I am still against punitive damages as a matter of principle
Why do you hate grandmas who had their genitals scalded shut, you monster? /s
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Well, one can get a clue by the link Cory helpfully embedded into his entire âit never happenedâ text or by continuing to read beyond his next sentence that begins with, "What actually happened ⌠"
When I read Coryâs posts, I put them in context of his past posts, usage of figure of speech, his conversational writing style, the links within his posts, the scope and context of his current post, the posts of his compatriots, his past actions and evolving situations that surround all of it. Itâs an exercise in critical thinking, not an exercise in spoon-feeding.
If you get frustrated because Cory doesnât explain in detail what you can find out for yourselves, then Iâm not sure this place is the right fit. Unless you enjoy your own confused, pedantic fits, that is.
Speak for yourself, please.
Thatâs BS. You arenât the arbiter of whatâs âwrongâ or not. Iâve seen you in other threads repeatedly accusing Cory of being wrong on things that are matters of opinion. You disagree with his opinion or style of writing and therefore he is âwrongâ. One things is for sure, you love to hear yourself complain about Cory repeatedly.
They arenât even really headlines. They are post titles. People keep screeching about terrible, misleading âheadlinesâ as if Cory is posting a dry headline for a corporatist news organization reporting on an airline disaster. They are post titles for opinion pieces on his fucking blog. I will use the term âheadlineâ because itâs shorter than calling them post titles, but Iâm not going to confuse a Boing Boing headline with a Wall Street Journal news piece headline in the process.
Maybe itâs time for you move on? I donât know. If his challenging style of posting makes you unhappy and you think itâs worthless clickbait, maybe itâs time for you to stop taking what you perceive as bait?
If you or anyone else wants to start an âI hate the style of Coryâs postsâ thread instead of addressing the issues he brings up, then open up a new BBS thread and enjoy your spirited whine-fest there. I donât understand the purpose of derailing the threads here for that kind of esoteric drivel.
Itâs one thing to say you disagree with Cory on issues⌠itâs quite another thing to repeatedly derail and descend the conversation into how Cory is some kind of disingenuous âclickbaitâ artist, etc.
That doesnât mean, nor infer that I think any and all criticism towards Cory is unwarranted. But, if someoneâs sole purpose is to piss and moan in such a trite manner in these threads, then itâs probably time to focus on writers you enjoy instead of repeatedly whining like infants in many of Coryâs threads.
What you donât seem to notice is all the many more posts in these threads that focus on the issues he brings up instead of attacking his style of posting.
We get it, you donât like Coryâs posts. Start a BBS thread on it and complain there to high heaven. This is a thread on corporatist tactics involving a woman, hot coffee and McDonaldâs.
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Yeah⌠Thatâs funny, because itâs true. The only difference is people are vastly more pedantic nowadays so the debate is far more trite and derailed.
Actually, no, it depends on what temperature the company KEEPS the coffee at post-brewing. McDonalds is infamous for KEEPING their coffee at 170-200 degrees. The fact that this was an industry standard was part of the problem that needed to be addressed - is it responsible to pass such (heightened) risks onto the customer for the sake of an arbitrary standard? But no one was interested in addressing this until, you guessed it, they had to pay.
Depends how bad the burn is. If itâs significant, as is the case here, that should be re-considered. Also, youâre basing how ârareâ getting burned is based on court cases. I think we can all agree that there have likely been a lot more burns, even significant ones, than have been taken to court. Like, a LOT. Thatâs like arguing that hammers rarely hurt people based on how many people took the hammer company to court. Come on, now.
Not really. I own a coffee maker that brews at the supposed âperfect tempâ (195 degrees in this case). But even if I finish the brew, pour into a mug, and try to sip right away, itâs never as literally blistering as retail coffee often is, especially McDâs. Thatâs personal experience talking, itâs anecdotal, but so is arguing that retail coffee is no different without doing an actual study on the issue. So for now, we all have to go with our own experiences. And mine (and obviously some othersâ) says that home brewed coffee doesnât even come close.
See, now here we go, HERE you use statistics that have nothing to do with court cases. Yet youâre comparing it to how many court cases have been collated. Not remotely balanced, son. Try again.
Now on THIS, we agree wholeheartedly 
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Thank you for your posts.
It was interesting to me after Jbforum disingenuously distorted your post and resorted to scare tactics, etc. he also threw in malpractice as something that bankrupts hospitals and raises the cost of health care.
First of all, malpractice lawsuits donât bankrupt hospitals. Thatâs just corporatist FUD. Itâs easy to find out why hospitals really file for bankruptcy as itâs publicly documented.
Most hospitals go bankrupt from their own poor financial management, changes in payer mix, reimbursement reductions, overzealous construction and purchasing of physician practices, decrease in volume and demographic shifts. Not malpractice lawsuits. So thatâs a crock.
