I think the point is exactly that the serving termperature was, in fact, wrong. It was hotter, several minutes after being handed to the customer than the avera

I think the point is exactly that the serving termperature was, in fact, wrong. It was hotter, several minutes after being handed to the customer than the average person's intuition would lead them to expect. And that difference was enough to cause life-threatening injury. That's a reasonable fault, in my opinion. Then there's the angle of why they did this. Disclaimer: I haven't sourced this, so maybe I'm mistaken, feel free to verify this info. It's been pointed out that McDs benefited from serving coffee hot enough that customers were unlikely to be able to consume it before leaving the store. They were using free refills as a marketing technique and someone figured out that the hotter you served the coffee, the less free coffee was given out, while presumably still getting most of the benefit of offering it. This explains why they wouldn't lower the temperature when told it was unsafe, and also why it makes sense to hit them with a large cash penalty, to counter the financial incentive to continue unsafe but profitable practices until you get caught. That is how I end up looking at this kind of lawsuit. You can't regulate every single potentially unsafe idea anyone can have. But having a flexible system that makes the risks of getting sued outweigh the financial benefit of potentially unsafe but lucrative practices means we get an overall safer environment, because it aligns the best interests of consumers with the best interests of the big companies.