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This is exactly what happened in the McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit. It wasn't some "Karen" who hit a bump while driving. It was an elderly woman (in her 70s,

This is exactly what happened in the McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit. It wasn't some "Karen" who hit a bump while driving. It was an elderly woman (in her 70s, IIRC), sitting in the passenger seat. McDonalds already had complaints (and some lawsuits) over the (significantly higher than industry standard) temperature of their coffee, so this wasn't exactly out of the blue. She ended up with 3rd degree burns on her legs and crotch. She asked only for her medical bills to be paid. McDonald's refused, so she eventually took them to court. Even then, she only asked for medical bills (and now legal expenses). The jury decided that McDonalds was not only liable for those costs, but had treated the woman so poorly that they should pay punitive damages. The massive amount you heard about in the news was based on the amount of money McDonalds makes selling coffee in one day. But that's not the story that was spread by the shills...

fmajid 7y ago
And the money went to Shriners' Hospital, not the burn victim (I saw the photos, they are beyond horrific). What's more, McDonalds had been advised their coffee temperature was dangerous, but decided to ignore this for marketing reasons, because people like the look of steaming coffee.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Not even that... if you put the coffee that high, people would be less likely to ask for a refill as the coffee took longer to cool off.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mumblemumble 7y ago
The most interesting thing to me about that McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit is how different the narrative is in popular circles vs. in legal circles. It's a little bit like in Rashomon. In popular circles, the story is framed in a way that does make the lawsuit look frivolous. But this is also a case that has made it into the legal textbooks as an example of corporate negligence that's clear-cut enough to use for demonstrating the concept in introductory textbooks. Of course, in the legal textbooks, the version of the story that's told includes a lot of details that, as you point out, get excluded from the popular version.
- endorphone 7y ago
  Are you a lawyer? Because this take is quite remarkable, especially given that the overwhelming public sentiment is that McDonalds was heinously negligent, coupled with a lot of supporting but not entirely factual claims to justify that position. I feel like the same people who were jeering at the victim just marched over to sainting her and demonizing McDonalds. The Internet extreme position machine. Everything has to be clear cut. How McDonalds no longer engages in "corporate negligence": they put pronounced warnings on the cup that it's a dangerously hot substance. That's it. They did not lower the temperature (as is frequently claimed, nor is the temperature at all outside of normal industry standards, yet this is being repeatedly stated throughout this thread -- coffee, brewing with boiling water, is hot). You can get a searingly hot cup of coffee from most quick-serve restaurants today depending upon how freshly it was brewed. This is a case where the solution is more warnings on things. This case was, however, an example of bad brand management, and perhaps throwing good money after bad for something they could have privately settled early on. This is certainly not a hill I want to die on, and generally arguing against the prevalent opinion (which is overwhelming the one that you and the GP have expressed, albeit almost always positioning it like it's contrarian) is self-defeating, however this whole case is fascinating in how public perception shifts.
  - coolsunglasses 7y ago
    The standard temperate you brew coffee at is 200F, less if at high altitude. McDonalds coffee is served at 180-190F and brewed at something higher than 200F and lower than boiling. Typical coffee serving temperature is 155-175F. I'm considered unusual among my friends for being able to sip 170-180F coffee. 190F is just way too hot.
    - endorphone 7y ago
      205F is the ideal brewing temperature, and is just a snip under boiling (212F). Serving temperature is entirely a function of waiting time from brewing, and is commonly between 165-185 everywhere. For take out shops it tends to be higher as there is the expectation that users have a delay before they drink it, and that many add cream or milk. Again, if you buy a coffee at McDonalds today, or at Starbucks, or virtually anywhere else, you'll get a coffee that can be as hot or hotter. It's a hot beverage.
duxup 7y ago
>But that's not the story that was spread by the shills... I'm not sure that was the case at the time... specifically there being "paid shills" on the internet. Concern / outrage over the legal system seems to be a bit of the human condition, I'm not convinced there was a conspiracy required to have folks retell an inaccurate story about that incident. Sometimes it feels like anything that is perceived to be corporate friendly is called a "shill" as if individuals (mistaken or not) couldn't organically have X opinion.
throwaway_law 7y ago
