[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.

[blisterpeanuts]

Most people don't think and behave that logically.

If this coffee is < 200F, then I can safely put in lap. Else, I will ask nephew to hold.

Nope. People don't do that. They just do the right thing most of the time, dumb things a small fraction of the time. Some people do more dumb things than they should.

The Liebeck situation is an edge case. McDonald's sells tens of millions of cups of coffee a day (depending on the source, 10 million/day or 300 million/month or 500 million a month). If there are several burn cases a year, or even several hundred, that probably does not constitute a significant trend.

There are thousands of people who burn themselves, electrocute themselves, crash their cars, choke on a bone, and do other things that are unfortunate but avoidable with a little common sense.

You can't protect everybody from every contingency, nor would you want to; we would become a nation of prisoners in soft rubber cells, protected from every possible danger. I read a sci-fi story about that once and it was rather unpleasant!

[oneeyedpigeon]

I agree. I don't think anyone actually considers actual temperatures, etc. before they handle a cup of coffee in the same way, they just treat all coffee pretty much the same - i.e. 'a cup of coffee is hot, and will hurt me if I spill it on myself, but it won't be serious / cause permanent damage'. It's for this very reason that I think either coffee shouldn't be served at such dangerous temperatures, or it should be served in such a different manner as to make people think - e.g. with some kind of warning attached. But I agree that you shouldn't take this too far; it's why I probably would choose the latter case of action over the former.

[Crito]

> but coffee that causes 3rd-degree burns is a lot different from coffee that hurts a bit.

Fresh black coffee from just about any shop will cause 3rd-degree burns if you spill it in your lap. Mcdonalds coffee was not somehow unique in that respect, despite opinion to the contrary.

In this thread, meaning to condemn Mcdonalds by holding the "reasonable Starbucks" up as an example, Starbucks coffee has been pegged at "145-165F".

145F coffee can cause 3rd degree burns in less than five seconds. 165F coffee can cause 3rd degree burns in less than one second.

Industry standard coffee causes third degree burns.

[oneeyedpigeon]

OK, I'm not a doctor, but presumably that 1-5 seconds difference is very significant. The higher temperature pretty much guarantees permanent damage. The lower temperature at least gives time for clothing to be removed, etc. And the McDonalds coffee was served at least at 180F, so presumably it would definitely cause 3rd degree burns instantly. That just seems way to risky, to me, to be serving as a beverage, which most people would not expect to cause instant 3rd degree burns.

[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).