Thirty degrees hotter?! I find that very hard to believe - let’s say they serve the coffee at near-as-damnit-boiling: 95 degrees; thirty below that is 65 which is a pretty tepid cup for your average home I’d say.
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We still don’t use the metric system in the US; here, water boils at 212 degrees (fahrenheit).
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Journalists don’t tend to study maths / statistics. It’s problematic, because they need to get the story out fast, and will tend to, when it comes to numbers, be simple conduits for the source.
It’s quite useful when you want to spin something.
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Yep. People in general read stories like this, along with 15 other stories of shock, and for three minutes are appalled. The next day they’re back in McD’s ordering coffee.
Unless you really touch a nerve - like selling tainted baby milk - your business will basically be untouched by issues like this. You will not lose revenue. The finance team will present on the costs of changing the business to avoid the issue, or diminish the number of times it happens per year, and perhaps the CEO will make a decision on it.
Even if a campaign is raised, and hundreds of thousands of people back it, there are still dozens of millions who continue to absorb the “sunshine and smiles” advertising that smoothly paints over the whole affair*.
It’s only us reactionaries (or activists? I never know) who cross a company off the list and spend time convincing others to do the same.
So - big awards are just about the only viable method for impacting policy at these institutions. Big enough, and the investors start losing return on equity - then things might change.
* Watch carefully the next time something like this hits the news. Read every article, and pay attention to the advertising and media response. Likely a story for a while, then the company itself will never, ever mention it.
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So hang on! How does this video change the perception again? I am not an American and have seen this video and the facts behind it for the very first time and even then without any prejudice, it is clear to me that although unfortunate, it clearly was the woman’s fault here.
The facts of the case are: Person buys hot beverage. Person while sitting on the passenger seat, keeps the still hot beverage between her legs. The Beverage spills over following the rules of Physics and common logic. Person is burned badly as a result.
Then when the case was brought to the Jury, they decided to punish the evil corporation for serving the coffee too hot? So the punitive damages ultimately brought about a change of temperature of 10 deg F. Now their recommended temp for coffee is 170-180 deg.
According to the American Burn Association, when the temperature of a hot liquid is increased to 140 F it takes only five seconds or less for a serious burn to occur. (http://www.ameriburn.org/Preven/2000Prevention/Scald2000PrevetionKit.pdf)
So does that mean that the next time someone spills their coffee and gets third degree burns, will Mc Donalds be culpable again?
This still is ludicrous to me!!
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There! I gave the answer to your question not knowing that someone had the same doubt as I did. You’re welcome!!
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If you bought a shotgun, loaded it and examined it, and it went off undemanded in your hands harming you, you’d sue, right?
So,in order for hot coffee to be safe it would need to be a lot cooler than 140°F (65°C), because that is still more than hot enough to give the same injuries.
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At first the ignorant citations of this incident didn’t bother me. Usually the source was a person with a particular (often anti-government) view, and I figured, well, they’re harmless enough because the facts are against them.
Then I started hearing reasonable, intelligent people–sometimes with no other motive than wanting to make a joke or conversation–cite this story incorrectly. They’d say something like, “Hey, you know that woman who sued McDonald’s because her coffee was too hot? How stupid can you get? Ha ha.”
I find the way the facts of the event have been either trivialized or simply buried even more appalling than the event itself. People like to cite it as an example, but most cite it for the wrong reasons. It’s an example of how an event can be misrepresented to manipulate people.
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It’s possibly ludicrous to you because you appear to have missed several salient facts or are ignoring them. I notice you specifically call out the passenger seat location: I’m not sure the relevancy of that detail (and the ‘common logic’ comment) unless you think that the car was in motion, which it was not. The vehicle was parked at the time. The fact was that McDonalds had already been sued SEVEN HUNDRED TIMES on this issue and had still taken no corrective action. They considered minor lawsuits an acceptable liability and expected to continue to weather them using the size of their organization and legal team to counter them routinely. Second was that they had done a study with an outside firm to determine the risk of brewing their coffee much hotter than other restaurants and then purposefully ignored the safety advice of their own study. McDonalds intentionally was selling coffee that was undrinkable at the time of sale by their own admission, because they considered the safety risk secondary to serving coffee that would remain hot 30 minutes after sold. Liebeck herself was only trying to get coverage of medical costs and lost wages for her and her family. We don’t know what her actual settlement was, but she wasn’t responsible for the punitive damages awarded by the jury to punish McDonalds, nor was she ever actually awarded those damages. Further, the jury found her partially responsible for her injury and reduced the penalty, long berfore the appeals process began.
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What exactly is this corrective action that you wanted Mc Donalds to take? The one that they actually took after this incident i.e. reducing the coffee temp by 10 deg F? Well then as I’ve written earlier, the lady would still have gotten 3rd degree burns in the exact same situation. Your own Burn Association acknowledges that. It further goes on to state that, “Coffee, tea, hot chocolate and other hot beverages are usually served at 160 to 180 F resulting in almost instantaneous burns that require surgery to heal”. So basically are you saying that if the lady was at home and spilled coffee after taking it off a coffee machine, would the company making the machine be responsible for the injuries?