Its actually even worse factually...its not just the coffee was hot and McD's had prior complaints, there are industry standards, which McDonald's knowingly and willfully violated. It actually all relates to trucking/truckers who use their own special cups, but demand the coffee be scalding so it stays hot longer on the road. McDonald's catered to these truckers to grow their coffee business, they knew the risks and gave no warnings to customers. I think the employee was also negligent in securing the lid leading to the spill itself. As you say the coffee was so hot it scalded this woman so badly through her jeans she needed skin grafts. And sure enough there was massive money spent to spin this in the media as "woman burned by coffee sues for millions, everything wrong with our litigious society." Where this should have read: giant corporation disregards safety standards to boost their bottom line to the detriment of its customers leading to boiling coffee that scalded a woman's privates requiring skin grafts, then in bad faith the insurer denies the woman's claim to pay her medical bills, drags her through court which they lose, then they drag her through the appeals process which she didn't want any part of either.
PJDK 7y ago
Curious how this one has changed on the internet. From a UK perspective I'd always thought of it as a case of crazy pay-out. Why does this one women get several million dollars (although googling reveals this number went down a bit on appeal)? Especially if others had a similar experience. Either there should be a limit on the temperature of hot drinks, or there shouldn't. The fact a warning is deemed adequate seems weird too, people will actively try and avoid spilling a stone cold cup of coffee on their lap! It feels to me like the internet moved from shilling for big burger to shilling for big law firm.
- dccoolgai 7y ago
  The payout is because _without it_ companies wouldn't change what they do. The punitive damages serve as an "example" for other corps to not do the same thing or risk losing that much money, too. If anything, I think punitive damages for corporate negligence would be _higher_. Maybe some of the payment could be directed to funds for victims instead of all going to one person, but that person (and their lawyers) also had to combat a multi-million dollar defense team.
- fencepost 7y ago
  From memory I believe the case was settled for a presumably lower undisclosed amount rather than go through a long appeals process.
briandear 7y ago
How did the coffee spill? Did she hold a cup of a beverage that is traditionally served very hot between her legs? That lawsuit was frivolous. Coffee is hot. If you spill it, it might burn you. As far as just asking for medical bills — that might have been true until her lawyers smelled a multi-million payday. Lawyers like that are the reason we have warnings on hair dryers to not use while showering and warnings on coffee cups that warn of the hot beverage inside. Coffee is traditionally made using boiling or near boiling water — unless McDonalds super-heated the water, the temperature at which it was served was consistent with how coffee is normally served. That it was an elderly lady makes no difference. That’s just emotional distraction and has no relevance. The McDonalds lawsuit ushered in the “nanny” era where people have to be warned against such hazards as “boating carries a risk of serious injury or drowning.” And product costs (including medical care) is dramatically more expensive than it should be because the trial lawyers had to all get paid. Punishment under statute is one thing, but unlimited punitive damages is absurd. We talk about CEOs getting paid to much — not even close to the payday trial lawyers get.
- eropple 7y ago
  This is a bad and frankly cruel reading of a lawsuit that addresses systemic failures of a corporate entity that had been previously alerted to a design and practice failure of their operation. Similar lawsuits regarding coffee at 179 deg F, rather than 190 deg F, have been thrown out. Almost as if there was an actual problem with what McDonalds' was doing, you know? That corporate entity had decided it was cheaper to not fix it than to fix it, until a human being who they contributed to significantly harming brought the problem before a jury. And she was found partially responsible for her own injuries, a fact which you elide (while speaking so authoritatively that I must assume you know this to be true, otherwise you wouldn't, yes?), while the jury also found that McDonalds' had been reckless in their operation--that most of the money awarded was a punitive penalty assessed because that corporate entity was cavalier in their treatment of actual, real-not-fictive people. While we're at it, the punitive award granted was $480,000, not "multi-million"--though the jury asked for it, as two days of McDonalds' coffee revenue, and was reduced by the judge. You've either been had, or you're trying to do the having. I shall not speculate on which.
- 7y ago
nitwit005 7y ago
McDonnalds didn't hire any internet shills or anything like that. The media bought into their lawyers public claims about the case without bothering to investigate anything, and the TV talk show circuits picked it up. Unfortunately, you often don't need to try particularly hard to get the media to repeat false claims.
- DamnYuppie 7y ago
  Especially when you have one of the largest advertising budgets in the world!
  - nitwit005 7y ago
    Contacting reporters is basically free, and they're usually happy to get stories from corporations. I doubt they had to spend much of anything. Besides, there's little point in spending more than you'd lose in a settlement on a PR campaign to avoid the settlement.
zajio1am 7y ago
> This is exactly what happened in the McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit. ... But that's not the story that was spread by the shills... Well, all of these changes (perhaps with the exception of industry standards) are IMHO irrelevant to responsibility of McDonald for the incident.
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20877309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20877309 and marked it off-topic.

