Originally published at: Woman sues Jet Blue over "dangerously cold" ice cream sandwich - Boing Boing
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Honestly, she may have a perfectly valid complaint here, especially if she wasn’t sufficiently warned to wait a while before eating it. I’ve also received some rock-hard ice cream sandwiches that were frozen with dry ice, which are far colder and harder than frozen treats that you’d get from your home freezer or a supermarket. Dry ice is -109 degrees Fahrenheit. Something from a supermarket or home freezer is in the neighborhood of zero degrees Fahrenheit. If you’ve got a frozen object that’s more than 100 degrees below zero then just holding it in your hands waiting for it to warm up a bit can be a bit dangerous.
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The important thing to remember about that case is that the lawsuit was perfectly reasonable and the media misrepresented or omitted key facts to turn McDonald’s grossly negligent behavior into a joke and/or call for “tort reform” legislation that further shielded multibillion-dollar corporations from culpability for their actions.
Regarding this lawsuit, it seems very plausible she was harmed by a dangerously cold sandwich. Many years ago my uncle recieved life-altering injuries after asking an airline attendant if they could possibly get him a cold pack to soothe his sore back during a flight. The attendant obliged, but the cold pack turned out use dry ice rather than water ice—which was so cold that it gave him permanent nerve damage that left him walking with a cane for the remainder of his life.
I really hate it when the media treats these stories as jokes even when they involve very real negligence that cause very real harm.
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Though she’s suing over her broken tooth, and I suspect it only broke because it was already seriously weakened. People routinely sue over cracked teeth due to a bit of unexpected shell in their shellfish dinner, and no one bats an eye at the lawsuits, but I understand that it really only happens with damaged teeth that would have eventually required serious dental work regardless.
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is that really a thing? thats so…its kinda insane, especially for food.
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Those things (instructions abut what not to do) are there to indemnify the company, most people reasonably assume that when they’re served a cold or hot food, it’s possibly going to be too hot to comfortably ingest, but not necessarily dangerous or hazardous.
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Absolutely. That’s how the mobile ice cream carts at Disneyland keep their treats frozen, for example. When you buy a treat they usually warn you repeatedly that they’re rock hard and that you should wait a while before biting into them, but come on, you know the kids aren’t going to do that.
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It’s no joke, just this summer i got a popsicle from a cart, and it had to have been stored with dry ice because it immediately fused to the inside of my lips. I was shrieking like that tongue-pole kid in A Christmas Story for Mrs. Bunbain to pour water out over the situation to defuse it. You know she was a little upset at how frantic i was acting, but later i finally got some sympathy when i showed her the blisters that formed on the inside of my mouth. Hurt like hell, 1/5 would not recommend!
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If you use water ice in an icebox to keep things frozen then the ice cream will melt as fast as the ice cubes and likely get soggy in the process. Dry ice sublimates into carbon dioxide gas at a lower temperature than the freezing point of ice cream, so it’s a much more efficient way too keep things both frozen and dry if a bulky plug-in freezer isn’t available. I’m guessing this is a big concern for airplanes as well as mobile ice cream carts.
The obvious trade-off is the safety hazards posed by dry ice, which the people who serve the food are ultimately responsible for.
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I get it’s fun to look down on people, or something, but “hot” and “cold” are both terms that admit a great deal of variation. Coffee is often hot enough to burn but not usually enough to melt your genitals together. Ice cream is cold and yet I have never gotten hurt by touching it.
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Which is irrelevant in a lawsuit like this. The eggshell plaintiff doctrine says you take your plaintiffs as they are. If the airline is found to be negligent, then they’re 100% liable, even if a passenger with healthier teeth wouldn’t have broken a tooth under the same circumstances.
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Thank you!
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Yeah this is exactly the kind of ignorant take that was ubiquitous during the McDonald’s lawsuit. People think they know what “hot coffee” or “cold ice cream” means because they have some experience with coffee and ice cream.
What most of the quick-to-judge commentators don’t realize is that an ordinary coffee maker isn’t even capable of heating something to the temperature of that McDonald’s coffee, and a freezer can’t make ice cream anywhere near as cold as dry ice.
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Yeah, my understanding is that people win those “cracked (already damaged) tooth on a bit of shell” lawsuits (or at least restaurants pay), and this wouldn’t be any different.
It doesn’t make them any more or less likely to win. Legally, in the US, any physical defects or ailments someone might have which may have made their injuries worse are irrelevant and inadmissible in a torts case. And the reason for that is that but for the negligence of the tortfeasor, they wouldn’t have been injured.
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JetBlue if it finds it should settle, might drip $14 a day of the amount into her CashApp so she doesn’t get “dangerously wealthy.”
Came here to say this. The Leibeck lawsuit was not just a frivolous money seeking exploitation of spilling some harmless coffee but widespread gross negligence and corporate malfeasance resulting in 3rd degree burns and reconstructive surgery.
The media misrepresentation of the facts continues to distort the issue of tort reform over 30 years later. Most people who bother to read the actual facts of the case are horrified
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