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"Unwanted birthday party" is such a misleading thing to claim as the root cause, reminds me of the McDonald's coffee case, framing very legitimate lawsuits as f

• giantg2 5y ago
  Why was the McDonald's one not frivolous? Was it just because it was 185 degrees? Edit: Why are people disagreeing with this? It's literally 2 questions and it seems the temperature was the issue when looking at culpability. Edit 2: someone here provided the additional type of information that I was interested in. It wasn't just the temperature, but also that the cup had a design flaw that made it likely to collapse if you took the lid off. Thanks!
  • watwut 5y ago
    Because a lot of effort went into trying to convince people that this particular result was correct rather then failure.
  • vkou 5y ago
    The coffee was much hotter than the industry standard. McDonalds already had multiple successful suits against them about this very thing. The lady in question got incredibly serious burns on her legs. She originally sued only for medical expenses, and McDonalds wasn't interested in settling. The award was later reduced. If the answer to bad corporate behaviour is not regulation, but rather lawsuits, then that lawsuit perfectly encapsulated the series of legal escalations necessary to deal with a bad corporate actor, that has been alerted of a problem in their product, and refuses to resolve it.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      "McDonalds already had multiple successful suits against them about this very thing." Ok, then I want to hear the reasoning behind those rulings/awards. "The lady in question got incredibly serious burns on her legs." That's an outcome/result. That has no real bearing on the culpability. "She originally sued only for medical expenses, and McDonalds wasn't interested in settling." Again, nothing speaking to culpability here. "The coffee was much hotter than the industry standard." Ok, so this is basically what my comment said. It seems 185 is about 20 degrees higher than other restaurants. It also has a warning on it (jury said it's not big enough, but maybe we should have everyone sign waivers first?). "legal escalations necessary to deal with a bad corporate actor" Depends on your viewpoint as to who is "bad". Edit: why disagree with this?
      • CharlesW 5y ago
        Gosh, if only you were there to defend that poor multinational corporation 20 years ago!
        • giantg2 5y ago
          I'm not sure what you mean. All I wanted to know was the reasoning behind the culpability. Saying "other successful suites" is like saying "because it always worked that way". It doesn't show the reasoning. The part about bad corporate actors was not specific to the McDonalds example. I was merely saying that we could label any company as bad. For example, some might say abortion clinics are bad, while others might say gun makers are bad.
      • res0nat0r 5y ago
        Watch this movie as it explains everything, it wasn't a frivolous lawsuit like it was always portrayed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBKRjxeQnT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBKRjxeQnT4
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • colpabar 5y ago
        I think people are just somewhat annoyed because your comments seem argumentative. This is a very famous case and there is tons of material online to read, including the court documents themselves! I have also heard from friends who went to law school that this is used as an example of a case that isn't a frivolous lawsuit despite appearances. It just seems like you are very set in your views and are demanding that we all argue with you, and if that's the case, make a new post about the mcdonald's case because this thread isn't even about that.
  • ender341341 5y ago
    Because they had multiple warnings that the near boiling coffee was likely to cause severe burns but didn't heed them cause it meant less refills from people dining in. From the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants#Burn_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau... > she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent.[14] She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg) (nearly 20 percent of her body weight), reducing her to 83 pounds (38 kg). After the hospital stay, Liebeck needed care for three weeks, which was provided by her daughter.[15] Liebeck suffered permanent disfigurement after the incident and was partially disabled for two years. I'd highly recommend looking up details of the case if you think it was frivolous.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      First, I never said it was frivolous. I asked a question. It seems the temperature of the coffee is the reason. The other stuff you mentioned are outcomes and don't necessarily speak to the culpability portion that I was questioning.
      • s5300 5y ago
        Probably not the best tl:dr, but - It quite literally burnt/melted part of her vagina onto her leg/part of body that was not her vagina. I think pictures are out there if you google for them, it’s been quite a while but IIRC pretty gruesome.
      • willis936 5y ago
        Asking "Is this not so?" and then saying you were not implying it is a betrayal of the cooperative principle, in the most generous of interpretations.
        • giantg2 5y ago
          I guess that wording does evoke a negative reaction that I didn't mean to imply.
  • mcculley 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaura... "She was hospitalized for eight days while undergoing skin grafting, followed by two years of medical treatment."
    • giantg2 5y ago
      Just because someone is injured doesn't say anything about culpability. The culpability part is what was being questioned, not her injuries.