Secondly, for Jbforum to point towards malpractice as raising the cost of health care without mentioning the elephant in the room which is the ridiculous administrative costs associated with our draconian, privatized insurance system is pretty disingenuous as well. If anyone is really concerned about health care costs, they should be focusing on the USA finally getting a true single payer system for health care in the first place.
Anyway, thanks again for your personal story and I wish you and your father well.
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Which is why even though I support a single payer system, I try to warn people that they should understand that there will be changes they might not like. The cost-benefit analysis will change and so will treatment paths.
Iâm not sure it has to be that way. The smartest people I see advocating for single payer in the US suggest we should copy the good parts of single payer systems from other countries and jettison the bad parts. The United States should innovate and make its own best single payer system. Weâll be terribly late to the table, but at least weâll be playing the best cards.
Remember the old lady who sued McDonaldâs for millions because she burned herself by spilling hot coffee in her lap?
As far as I can establish from the article, she asked for money to cover her medical costs (~$10,000, or ~$20,000 via Wikipedia). Mcdonalds offered $800. She then retained a lawyer. At trial she was awarded $200,000 which was reduced to $160,000 in compensatory damages. In addition she was awarded $2.7m in punitive damages which was reduced to $480,000.
So Iâm still unclear about what Cory means.
So Iâm still unclear about what Cory means.
In my opinion, you may have issues with nuance in language, figure of speech, etc. â Cory used a nuanced figure of speech. Like usual, heâs using a conversational style of speech. He wasnât literally saying that none of it ever happened.
In my opinion, the best I can do for you is teach you how to fish:
I admit Iâm sometimes slow to pick up on it when people do it verbally, but I guess Iâm quicker with it when itâs in written form for whatever reason. Probably just the way my brain is wired or whatever or Iâm just used to Coryâs style of posts over the years⌠who knows?
Since Iâve exhausted my three replies allowed to ânewbiesâ (although Iâve been reading BB for years and used to have an account,) Iâm replying to the thread at large.
âThank you for the links, but Iâm not sure I follow how that shows that Liebeck was using propaganda.â
I said this was âthe other sideâsâ propaganda, not Liebeck. So many links (and yes, I do have them, but donât have time to post before work) talk about how McDonaldsâ coffee was so much hotter than the rest. No, thatâs propaganda. McDonaldsâ coffee was intended to be within industry standards (185 degree,) but the +/- 5 degrees their practices allowed would have made it 5 degrees above standards.
âThe other sideâ presents the 700 reported cases as proof McDonalds was negligent, but when you consider the volume of coffee severed over the all their restaurants over a decade, 700 - approximately 1 on 24 million served - is actually a pretty insignificant number of cases, especially given that most were no where as severe as Liebeckâs injuries.
âThe other sideâ points to her injuries and that she won as proof the lawsuit was legitimate, but injuries donât indicate liability. I can accidentally cut off my hand with a sharp knife, but that doesnât make it the knife makers fault. And other âHot Coffeeâ lawsuits routinely fails, which indicates that this was instead a case of a lawsuit being wrongly decided, not vindication of this type of tort. Additionally, that the industry standards were not changed as a result of this suit indicates that the coffee industry (and coffee consumers whose preferences those standards are geared to) saw that the Liebeck decision was an anomaly.
As a final point, Susan Saladoff is a former trial lawyer - imagine if someone tried to present a documentary of the GWB presidency as though it wasnât propagandized if it were made by someone in that administration. Iâm saying to dismiss her work entirely, but you do need to consider the source, whether it supports your position or not.
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So many links (and yes, I do have them, but donât have time to post before work) talk about how McDonaldsâ coffee was so much hotter than the rest. No, thatâs propaganda.
All of your points have been addressed multiple times throughout this thread by others, so Iâm not going to rehash them here. In my opinion, youâre bringing nothing new of true importance to the table.
Meanwhile, you didnât properly address the real propaganda problem that @L_Mariachi mentioned in a reply to your previous post that also happens to align with the topic of this thread. Once again, the media didnât simply sensationalize the story as you said, the mass media very much colluded with the corporatist framing of the story. Thereâs a big difference there you havenât acknowledged and you instead continue to focus on flogging a head horse.
Once again, the truth of the matter you seem to be avoiding is corporations are vastly more litigious than anyone else. And, how the media keeps trying to frame a false narrative that the public is the problem, not their owners. No amount of deflection by railing against an amorphous âother sideâ takes away from these important facts and the point of this thread.
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âYouâre not big with the nuance and subtlety, are ya?â
Hahaha, well, you DID say you couldnât see what change this was supposed to generate. Thought Iâd put it in big letters so itâs hard to miss!
