A wild OVERRULED appears.

I challenge you to drink 100ml of 'orange juice' that is 0.1% cyanide.

(To the kids at home: please don't try this. It is extremely inadvisable.)

There's also http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm. Summary is: The coffee was way hotter than is safe, their quality assurance manager acknoledged that they knew the coffee was being served at a temperature that would scald people (rather severely, in fact), there was an enforced company policy of serving coffee at that temperature, the Macdonald's research showed that most of their customers intend to drink their coffee straight away (not when they get home or to work, after it had a chance to cool down, which is what MacDs claimed)... and all the woman did was put the cup between her legs while she pulled the lid off so she could sweeten it (the car was stationary at the time, BTW).

Personally, I think one should be able to do what common sense would dictate as being safe without suffering extreme injury. If, for example, you bought a new stove and had it installed by a professional, then got shocked to the point of electrical burns, would you go, "Oh well, stuff happens"? Or if you were walking down the canned goods isle in a supermarket and and entire shelf just fell on you 'cause it was obviously too flimsy to take the weight (bloody cheapskate manager), would you happily forgive them and wander off to work with a concussion and fractured arm?

Neither of those examples are terribly farfetched, and if you think they are I'm sure I could think of better ones. And this isn't even taking into account people with anaphylactic allergies, who could literally* keel over and die due to traces of stuff that the company 'forgot' to mention (I happen to know someone who was rushed to hospital multiple times before they figured out they were extremely allergic to wheat).

*Yes, I do mean "In a literal manner or sense"

The idea of getting my water from the Thames terrifies me. You'd be better off drinking the Ankh from Discworld.

Tasty Lake District water here, no limescale!

The chewiness is perfect for getting kids to consume water instead of soft drinks; it's like caramels, only crunchy!

The Thames has been cleaned up a lot over the years, but they don't take their water from it as far as I know. Whatever bore-holes they draw the bulk of their water from produce something that's pretty nasty. There's a lot of iron in it, it stains everything orange, and God knows what else there is. They're buggers though, they drain too much water and they can pass on the associated costs to their customers along with the horrible water itself; but the reason they do it is because half of it leaks away through their unmaintained network of pipes which they're reluctant to fix as they apparently can't pass the cost on to the customers and it'll affect their profits. Sigh, the joy of privatisation.

This article is misleading. Coffee is supposed to be served hot. http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71 recommends "your brewer should maintain a water temperature between 195 - 205 degrees Fahrenheit", arguing "Brewed coffee begins to lose its optimal taste moments after brewing so only brew as much coffee as will be consumed immediately. If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit."

McDonald's coffee was not unique in this regard. Many other coffee sellers offered cups at similar temperatures and still do today. Unless you're arguing that coffee should never be at a temperature in which burns are possible (despite industry recommendation and consumer preference), then there was nothing wrong with how the coffee was served.

this is just another stupid lawsuit that is run amuck by people who only know how to make money by suing other people. In some places, people will literally jump in front of cars to get a lawuit. Froot Loops (the cereal) used to be spelled "Fruit Loops" before some idiot thought there was real fruit in there, so they gave him money and they changed the name. Kellog's then went to sue Image-Line, a successful music sequencer company for naming their product "FruityLoops". They were forced to change the name to FL studio. It is times like these where I am ashamed to live in this train wreck we call "the United States of America". I shall cut off here in my rant to avoid going into politics.

All in all, Americans can be very deceptive and for some reason, everyone wants to take advantage of others to get to the top. There are a few good souls out there, but they are getting more and more rare.

It may not hold true for filter coffee (can't say I've looked it up), but for espresso based drinks (cappuccino, lattes, ect.) the optimal temperature is 60°C (140°F). Higher than that scalds the milk and negatively impacts the flavour. Obviously, the shot itself is brewed at a higher temperature than that, but once the milk is added it drops down to being more drinkable.

Espresso is different, but even so:

http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/services/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_lrg.gif

140 degrees Fahrenheit can still result in 2nd and 3rd degree burns in 5 seconds. The plaintiff in the McDonald's case sustained such extreme damage mostly because the coffee was absorbed into her pants and maintained skin contact for a relatively long period of time. Even if the coffee spilled by the plaintiff had been served at the 140 degree Fahrenheit temperature, severe burns still would have been sustained.

Nope. Someone sued and his case was thrown out (he didn't win a thing), but Froot Loops have always been Froot Loops. I had to see if that one was true

I would assume that graph is based on maintained temperature, as you would get if you touched a hot plate or shoved your hand in a pot of boiling water. Five seconds would, I expect, be enough time for a fair amount of heat to be lost/spread out enough to avoid significant harm (if you spilled half a cup of in on your lap). 180°F would cause near-instant burns, however.

My point is that inLiebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, there was maintained temperature. The plaintiff's clothing absorbed the liquid and kept it pressed against her skin. Severe damage (meaning damage requiring skin grafts) would have resulted in either temperature case. If your argument is that coffee should not be served at temperatures that might cause severe burns, then neither temperature would be acceptable.

If instead you're arguing that 140 degrees Fahrenheit is acceptable (despite the very real possibility of severe damage still occurring), but that 180 is not (due to it's increased propensity to result in severe damage), then I'd make two points. First, I'd want to see statistics indicating whether disallowing the latter would actually result in fewer cases of severe coffee burns. Second, this should be accomplished through legislation. As it is, nothing about the way McDonald's handled it's coffee was unreasonable. Many customers prefer very hot coffee, other coffee sellers serve coffee at similar temperatures (and continue to do so, even after the lawsuit in question), and the National Coffee Association recommends serving at similar temperatures. So, how exactly was McDonald's negligent?