fmajid 7y ago

And the money went to Shriners' Hospital, not the burn victim (I saw the photos, they are beyond horrific). What's more, McDonalds had been advised their coffee temperature was dangerous, but decided to ignore this for marketing reasons, because people like the look of steaming coffee.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Not even that... if you put the coffee that high, people would be less likely to ask for a refill as the coffee took longer to cool off.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mumblemumble 7y ago

The most interesting thing to me about that McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit is how different the narrative is in popular circles vs. in legal circles. It's a little bit like in Rashomon. In popular circles, the story is framed in a way that does make the lawsuit look frivolous. But this is also a case that has made it into the legal textbooks as an example of corporate negligence that's clear-cut enough to use for demonstrating the concept in introductory textbooks. Of course, in the legal textbooks, the version of the story that's told includes a lot of details that, as you point out, get excluded from the popular version.

endorphone 7y ago
Are you a lawyer? Because this take is quite remarkable, especially given that the overwhelming public sentiment is that McDonalds was heinously negligent, coupled with a lot of supporting but not entirely factual claims to justify that position. I feel like the same people who were jeering at the victim just marched over to sainting her and demonizing McDonalds. The Internet extreme position machine. Everything has to be clear cut. How McDonalds no longer engages in "corporate negligence": they put pronounced warnings on the cup that it's a dangerously hot substance. That's it. They did not lower the temperature (as is frequently claimed, nor is the temperature at all outside of normal industry standards, yet this is being repeatedly stated throughout this thread -- coffee, brewing with boiling water, is hot). You can get a searingly hot cup of coffee from most quick-serve restaurants today depending upon how freshly it was brewed. This is a case where the solution is more warnings on things. This case was, however, an example of bad brand management, and perhaps throwing good money after bad for something they could have privately settled early on. This is certainly not a hill I want to die on, and generally arguing against the prevalent opinion (which is overwhelming the one that you and the GP have expressed, albeit almost always positioning it like it's contrarian) is self-defeating, however this whole case is fascinating in how public perception shifts.
- coolsunglasses 7y ago
  The standard temperate you brew coffee at is 200F, less if at high altitude. McDonalds coffee is served at 180-190F and brewed at something higher than 200F and lower than boiling. Typical coffee serving temperature is 155-175F. I'm considered unusual among my friends for being able to sip 170-180F coffee. 190F is just way too hot.
  - endorphone 7y ago
    205F is the ideal brewing temperature, and is just a snip under boiling (212F). Serving temperature is entirely a function of waiting time from brewing, and is commonly between 165-185 everywhere. For take out shops it tends to be higher as there is the expectation that users have a delay before they drink it, and that many add cream or milk. Again, if you buy a coffee at McDonalds today, or at Starbucks, or virtually anywhere else, you'll get a coffee that can be as hot or hotter. It's a hot beverage.

duxup 7y ago

>But that's not the story that was spread by the shills... I'm not sure that was the case at the time... specifically there being "paid shills" on the internet. Concern / outrage over the legal system seems to be a bit of the human condition, I'm not convinced there was a conspiracy required to have folks retell an inaccurate story about that incident. Sometimes it feels like anything that is perceived to be corporate friendly is called a "shill" as if individuals (mistaken or not) couldn't organically have X opinion.

throwaway_law 7y ago

Its actually even worse factually...its not just the coffee was hot and McD's had prior complaints, there are industry standards, which McDonald's knowingly and willfully violated. It actually all relates to trucking/truckers who use their own special cups, but demand the coffee be scalding so it stays hot longer on the road. McDonald's catered to these truckers to grow their coffee business, they knew the risks and gave no warnings to customers. I think the employee was also negligent in securing the lid leading to the spill itself. As you say the coffee was so hot it scalded this woman so badly through her jeans she needed skin grafts. And sure enough there was massive money spent to spin this in the media as "woman burned by coffee sues for millions, everything wrong with our litigious society." Where this should have read: giant corporation disregards safety standards to boost their bottom line to the detriment of its customers leading to boiling coffee that scalded a woman's privates requiring skin grafts, then in bad faith the insurer denies the woman's claim to pay her medical bills, drags her through court which they lose, then they drag her through the appeals process which she didn't want any part of either.