By common logic, I meant that it is always possible for a hot beverage to spill if kept in an uneven/unbalanced surface (like between your knees). According to the wiki entry, ‘Liebeck placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap.’ Source: ‘Michael McCann, William Haltom, and Anne Bloom, “LAW & SOCIETY SYMPOSIUM: Java Jive: Genealogy of a Juridical Icon”, 56 U. Miami L. Rev. 113 (October 2001), which describes the accident in detail’
Also the cotton sweatpants that she was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks, and groin. So in effect, if she hadn’t had worn them the injuries may not have been so severe! Should she have sued the sweatpants company as well?
I am not an advocate for big corporations and Mc Donalds, Coca Cola etc have done much much worse atrocities on mankind and 2.7 million dollars is nothing compared to the actual damage they have done. In this case though, the blame doesn’t lie on the big evil corporation!
Yes, it is a common way that greasy-spoon diners deal with hours-old coffee in a glass pot.
Signed,
a former greasy-spoon diner waitress
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Horribly, that probably means that, had the story happened more recently, it would have been a talking point for ‘tort reform’ assholes and she would have been subjected to talk-radio inquiries about why vaginal fusion was such a big deal, anyway, unless she was some kind of slut…
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I really wish there was a simple law for journalism that no percentage may ever be reported without at least one of the values it’s calculated from.
It also irks me when journalists try to use percentages to tell how much something has increased or decreased when based on percentages changing. They often get this math wrong.
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It’s funny. Even before this lawsuit, I always thought it was a bad idea to put a cup of hot coffee – regardless of the source – between one’s legs. Because, you know, genitals.
Regardless of the role of McDonald’s in the woman’s injuries, the incident never could have happened if she hadn’t done something monumentally stupid in the first place.
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Exactly my point!! Thank you for elucidating that ever so plainly!
Just to add something missing from that great comic and your details: at trial, evidence presented indicated that the specific McDonalds franchise had been at least once cited (maybe more times) recently before the incident by the health dept (?) for having their coffee too hot. They had been specifically told to correct it and did nothing.
Ugh, I’m breaking serious commenter etiquette here, but I can’t find a source. I’m sure that I read that during a marathon session one night researching this case. Please forgive. 
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I always remember as a kid my dad teaching me to place my coke can mouth-side forward between your legs so that if it spills it doesn’t wet your pants but rather the floor.
My Burn Association? I think you’re under the impression that they are a government organization that holds some degree of authority on the matter and that somehow I have ownership of them, as opposed to them being a private organization with a legislative agenda and private membership, which they are.
As to what corrective action I would want McDonalds to take? They already took it, by reducing the temperature of their coffee and reengineering their coffee cup design. The straw man often offered up in this argument and that you are using is that since it is reasonable to assume that coffee could be spilled and it is reasonable to assume that coffee is hot, that it is reasonable to assume that you would get 3rd degree burns from that coffee that you purchased at McDonalds. And the jury agreed with the plaintiff that it clearly was NOT reasonable to expect those kind of injuries from a cup of coffee. If I purchased a can of soda, I would be reasonable to expect that it would cause me to belch if I drank the cup. It would not be reasonable for me to expect that I would get kidney stones from it as a normal consequence of drinking it without waiting 20 minutes.
And since 2.7 Million dollars was NEVER AWARDED TO THE PLAINTIFF, I’m not sure why you harp on it. I don’t consider the corporation ‘evil’, I consider it a large organization whose interests are purely it’s profit motivators. I don’t consider that wrong, but at the same time we have centuries of experience that laissez faire treatment of organizations leads to abuses. They need to be help accountable and motivated to proper behavior or we get Union Carbide in India.
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By “your own Burn Association”, I obviously meant the organisation established in your country (presuming that you are American, apologies if you aren’t though)! They are definitely one of the foremost authority in Burn related cases, so much so that the wiki article on Burns quotes their data. But of course, you’d like even more sources, so here you go…
‘Moritz AR Henriques FC Jr. Studies of thermal injury II: The relative importance of time and surface temperature in the causation of cutaneous burns. Am J Pathol. 1947; 23: 915-941’
Well you got to start believing somebody, especially when evidence starts piling up in the form of those pesky little things called as, “Facts”.
Secondly, had McDonalds taken the ‘corrective’ action before and reduced the temperature by 10° F (as they later did), the lady still would’ve got those burns and be injured. Would she still have sued and won?
Also, are you seriously implying that it is quite reasonable to assume that a hot cup of coffee bought at a takeout will get spilled and that any injuries occurring because of that ‘reasonable’ assumption is the coffee maker’s fault? So, it is the beer and Soda companies fault when the soda/beer fizzes up the can when you open it, since you can ‘reasonably’ assume that the customer is stupid enough to shake it. Then any injuries to the eye or the damage to the suit should be recompensated by the said company?
The National Coffee Association of USA as well as the Specialty Coffee Association of America recommend optimal temperature for brewing a great cup of coffee is 195 – 205 F (http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71) and most of the commercial coffe machines try to follow that as shown by this coffee enthusiast here (http://coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/568286) . So any accidents due to coffee spills from these machines are the fault of the manufacturers then?
