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I'd avoid such a glib characterization...without more of the tale
for example the lady who "spilled a cup of coffee" and sued McDonalds had third degree burns on her face... apparently McDonald's standard coffee machine at the time kept the coffee signifigantly hotter than any other institution would ever serve you... and what in any other restaurant would be like 86-87 degrees, was 98-99 degree when handed to you...
I could imagine if the trolley was like 100-200lbs and had momentum you could get a serious joint injury from a negligent attendant or poor design... not saything that's what happened, just within the realms of the possible.
If I had to guess, her case was more justified than his. She obviously did sustain serious skin injuries, as would be expected by being scalded by hot liquids. It shows is that frivolous lawsuits have been around forever, and continue, but for some reason the public and media latched onto the spilled coffee one.
But it's going at a snail's pace
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That's not how I remember it. My recollection is that they were serving bog standard coffee, and the lawsuit resulted in everyone else dropping the temperatures to avoid being sued as well.
And as far ask I'm concerned her third degree burns are irrelevant. If you don't know how to handle boiling water, you should not be recognized as a legal adult.
It is probably worth pointing out that it only takes slight incompetence of the serving employee to end up with that cup of coffee in one's lap (doubly so with the shitty thin lids of years gone by). That's an inconvenience for cold drinks, but every place that serves hot drinks serves them at a temperature that will scald you if you attempt to drink them immediately.
It utterly bewilders me why the norm for hot beverages is to be served at temperatures that will physically harm you should you attempt to consume them within the first half hour of preparation; clearly the reason fast food chains serve their coffee that hot is specifically to ablate the outer part of your tongue, thus you won't be able to taste how shitty the beverage actually is (which I suspect is why McDonalds in particular was doing this; the coffee they serve in the US is quite literally just hot water with some coffee grounds dumped directly into the cup).
It's clearly not "so that the coffee stays hot later so that when you're ready to enjoy your meal it'll still be hot", because they don't care about the meal itself staying hot for that period of time (the food containers would be just as insulated as beverage containers are now). Guess jury selection should have included people who actually believe that burning themselves is a valuable and immutable part of the experience of consuming tea and coffee?
I'm old enough to remember when the food containers were insulated, but that was changed on account of environmentalist activism.
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Yes, and if the coffee ended up on her as a result off an employees actions, sshe would have had a valid claim, but that's not what happened.
It is utterly bewildering to me you expect anything else. If you prepare a hot beverage at home it will be at the exact same scolding temperature as when you order it at McDonnals. Also you're being way overdramatic when you say half an hour, unless the cups are very well isolated.
If you're saying restaurants should be forced to cool the beverage down to as safe temperature before serving:
Screw you, I don't want that as a customer.
It's treating adults as though they are mentally handicapped. Anyone who needs this should not be allowed to have a driver's license.
They likely do it in response to other customers complaining about cold coffee. The vast majority of people buying coffee in any drive thru are going to drink it at work which might be over half an hour away. If they serve coffee cool enough to drink immediately, they lose the people who want it for the office.
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Rather than relying on memory, it is easy enough to google the case and discover that they were in fact selling coffee hotter than the norm, that they had previous injury complaints, and that the jury took into account the plaintiff's own negligence and found her 20 pct responsible.
Whether damages were excessive is a separate question, but she did have to undergo skin grafting and was hospitalized for 8 days.
I had a friend I've since lost touch with who manages a McD's at the time of this lawsuit so we all had to ask him about it. His initial thought was that McD's should have just settled and paid out, but his take on the subject of the coffee temp was interesting. Apparently a lot of older folks come there for coffee in the morning; he estimated at least 50% of their traffic before 10am was seniors getting coffee and usually a small food item like a hashbrown or muffin of some sort. They sit down, get a free newspaper from the bin by the door and sip their coffee. This same customer demo complaining about their coffee being too cold was also the single biggest complaint category and reason for a refund demand by a long margin. They sip the coffee slowly over the course of half an hour, it gets cold pretty fast, and they'd bring 1/2 empty coffee cups back to the counter complaining about the temperature. Staff usually just gives them more "fresh" coffee from the urn. There was no realistic way they could ever actually lower the served temperature of the coffee. They briefly started lowering the temperature of drive in served coffee but that drove complaints immediately. I don't know what they ultimately did about it. His preferred solution was no coffee for the drive through period.
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Your source says "had tested." So, they hired someone to conduct a survey. Was the survey accurate? I don’t know. But of course, neither do you. What I do know is that McDonald's had access to that survey, could cross-examine whoever conducted it, and were free to conduct their own study. I also know that the jury, which heard all the evidence, decided in favor of the plaintiff. That doesn't mean that they were necessarily correct, but you will excuse me if I am unimpressed with the incredulity shown by someone who has seen none of the evidence and is opining 30 years after the fact.
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Her labia were fused together by the burns in her lap. Her team reasonably only asked McDonalds to cover the medical expenses, and McD refused to settle. When McD was found guilty, the book got thrown at them. It all happened in Albuquerque.
I'm sorry for what happened to her, but if she spilled a coffee she made at home the effect would be largely the same. If a McDonnalds waiter spilled the coffee on her the case would make the slightest bit of sense, but it's not what happened.
How does any functioning adult buy a boiling hot beverage and immediately put it between her knees?
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The motte vs the motte: The cereal defense
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No, it is not easy enough to google the state of the internet as it was around the time of the case, when I distinctly remember some dude on on a phpBB forum linking to a document of some coffebrewer association recommending a temperature range within which McDonnalds comfortably sat.
All other factors you brought up are completely irrelevant.
I would suggest that if you think those factors are legally irrelevant, you don't know enough about the issue to have anyone take your opinion seriously.
I never said "legally" and the exercise of determining something's "legal relevance" is pointless, because it's whatever the court says it is in that moment.
I was talking about it from the perspective of morality and common sense.
Hm, so, if I ignore a known risk to my customers, that is morally irrelevant? I would hate to see what you think IS morally relevant?
Yes, because literally every action we take is a risk, and in this case the risk McDonnalds was putting their customers in was no higher than they were putting themselves into, when making a cup of coffee, tea, or any hot beverage at home. Adults, and even minors, are expected to be able to handle fluids in temperature of up to 100°C.
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