      • mcculley 5y ago
        "Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000." We know why coffee vendors make the coffee so hot. It expresses more caffeine. It is very simple. They decided that the value in keeping consumers addicted was worth the risk.
      • derekp7 5y ago
        The culpability is two parts. First part is serving a beverage that was much hotter than what an average consumer would expect, without a warning such as "this product will cause third degree burns within 3 seconds of touching your skin". But the biggest issue that I don't see mentioned most times this case is brought up is that the coffee cups at that time were defective by design. They relied on the lid for structural integrity. When you grasped the cup and squeeze it hard enough to keep it from falling, then if the lid pops off the cup collapses and the cup falls, spilling scalding liquid on you. Notice that the current cups don't crush as easily even without a lid on, they still hold their structure when squeezing it hard enough to pick it up. Also, the old cups would cause discomfort when holding them, which indicates that the liquid lost a lot of its thermal energy to the environment in a short amount of time. Due to that, customers that had to transport their coffee for some distance before wanting to drink it would want it to be served hotter than normal. Then it would be the perfect temperature when they get to their classroom / office. The newer cups have much better insulation properties, so this is less necessary.
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    You don't deserve downvotes. It is a legitimate question from someone who doesn't understand
  • jshier 5y ago
    fused labia
    • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      You just named my next rock band
  • gambiting 5y ago
    I found that even trying to discuss this case like reasonable human beings immediately attracts downvotes, be it here or on Reddit - it's like "how dare you even question this! Of course McDonald's was in the wrong and even asking 'why' is a violation of some kind" Edit: case in point - this comment is currently in negative and I literally have no idea why, I've been commenting on this site for almost 10 years and this is one topic that is always guaranteed to attract downvotes no matter the context.
    • blowski 5y ago
      I don’t think the OP is discussing in good faith. They’re projecting a rather tangential opinion disguised as an innocent question. Their opinion is then being undermined by facts, thus they are being downvoted, and complaining about the downvotes. There’s a lot of behaviour there that goes against the guidelines of most forums.
      • paulmd 5y ago
        This tactic is called "sealioning", named after this comic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning http://wondermark.com/1k62/ http://wondermark.com/1k62/ HN's rules around faux-politeness make it extremely susceptible to this kind of attack: not everyone is actually acting in good-faith and it makes discussions extremely tedious dealing with sealions who exploit that to drag the discussions of interest to a halt while the bad-faith user demands that we engage in a lengthy discussion of basic underlying points to keep from engaging the actual topic of discussion. Oh, but if you say it then you're the bad guy, because we have this rule! Again, why are we re-litigating a discussion about mcdonald's coffee on a topic about workplace harassment? Literally the only connection is they're both lawsuits. There's been a ton of words written about something that is entirely off-topic, because of this sealioning from the parent. That is textbook, open-and-shut, exactly what this tactic is designed to do.
        • dragonwriter 5y ago
          > HN's rules around faux-politeness make it extremely susceptible to this kind of attack Not if people downvote rather than responding to nonproductive contributions. The problem isn't the rules around good faith when responding, the problem is people feeling obliged to respond.
  • stirfish 5y ago
    Have you seen the photos of the injury?
  • brimble 5y ago
    > Edit: Why are people disagreeing with this? It's literally 2 questions and it seems the temperature was the issue when looking at culpability. Downthread? Because you're being obtuse and, when people answer, asking a bunch more questions that you could easily google the answers to. It's not coming off as a good-faith discussion.
    • freedomben 5y ago
      As someone slightly on the spectrum, I regularly get accused of being "obtuse" when I'm asking honest questions to make sense of something. Of course some people really do intentionally be difficult, but OP's question was not near enough info to conclude that, and his additional responses were after he got slammed with downvotes (which usually bother people)
      • brimble 5y ago
        > Why was the McDonald's one not frivolous? Was it just because it was 185 degrees? The questions read as slanted. This is a warning sign that you're dealing with someone who's already made up their mind and is just looking to argue. That "just" especially is... a red flag. That on its own might not mean much, but then, there's this entire post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31042870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31042870 Which looks like a continuation of exactly that kind of thing. Asking questions in a one-sided way, demanding others do things for you even when they already pointed you in the right direction, hostile tone, et c. Even if done innocently, this style of posting can't be tolerated because it's a beloved trolling/shitposting tactic.
        • giantg2 5y ago
          I think there was a communication issue. My post could have been worded better. I was specifically interested in the culpability portion. To my knowledge at that time it was simply about the temperature of the coffee. People were bringing up the injury portion. I wasn't questioning that part. Someone else on here brought up that the design of the cup was defective. That was the type of information I was looking for. Even some Google searching was not bringing up that for me, probably because like this thread, most people are focused on just the injury and the temperature. The cup issue really added to my understanding of the case, and answered my question about why it was not a frivolous case.