"A business that sells coffee has to put the mean temperature somewhere. If itâs too cold, most customers will go somewhere else. Too high, and there will be a lot of customers burning themselves. "
The juryâs position in this instance was that keeping coffee at a temperature that would burn someone THAT severely was âtoo hot.â I have no reason to dispute this finding, not being a coffeeologist or a McDâs customer satisfaction thingy. Iâm not persuaded that you have any more reason to dispute this finding than I do. I presume that, as is the case in most trials, both sides had a chance to persuade the jury, and the punitive damages reflect the juryâs belief that McDâs was unlikely to change their behavior unless incentivized to do so by the possibility of expensive lawsuits.
tonyblaha:
According to the national weather service, your chances of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in a million (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/lightning/lightning_faq.htm). Thatâs right, you are 24 times more likely to be struck by lightning then to be injured by McDonaldâs coffee.
Obviously Doctorowâs linkbait article is correct in pointing out how evil and dastardly McDonaldâs is. Now we just need to ban weather.
I think weâd be fine if we just banned misleading analogies, but lets pretend youâre being legit because itâs more fun that way and talk abut the core of your logic here.
Itâs more dangerous to be in a thunderstorm than drink McDâs coffee, so if weâre going to get the law involved with one, why not the other?
Because the law can do something in the case of McDâs coffee, but it canât do anything in the case of weather.
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I agree. Taiwan is a good starting model. But there will be changes. Americans insist on gold standard care and extreme end of life measures. That, and many other practices, mean high costs. Only a fraction of the improvement can come from how care is delivered. Another small fraction from drugs. The majority will come from what care is delivered.
There are ways to preserve the extreme end, but would likely mean a two tier system. Most health care can be delivered at a modest cost with great benefit. Putting grandma in the ICU for the last two weeks of life isnât one of them. You want slid base healthcare, we can do it cheap and effective. You want $100,000/mo blood products, that might have to be private insurance.
Only a fraction of the improvement can come from how care is delivered. ⌠Putting grandma in the ICU for the last two weeks of life isnât one of them.
Much larger than âa fractionâ, and youâre heading into rationing and âdeath panelâ territory a little bit (unless Iâm misunderstanding you). I think the PNHP addresses that here:
In U.S. health care, no one is ultimately accountable for how the system works. No one takes full responsibility. Rationing in our system is carried out covertly through financial pressure, forcing millions of individuals to forgo care or to be shunted away by caregivers from services they canât pay for.
The rationing that takes place in U.S. health care is unnecessary. A number of studies (notably a General Accounting Office report in 1991 and a Congressional Budget Office report in 1993) show that there is more than enough money in our health care system to serve everyone if it were spent wisely.
Administrative costs are at 31% of U.S. health spending, far higher than in other countriesâ systems. These inflated costs are due to our failure to have a publicly financed, universal health care system. We spend about twice as much per person as Canada or most European nations, and still deny health care to many in need. A national health program could save enough on administration to assure access to care for all Americans, without rationing.
And a little more here:
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Mod note: No personal attacks and stay on topic.
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Iâve seen similar asserted quite often, but no links to any sort of smoking gun. The bulk of the evidence would seem to be on the side of the opposite contention, that the media have colluded with the organized âplaintiffs barâ framing.
For example Iâve never seen any report or documentary where McDonalds has cooperated to push their side of the story â even to rebut the easily-checked âfactâ that âMcDonalds only offered $800â (from what Iâve seen, that was âP.T.S. Incâ, AKA the franchisee guy). Iâve read several books that complain of corporations using the case to promote âtort-reformâ, but all of the examples are bought ads, rather than news articles â whereas one press conference by Public Citizen in 1995 netted many high-profile articles churnalizing their talking points, such as in Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.
I suggest you start here:
Then watch this film:
The film has actual news clips, etc. â Hence, the smoking gun you desire.
More options: Scarab Media Offline
The smoking gun is there within the Hot Coffee film if youâre willing to look. You are, arenât you?
More:
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NYT did a nice update.
Also, Refusing brown M&Mâs is a smart request.
copy the good parts of single payer systems from other countries and jettison the bad parts
Most Americans seem to think that the good parts are:
(1) having the most state-of-the-art technologies and medications universally available.
(2) immediate access to all of the above, no waiting.
(3) as much office time as they want with the best doctors, no gatekeepers to limit physician access.
(4) freedom to sue without limit any time something goes wrong.
Most Americans seem to think that the bad part is:
(5) having to pay for any of the above.
Let me know when you get that plan worked out, OK??
I am not sure cowicide was suggesting it was going to be an easy negotiation to get the American people to sign on to a good idea.
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Absolutely correct. They had been sued for the same thing many times before. Finally they burned âgrannyâ and got what was coming to them.
The lady did not get millions. All she gets is to be âmade wholeâ she doesnât get to profit wildly.
The confusion over this case is caused by an inept media and corporate American wanting to appear as a victim.
I repeat, Grandma did not get rich off of this suit.