PJDK 7y ago

Curious how this one has changed on the internet. From a UK perspective I'd always thought of it as a case of crazy pay-out. Why does this one women get several million dollars (although googling reveals this number went down a bit on appeal)? Especially if others had a similar experience. Either there should be a limit on the temperature of hot drinks, or there shouldn't. The fact a warning is deemed adequate seems weird too, people will actively try and avoid spilling a stone cold cup of coffee on their lap! It feels to me like the internet moved from shilling for big burger to shilling for big law firm.

dccoolgai 7y ago
The payout is because _without it_ companies wouldn't change what they do. The punitive damages serve as an "example" for other corps to not do the same thing or risk losing that much money, too. If anything, I think punitive damages for corporate negligence would be _higher_. Maybe some of the payment could be directed to funds for victims instead of all going to one person, but that person (and their lawyers) also had to combat a multi-million dollar defense team.
fencepost 7y ago
From memory I believe the case was settled for a presumably lower undisclosed amount rather than go through a long appeals process.

briandear 7y ago

How did the coffee spill? Did she hold a cup of a beverage that is traditionally served very hot between her legs? That lawsuit was frivolous. Coffee is hot. If you spill it, it might burn you. As far as just asking for medical bills — that might have been true until her lawyers smelled a multi-million payday. Lawyers like that are the reason we have warnings on hair dryers to not use while showering and warnings on coffee cups that warn of the hot beverage inside. Coffee is traditionally made using boiling or near boiling water — unless McDonalds super-heated the water, the temperature at which it was served was consistent with how coffee is normally served. That it was an elderly lady makes no difference. That’s just emotional distraction and has no relevance. The McDonalds lawsuit ushered in the “nanny” era where people have to be warned against such hazards as “boating carries a risk of serious injury or drowning.” And product costs (including medical care) is dramatically more expensive than it should be because the trial lawyers had to all get paid. Punishment under statute is one thing, but unlimited punitive damages is absurd. We talk about CEOs getting paid to much — not even close to the payday trial lawyers get.

eropple 7y ago
This is a bad and frankly cruel reading of a lawsuit that addresses systemic failures of a corporate entity that had been previously alerted to a design and practice failure of their operation. Similar lawsuits regarding coffee at 179 deg F, rather than 190 deg F, have been thrown out. Almost as if there was an actual problem with what McDonalds' was doing, you know? That corporate entity had decided it was cheaper to not fix it than to fix it, until a human being who they contributed to significantly harming brought the problem before a jury. And she was found partially responsible for her own injuries, a fact which you elide (while speaking so authoritatively that I must assume you know this to be true, otherwise you wouldn't, yes?), while the jury also found that McDonalds' had been reckless in their operation--that most of the money awarded was a punitive penalty assessed because that corporate entity was cavalier in their treatment of actual, real-not-fictive people. While we're at it, the punitive award granted was $480,000, not "multi-million"--though the jury asked for it, as two days of McDonalds' coffee revenue, and was reduced by the judge. You've either been had, or you're trying to do the having. I shall not speculate on which.
7y ago

nitwit005 7y ago

McDonnalds didn't hire any internet shills or anything like that. The media bought into their lawyers public claims about the case without bothering to investigate anything, and the TV talk show circuits picked it up. Unfortunately, you often don't need to try particularly hard to get the media to repeat false claims.

DamnYuppie 7y ago
Especially when you have one of the largest advertising budgets in the world!
- nitwit005 7y ago
  Contacting reporters is basically free, and they're usually happy to get stories from corporations. I doubt they had to spend much of anything. Besides, there's little point in spending more than you'd lose in a settlement on a PR campaign to avoid the settlement.

zajio1am 7y ago

> This is exactly what happened in the McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit. ... But that's not the story that was spread by the shills... Well, all of these changes (perhaps with the exception of industry standards) are IMHO irrelevant to responsibility of McDonald for the incident.

dang 7y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20877309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20877309 and marked it off-topic.