  • freedomben 5y ago
    Purely anecdotal and worth nothing as evidence, but I remember how hot that damn coffee was. It was insane. We would literally take the lid off and hold it in front of an A/C vent to try and cool it off and it still took 20 mins before you could drink it. It burned the hell out of our hands lol. But, it was good coffee once it cooled down.
    • robonerd 5y ago
      The wikipedia article for this lawsuit claims that McDonalds has not reduced the temperature of their coffee, and that it continues to cause 3rd degree burns to this day.
      • watwut 5y ago
        Most coffees do that tho. That part about McDonald's coffee being unusually hot was BS.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    You need to read about what happened to that lady. She got 3rd degree burns. That is not "185" degrees. It was concluded that the coffee had to be right near boiling when it was poured on her. It was not frivolous at all. It is an easy google search away. I don't know why anyone would wait possibly hours for a response on HN on something like that?
  • bsder 5y ago
    Here were relevant things: The coffee was turbo-hot--far in excess of standards that exist. McDonald's had been warned about this before. The design of the cup had it's own issues. The woman's initial lawsuit was for perfectly reasonable medical expenses given the horrible nature of the injuries. And, in response, McDonald's went completely nuclear. So, when McDonald's lost, THAT'S why they got hammered. And, even then, the award amount later got reduced, but nobody remembers that.
• dundarious 5y ago
  Yes, I'm sympathetic towards the circumstances that maybe led to the party happening anyway, but it seems like there was harsh retaliation against him for an issue that he forewarned against.
  • freedomben 5y ago
    I think we need more information about what he did that violated the "workplace violence policy" before we can say the retaliation was harsh. If he bumped into somebody on his way to the car, then definitely harsh. If he beat the shit out of a coworker, termination is probably appropriate. Tragic, and really sucks that the supervisor didn't listen, but as HR/management you can't expect to make a person/people (we don't know cause article didn't cover it at all) work with someone who beat the shit out of them, even if the person's supervisor had a warning. Whole situation just sucks.
    • dundarious 5y ago
      I forgot to note that caveat, fair point. But it's implied he returned to work after lunch in his car, and that he was "confronted and criticized" for his reaction to the party, which seems like a light response to significant violence, so I'm leaning towards the less violent end of the spectrum there, on the order of something like a shove on the high end. Without clarification, that's just an assumption, but generally, the burden for proof lies with the employer. Edit: Actually, the Link NKY article referenced in OP clears this up, and it appears that no evidence or testimony of any violence was ever offered. The first set of opinions are obviously one-sided, but it seems clear from the last paragraph in quotation here that there was no real violence. > “They way [the Gravity Diagnostics employees] say it, they believed he was enraged and possibly about to get violent,” Bucher said. > Berling has never demonstrated any violence, Bucher said, and someone who is suffering a panic attack becomes almost paralyzed with fear; they don’t often lash out. > “Basically what the argument was is he was fired for having a panic attack,” Bucher said. “They made assumptions that he was dangerous based off of his disability and not off of any evidence that he was violent.” > If he had made violent gestures, Bucher said, Gravity Diagnostics would have had grounds to fire him, but he didn’t do anything threatening. > ... > With ever-increasing incidents of workplace violence, Brazil said, the verdict sets a dangerous precedent for employers and employees that unless physical violence occurs, workplace violence is acceptable.
• BelieveMeImAWiz 5y ago
  I [mistakenly] believe[d] this whole situation originated in a /r/legaladvice reddit thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/topifb/oops_doesnt_want_to_celebrate_their_birthday_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/topi... Edit: As pointed out below,not the same case, but a case of the same thing happening.
  • pseudalopex 5y ago
    Many details are different. Beginning with the year.
    • BelieveMeImAWiz 5y ago
      Don't know how I missed the date,thank you for pointing that out. Sorry for misleading, updated accordingly
• rosndo 5y ago
  Except the McDonalds coffee case isn’t represented in a misleading way, and can very reasonably be viewed as frivolous no matter how much you study the facts.
• elliekelly 5y ago
  And how cruel for this to be so widely publicized. > The employee, who was hired in October 2018 by Gravity Diagnostics, did not want a celebration because “being the center of attention” can trigger his disorder, the documents state. And now it's all over the news where he'll be the unwanted center of attention all over again.