During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills of coffee. This policy by the fast food chain is the reason the jury awarded $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages in the McDonald’s hot coffee case. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for their inappropriate business practice.
It’s pretty screwed up how the media made light of this lawsuit.
A lawsuit that ended in gross negligence, and the media shamed the lady involved for a decade.
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Inner thighs and labia :-(
Bro?
Yeah, it was kinda the stuff of nightmares. I think it actually… fused … some things together.
180°©?!? Did they keep the coffee from flashing to steam instantly?
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The woman’s scalds were almost enough to kill her. She spent weeks in hospital and needed skin grafts. To make it worse, McDonald’s had received multiple complaints about the temperature of their coffee.
Her lawsuit was just to help cover the medical expenses. McDonald’s didn’t want a precedence of being sued so their PR cooked up a narrative of greedy frivolous lawsuits and America bought this story hook line and sinker.
I didn’t know about the saving on refills, but I did know that it was an old lady who’s grandson drove her to McDonald’s
They were sitting in the car in the parking lot, NOT MOVING and the coffee spilled and gave the old lady 3rd degree burns that required hospital care for a long time.
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English is hard.
It’s my native tongue and I admit it has hardly a shred of orthagonality.
It was used as the definitive “Frivolous Lawsuit”, but… in reality McDonalds just told Media Companies “Make us look like the victim here, or we’re pulling our precious advertising dollars.”
And media did a bang-up job portraying the victim as a petulant child who is too dumb to drink coffee. Classic corporate Uno reverse card.
The good news is the only way they’re able to get away with it was because the internet hadn’t caught on as much, and because this was before the media was afraid of catching defamation lawsuits.
I just wish the victims lawyers had responded to those claims with the pictures of that poor woman’s third degree burns. she suffered horrifically and for years.
Fortunately we have actually come aways since then, if a company tried that kind of stunt today, Not only would they be called out for it online, but they would also likely catch a second lawsuit for defamation.
hopefully, she deserved so much better.
Oh man there is so much to this case. First, she asked for like $40k, enough to cover the cost of the medical bills. To be clear, she received extensive burns as the coffee was so hot that it would burn in seconds (the wiki had a breakdown of the times/temps and they were illuminating). Moreover, it wasn’t even the hottest coffee available. Starbucks was serving much hotter coffee at the time (the hottest I think recorded). In the end, she got paid, but McDs never cooled their coffee (nor did anyone else), all they did was make better lids lol.
Or they could just charge per cup
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When you dive into that case, you definitely side with the lady. She had some pretty serious burns, like way beyond what most of us would get if we spilled coffee that we made at the house.
If my memory serves me well, she originally only asked them to cover the medical expenses. So their greed ended up costing them far more.
Must be one of the more successful smear campaigns in recent history. I’m not even from the us and we heard about that shit and used it as an example of greed and frivolous lawsuits. It was only like 5 years back I learned the truth. Believed that shit for 25 years…
Edit: oops should’ve responded to the media part of thread
Poor lady. Her labia was physically fused together from the heat, but she was still called dramatic. I can’t imagine everything that she had to go through.
This thing has been going around a long time. McDonald’s is bad and people will believe anything anyone makes up about the case. People on the internet tend to be contrarian, so they jump on the chance to say “well actually the women that sued McDonald’s was in the right, I know this because I’m much smarter than anyone that thinks otherwise!”
The flaw with this meme is making coffee involves boiling water. You can’t actually heat water above 100C without it turning to steam. The coffee served to the woman was significantly less than the boiling point of water, because McDonald’s isn’t able to change physics. The injuries the woman were horrific, but anyone would suffer even worse injuries if the spilled water on themselves while making a pot of Mac & Cheese. Like anything that involves boiling water to make there’s an expectation that you need to be careful when handling it.
The reality of the story is the lady that got burned admitted it was her fault. The reason she sued was to pay her medical bills. The real issue is lack of healthcare. Handling boiling water is a common thing, an accident can happen to anyone. Having a system that depends on either having a corporation associated with the accident you can sue or face bankruptcy whenever you have an accident is the real stupidity here.
