonomy in dictating the punishment. If that were so, there would be no point to eg rules of evidence, judges reducing damages, etc.

[mason240]

Tort reform boils down to "Getting hurt shouldn't like winning the lottery."

FTFY

[nemo]

Creative rephrasing of what I said. It does recap my point well.

[stuki]

Rather, tort reform, or more accurately some sort of limitations of what one can drag the civil courts system into, boils down to looking at who wrote the Bill of Rights, and making an estimate as to whether it is reasonable to believe they intended them to be used to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars for spilling coffee on oneself. Or, more pointedly, hundreds of thousands in legal fees by lawyers.

Did we really have cases like this, back when the Bills' authors were still alive? Otherwise, doesn't all this brouhaha look like it boils down to little more than someone getting paid very well to conveniently misunderstand what the Bills were intended to mean? Paid better, in fact, than if instead of harassing others, they simply went out and solved the problem they perceive exist, by selling perfect temperature coffee themselves.