3 ms·

That McD's story is like second level fake-news/rush-to-judgement. Yes, the woman was seriously hurt. So people shouldn't have reacted quite so strongly. But n

That McD's story is like second level fake-news/rush-to-judgement. Yes, the woman was seriously hurt. So people shouldn't have reacted quite so strongly. But now people use it as an example of rush to judgement, when really, people were mostly right about it in the first place. She shouldn't have put fresh coffee in her crotch. McD's still brews their coffee just as hot because that is how you are supposed to. She shouldn't have gotten a dime.

conanbatt 9y ago
Don't know. McD made the coffee purposely hot so people wouldn't drink it inside the local shop, meaning they would get less refills. They knew people were getting burned because of it, and decided to keep doing it. They had the power to fix it and the incentive not to. Being liable in a lawsuit is the right kind of fix.
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  > McD made the coffee purposely hot so people wouldn't drink it inside the local shop, meaning they would get less refills. Source? Particularly since places like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts that do not offer free refills serve at roughly the same temperature.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I think it was from Adam ruins everything, don't have a source at hand.
- rhino369 9y ago
  There is no way McD's cares about free coffee refills. Starbucks serves at the same temperature. It's the optimal brewing temperature.
SilasX 9y ago
I (somewhat) agree. At the very least, I dislike how people equate "nasty burn" with "obvious guilt". That's not how it works. There are many ways you can get a burn without it being some big corporation's fault. If you prepare boiling water in a kettle and spill it on yourself, you can't use the nasty burns as proof that the kettlemaker was obviously guilty and deserving to pay your bills. There is a defensible case that the particular level of coffee temperature, combined with some rational standard for how it should be labeled, combined with general consumer preferences for temperature and understanding of what to expect when served coffee, all together imply that McDonald's acted negligently. But that debate is always short-circuited in discussions about the case, where everyone is tripping over each other to say, "oh, you disagree with the verdict? I guess you didn't see these pictures [NSFW]. Checkmate, skeptics." Or worse, "the lawyers were really aloof when Liebeck was trying to be cool." Those really aren't good reasons to make a decision.
jstewartmobile 9y ago
Even if that is the case, it would have been nice if the media had actually dug into details instead of just sensationalizing the hell out of it. Back in '94 the media was in better shape and had more than enough resources to do it right, but they didn't.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Back in '94 the media was in better shape No, it wasn't. The mid-1990s was pretty much the modern minimum for health of the US media; it was the end of decades of decline driven by corporate consolidation and cutting local resoures in traditional media, and before competing new media provided alternatives and spurred new efforts in traditional media.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    What is your metric for health? Just going off my own recollection, it looks like broadcast has fragmented into a million irrelevant outposts, all racing each other to the bottom. Print seems to be in even worse shape. In the southeast, almost every paper outside of the largest state metro has been shuttered and centralized into a state-wide newsroom running on a skeleton crew. I don't know how those trajectories gets classified as improvements...

conanbatt 9y ago

Don't know. McD made the coffee purposely hot so people wouldn't drink it inside the local shop, meaning they would get less refills. They knew people were getting burned because of it, and decided to keep doing it. They had the power to fix it and the incentive not to. Being liable in a lawsuit is the right kind of fix.

vonmoltke 9y ago
> McD made the coffee purposely hot so people wouldn't drink it inside the local shop, meaning they would get less refills. Source? Particularly since places like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts that do not offer free refills serve at roughly the same temperature.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I think it was from Adam ruins everything, don't have a source at hand.
rhino369 9y ago
There is no way McD's cares about free coffee refills. Starbucks serves at the same temperature. It's the optimal brewing temperature.

SilasX 9y ago

I (somewhat) agree. At the very least, I dislike how people equate "nasty burn" with "obvious guilt". That's not how it works. There are many ways you can get a burn without it being some big corporation's fault. If you prepare boiling water in a kettle and spill it on yourself, you can't use the nasty burns as proof that the kettlemaker was obviously guilty and deserving to pay your bills. There is a defensible case that the particular level of coffee temperature, combined with some rational standard for how it should be labeled, combined with general consumer preferences for temperature and understanding of what to expect when served coffee, all together imply that McDonald's acted negligently. But that debate is always short-circuited in discussions about the case, where everyone is tripping over each other to say, "oh, you disagree with the verdict? I guess you didn't see these pictures [NSFW]. Checkmate, skeptics." Or worse, "the lawyers were really aloof when Liebeck was trying to be cool." Those really aren't good reasons to make a decision.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

Even if that is the case, it would have been nice if the media had actually dug into details instead of just sensationalizing the hell out of it. Back in '94 the media was in better shape and had more than enough resources to do it right, but they didn't.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Back in '94 the media was in better shape No, it wasn't. The mid-1990s was pretty much the modern minimum for health of the US media; it was the end of decades of decline driven by corporate consolidation and cutting local resoures in traditional media, and before competing new media provided alternatives and spurred new efforts in traditional media.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  What is your metric for health? Just going off my own recollection, it looks like broadcast has fragmented into a million irrelevant outposts, all racing each other to the bottom. Print seems to be in even worse shape. In the southeast, almost every paper outside of the largest state metro has been shuttered and centralized into a state-wide newsroom running on a skeleton crew. I don't know how those trajectories gets classified as improvements...