I mean who would you sue if you tripped while carrying a pot of Mac & Cheese and got burned because of it? The Kraft Corporation maybe? Dumb system that brainwashed people into trying to blame accidents on a nearby corporation instead of fixing the real problem.
Dude her labia fused to her leg. I think that coffee might have been just a bit too hot.
Yes yes, the emotion of it all. Let’s bring it back to logic. You would suffer more injury if you spilled a pot of Mac & Cheese over your groin. Injuries be nasty, boiling water be dangerous, these are just facts of science.
Unless your mom cooks all your food for you, then you are at risk of similar injuries nearly every day. Most of us have learned the importance of being careful around the dangerous things we encounter every day to avoid these nasty injuries.
Wow you must be some kind of cunt scientist, moaning about the fact that the water obviously wasn’t boiling because it was liquid. Significantly under 100C, sure.
Water at a temperature as low as 54C “can result in a full-thickness skin burn in 30 seconds” as in, 3rd degree burns.
How fast can a 79 year old strip in a parking lot?
In a kitchen you are an least handling your boiling liquids in rigid containers instead of cardboard. Why would you be walking around with that full hot pot anyway? Did you order your pot of mac and cheese to go?
The stupid thing here is instead of the government enforcing safe products that are fit for purpose, this kind of damage to a person is civil and a tort.
Nah I’m the kind of scientist that actually measured the temperature of a cup of Maxwell House instant coffee. Because actual scientist test instead of just believing rando articles from personal injury lawyers.
Black (just coffee crystals and water): 88C With two spoonfuls of sugar: 80C With sugar and cream: 68C <- I drank it at this temperature, it was nice!
Feel free to peer review my findings. You only need instant coffee, a kettle and a thermometer.
A carafe, a window, a cardboard cup, and someone sitting in a car next to the window.
Or did this old lady walk up to a counter?
This experiment doesn’t seem too well thought out.
So you concede the point that the temperature of the coffee was fine?
So basically you think McDonald’s shouldn’t sell coffee at the drive through window. If you were saying that, then sure, maybe I can be convinced of that. But the main point of that the “coffee was too hot” is completely invalid.
BTW what happened in reality was McDonald’s didn’t significantly change the temperature of their coffee (it’s supposed to be hot), they improved their lids and put a “warning coffee is hot” label on the cups. You could still suffer third degree burns from dumping coffee on your groin, so heed the warning on the label and be careful with it.
This is a stupid way of thinking.
Making your own coffee at home, you have complete control over how safe it is.
Buying it from a business, you expect it’s not going to maim you. If a hibachi bar burns you this bad or you have equivalent injuries from dry ice at some gastro pub, the business is at fault because they should know how to prevent patrons from being injured.
The coffee was in her possession when the accident happened. Coffee is served hot, that’s just what the product is. If someone buys a knife and after the knife is safely handed to them by the employee of the store, then the customer cuts themself with the knife in their car, would you say the store didn’t take appropriate measures to ensure safety by only selling dull knives?
The reality of the story is the lady that got burned admitted it was her fault.
The bottom line though is that McDonalds sold/served it at an unsafe temperature (for the type of container it was put in), to make more money, making it an unsafe product to sell, which companies are not allowed to do.
The bottom bottom line is lawyers want to keep up the narrative that it’s good and proper to sue over hot coffee. Check the source of the link.
The reality of the story is the lady that got burned admitted it was her fault.
The bottom line though is that McDonalds sold/served it at an unsafe temperature (for the type of container it was put in), to make more money, making it an unsafe product to sell, which companies are not allowed to do.
The bottom bottom line is lawyers want to keep up the narrative that it’s good and proper to sue over hot coffee. Check the source of the link.
You completely ignored my point about safety, you’re not being intellectually honest, and arguing for arguing sake.
They didn’t serve the coffee at that temp to save money, they did it because that was the recommended holding temp for coffee.
After this lawsuit, they didn’t lower their coffee temps, they just made better cups and lids, and added more warnings.