You know that the main reason that everything is so expensive now is because of all this sueing for incredible amounts. There should be a very limited formula for the cost of reperation. and the actions of the person sueing should be measured into that. Freedom is responsibility. If you spilled coffe onto yourself. you should have to deal with the consequences of it. And if it was truly too hot. The only expenses that should be incurred should be that medical bill. And loss of time at minimum wage. No more, no less. When it gets to the point when lawn mower munufaturers have to put do not place hands, feet or HEAD!! under deck. it has gone too far. And some silly git did that!!

I'm not 100% sure precisely what I'm arguing, actually. Coincidentally, I think coffee is one of the causative factors there... I probably shouldn't drink it when I haven't been getting enough sleep. Doing so often seems to exacerbate my propensity to go on tangents and stuff (use of fancy words may be another effect, but that needs further study ).

But my point regarding temperatures and burns was that less than half a second doesn't give enough time to react, let alone achieve any kind of mitigating action. Five seconds, however, gives more of a chance to avoid a trip to the hospital (and there's a possibility it'll cool enough to give even more time).

Right, I'm not arguing that 180 degree coffee is just as safe as 140 degree coffee. I'm just arguing both have the similar potential to cause egregious harm. Beyond that, accepted coffee policy would seem to put McDonald's in the clear. That's why I'd argue legislation is necessary. It's not clear to me that McDonald's was doing anything negligent. They were simply doing something that had always been done.

It'd be like suing an automobile company for selling a car without seat-belts when no car made by any company had ever implemented seatbelts and there were no safety regulations in place requiring them (except, there can be a clear case made for seatbelts whereas I think the case for cooler coffee is far less substantial).

And one of the key points of the McDonalds ruling is that McDonalds knew through their own market research that their customers usually drank their coffee right away, and yet acted as if they didn't.
There was maintained contact with the liquid, but that's not the same as maintained temperature. When it falls out of the cup and onto clothes or a person, liquid immediately starts to cool down. As I understand, the thermodynamics expert who was consulted in the McDonalds case testified that had the liquid been cooler, it would have cooled enough in that 5 second period that she wouldn't have suffered third degree burns.

I'm no scientist, but as I understand from the link I posted, "sustained contact with liquid at 140 degrees" means sustained contact with liquid that remains at 140 degrees. So yes, maybe if you stick your hand in a coffee pot at 140 degrees you will get burnt in five seconds, but as soon as it falls out of the pot or the cup and comes into contact with air and skin it starts to cool down.

I'm not sure why that matters. Most coffee sellers still serve their coffee at temperatures similar to McDonald's.

If this was a substantial risk, no doubt all these customers drinking their coffee immediately after purchase would be sustaining severe burns left and right. From what I've read of the case, evidence indicated "more than 700" people reportedly sustained burns from McDonald's coffee in a ten year period. I couldn't find any breakdown in severity of those burns. Consider the number of burns per year compared to the total number of coffees sold. McDonalds is selling billions of these things. Is this level of risk so substantial that serving very hot coffee counts as negligence (again, factoring in aforementioned recommendations, seller temperature trends, and consumer preferences)? In what way were McDonald's actions unreasonable?
Fair enough. I'm not well versed enough to determine how quickly coffee cools, so I'll concede the point.

There's been quite a bit of legislation at the national and state level to deal with these frivolous cases, which were pretty prevalent throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Most of them are dismissed nowadays, but some holes in the law still need to be filled. You can be assured the money-loving, corrupt people will take advantage of those gaps until they're filled.

I think all of slyme's posts have been from gentlemanly debates.
So are you saying it's a sue happy culture, or a sue privy one? I'd argue it's the latter. We all know that you can sue over almost anything, it has become so commonplace there's even the saying "sue me". With that in mind, it's not that we're happy about it. I personally have not sued anyone, and don't know anyone who has been sued for something that could be interpreted as frivolous. There are just a lot of problems that money can cause, and a lot of people who think that money can solve.
In short, remember that suing is a method of gaining compensation, one that has many, many forms. If you look at it that way, suing isn't really a bad thing.

I think the sue happy culture is a natural reaction to the strict binding terms of service and ways corporations try to control their markets. It's a natural reaction to try and fight back against these threats of them taking contorl real or percieved. Might be one of th emany things explaining why America does have a large amount of lawsuits.

Thinking of other comments I've read in this thread, I'm now starting to wonder if this was her or if it was driven by her medical insurance? Based on insurance companies that I've had the displeasure of experiencing, it could well be the latter, especially as they have a nasty habit of effectively "claiming" from other policies and potential sources of income by deducting the amount you might get--but of course leaving you with the liability for doing so; and, in this case, the public blame, if that is indeed what happened.

A case in point is the car insurance business, which explains away the inexorable inflation-busting rises by moaning about the rising costs of litigation, implying that it's an increasingly litigious society that's to blame. What it conveniently fails to mention is that most of that litigation is initiated or at least facilitated by... the car insurance business.

There's an "industry" that's in dire need of some serious regulation.

News like this make me proud to be European.

I'm quite interested in these parts of the quote...


Pasteurisation is a process which involves heat. If you pasteurise fruit juice, you destroy the vitamin A, C and E, which are extremely heat sensitive. (Not sure about B and D vitamins.) So what are you really getting from such fruit juice? Water + Sugar.

"Nutritious", indeed.

There's one brand here in Aus that does high pressure processing instead of heat pasteurisation, and it's pretty good. Unfortunately, it's also costs about twice as much, as I recall .

EDIT: Preshafruit is the name.

Anybody heard the one about the guy breaking into someone's house, falling through the ceiling into the kitchen, landing on a knife, and successfully suing?