> Which leads to my first post again: A culture of fear for being sued, with damages completely out of proportion [1]. There had been more than 700 previous ca

> Which leads to my first post again: A culture of fear for being sued, with damages completely out of proportion [1]. There had been more than 700 previous cases, where McDonald had settled with the victims for a total of more than US$ 500.000, but hadn't changed their practice. The wast majority of the damages in this case was not "compensatory damages", intended to compensate the victim for her injury, but "punitive damages", intended to be large enough that McDonald would change their business practice. The punitive damages were set to be equivalent to two days worth of coffee sold at McDonald. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaur... We can argue whether McDonald should be forced by law to lower the serving temperature. A UK court came to the opposite conclusion in a similar case. However, if we accept that as a premise, the size of damages doesn't seem out of line.