Recommended by who, is the thing. The recommended holding temp for coffee is 110°, McDonalds of that era was holding it at 200°, and claiming it was so that when you arrived at your destination with your coffee it would have cooled down to drinking temperature, even though that is not what people use drive throughs for
The recommended drinking temp of coffee is higher than 110F.
I can almost guarantee you nobody is drinking 200° coffee. Hell, not even 160°. Closer to 140° is where it gets bearable without burning your mouth, but that’s still pushing it
Did I say people drink their coffee at 200F? I was responding to someone claiming that coffee should be held at 110F, which is fucking crazy.
Drinking temps are usually 125-140F, holding and serving temps should be higher than drinking temps, especially if people might add cream to it.
I drink mine at 168F (measured it this morning). That’s after I add a lot of sugar and cream to it. It’s 190F before I do that.
It seems a lot of people in this thread don’t own a thermometer and won’t try dipping it into a cup of coffee to see what temperature it actually is. Just believe whatever the personal injury lawyers say, don’t verify it!
Yeah, I know it’s pointless to try to educate people, but I can’t help myself. I knew the downvotes were coming, but the truth needs to be told.
I got downvotes for saying that 110F was too low for drinking. That’s barely over hot tub temps. People are crazy.
Yeah, it’s the “I did my own research on the internet” compulsion. Something on the internet lets you in on a little secret and if you buy into it, it makes you smarter than everyone who’s not aware of it. Once someone’s been convinced that they’re special for having some knowledge that most people aren’t aware of, it’s very hard to convince them that the majority is correct about it, not matter how many facts are presented that contradicts the special knowledge.
It’s why flat earthers exist. Of course that’s way more extreme (it’s almost a lifestyle really) than this thing. But this thing takes a lot less effort to verify scientifically, just stick a thermometer into a cup of coffee. The compulsion is different by degrees, but the psychological cause is similar.
People love narratives that are simple and have an easy to understand moral to them even if they’re absolutely wrong. In this case, the narrative is that she asked for hot coffee and got hot coffee, and the moral is that people are greedy and stupid and you have to protect yourself from them. I’ve often found that one well-constructed point can blow these narratives up though. I was talking with my dad about this particular case, he’s a big “gotta do something about these frivolous lawsuits” guy because he used to own a business that was adjacent to real estate and real estate is probably the most litigated business in America. I’m a big “frivolous lawsuits is a term exploitative industries use to get people excited to give up their rights” guy, so we were at loggerheads about this one. Eventually I was like “Have you ever spilled coffee? When you did, who paid for your skin grafts?” Turns out that when crafting their narrative about how she was “suing them for giving her what she asked for”, the industry lobby left out the part where she had to spend 8 days in the hospital and have multiple reconstructive surgeries.
But, butt… if she spilled the coffee, then it’s on her for being clumsy… right? /s
they gave it to her without a lid when she ordered in the drive thru
Ouch… that’s an asshole move, they deserve the punitive damages.
The fact that someone actually was dumb enough to sue over coffee being hot was a punchline in the 90s and 2000s. It’s amazing what kind of misinformation can run amok in a world where you don’t have easy access to the internet and whatever corporate wants the spin to be, that’s what every Outlet is going to tell you.
Thankfully proper research has revealed that news groups were strong armed by McDonald’s into leaving important details out to save their stock prices… and this version of the story is the one that’s catching on.
I certainly hope that a better research clears up other misunderstandings ( the amount of people who actually believe Mother Teresa was a sadistic serial killer thanks to Christopher Hitchens riding the New Atheist wave of the early 2000’s with his easily debunked Hell’s Angel book is… way too high. The book claims among other things that she ran sham hospitals when in fact she ran hospices long before the concept was a thing in mainstream medicine and is credited for pioneering the concept of palliative care.)
Are you a ChatGPT bot comment?
You /s but someone in this very same conversation posted a comment above basically saying the same thing.
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
People, or “people”?
Redirecting the narrative away from your faults helps protect your profits.
Shocker of the century.
I respond by asking them for a cup of ice with it. Asking for ice in it leaves too many of them confused.
