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> knew about the dangers and repeatedly chose to do literally nothing about it The dangers of... hot coffee? Yeah, everyone knows that. That's exactly why they

> knew about the dangers and repeatedly chose to do literally nothing about it The dangers of... hot coffee? Yeah, everyone knows that. That's exactly why they shouldn't have lost to the extent that they did. It's tragic for the person involved obviously; I get why emotionally the court would feel sympathy for the victim. But objectively speaking its pretty ridiculous for the legal system to be awarding punitive damages for companies exposing people to normal, reasonable risks that everyone encounters as part of everyday life. It creates a culture where businesses have to treat grown adults like children for fear of huge fines if something goes wrong. At worst McDonald's was probably like 10% responsible for the incident but they got treated like they were 100,000% responsible. (The jury actually did find the woman was partially responsible, it was the judge that decided on the absurd damages amount. It later got reduced and settled out of court so all in all I think the system ultimately worked okay despite the judge's ridiculous initial decision.) Edit: I misread, it was actually the jury that made the initial ridiculous punitive damages ruling, the judge was the one who reduced it later before it got settled out of court for an undisclosed (possibly still ridiculously high) amount.

D-Coder 1y ago
> The dangers of... hot coffee? I don't expect hot coffee to put me in the hospital needing skin grafts.
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  It can and will if you spill enough of it in the wrong place, regardless of whether it was made by McDonald's or an electric kettle. This is true of any hot beverage or even soup.
  - D-Coder 1y ago
    Depends on the temperature. If I had burned myself 500 times, I think I'd learn and turn down the temperature. Note that both customers and store managers had complained many times.
fgbarben 1y ago
[flagged]
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  Would you feel the same way if you had been the one to serve me a hot drink and the court ordered you to pay me $480,000 in punitive damages because I spilled it on myself? The law is supposed to be blind (impartial), the fact that McDonald's is a big company isn't relevant here.
  - fgbarben 1y ago
    [dead]
const_cast 1y ago
Brother, there are levels of hot coffee. I might burn my lips a little bit here and there, but I don't want molten lava poured on me.
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  If it's hot enough to burn your lips it's hot enough to burn your skin. Generally coffee is brewed at close to boiling temperature; it doesn't get much hotter than that. If it's freshly brewed, it's necessarily going to be hot enough to cause serious damage if you pour the entire cup somewhere sensitive. I guess it would be nice if they waited for it to cool before serving or something, but I don't think serving freshly brewed coffee ought to be illegal. (And even if you disagree, certainly that's a policy that should be enacted through the legislature, not arbitrarily and ex post facto by the courts.)
  - hansvm 1y ago
    Even from afficionados the best temperature at extraction time isn't near boiling. The best drinking temperature is even lower. Typical temperatures at other chains are in the 140-180F range. McDonald's chooses to use much higher temperatures for ... reasons? Their customers don't want it, and their scalded patients don't want it.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    There are literally, actually, degrees of burns. I don't know what to tell you, we've already established these measurements. I don't know what to tell you. If you disagree take it up with scientists? I guess?
dragonwriter 1y ago
> At worst McDonald's was probably like 10% responsible 80%, according to the jury. > The jury actually did find the woman was partially responsible Correct, which was factored into the award of actual damages, reducing the $200,000 in damages to a $160,000 award, since it was in a comparative negligence jurisdiction. > it was the judge that decided on the absurd damages amount. It later got reduced and settled out of court No, it was the jury that returned the original $2.7 million punitive damage award, which the judge reduced to $480,000, for a total actual+punitive award of $640k in the trial judgement. The parties did settle out of court while an appeal of the trial judgement was pending.
- ljsprague 1y ago
  It's funny how small $2.7 million sounds to me today. A guy got $50 million from Starbucks recently. https://youtu.be/xSC6qLsLcgU https://youtu.be/xSC6qLsLcgU
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  I see, so it was the jury that was responsible for the ridiculous ruling, not the judge. My mistake, I misread. Definitely seems like there were some systemic or possibly cultural issues at play here.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > I see, so it was the jury that was responsible for the ridiculous ruling, not the judge No, a jury verdict that is not reflected in the trial judgement is not a ruling at all. There was some rush-to-publish reporting of the jury verdict prior to the ruling which is the source of the whole popular perception of the case, because the misunderstanding of the case has deliberately magnified ao it can be weaponized by people wanting to limit perfectly warranted recovery from actually-at-fault corporatiojs by spinning false tales of out-of-control judgements.
    - Ajedi32 1y ago
      That's a fair criticism of the media headlines, but the final ruling of $480,000 just in punitive damages ($1M inflation-adjusted) is still pretty ridiculous given, again, that handling too-hot-to-immediately-drink beverages is a normal, reasonable risk that almost everyone encounters as part of everyday life. We could quibble about about the compensatory damages (80% McDonald's fault seems too high to me, but it's also probably not 0%), but I feel that certainly there should be no punitive damages for such things.

D-Coder 1y ago

> The dangers of... hot coffee? I don't expect hot coffee to put me in the hospital needing skin grafts.

Ajedi32 1y ago
It can and will if you spill enough of it in the wrong place, regardless of whether it was made by McDonald's or an electric kettle. This is true of any hot beverage or even soup.
- D-Coder 1y ago
  Depends on the temperature. If I had burned myself 500 times, I think I'd learn and turn down the temperature. Note that both customers and store managers had complained many times.

fgbarben 1y ago

[flagged]

Ajedi32 1y ago
Would you feel the same way if you had been the one to serve me a hot drink and the court ordered you to pay me $480,000 in punitive damages because I spilled it on myself? The law is supposed to be blind (impartial), the fact that McDonald's is a big company isn't relevant here.
- fgbarben 1y ago
  [dead]

const_cast 1y ago

Brother, there are levels of hot coffee. I might burn my lips a little bit here and there, but I don't want molten lava poured on me.

Ajedi32 1y ago
If it's hot enough to burn your lips it's hot enough to burn your skin. Generally coffee is brewed at close to boiling temperature; it doesn't get much hotter than that. If it's freshly brewed, it's necessarily going to be hot enough to cause serious damage if you pour the entire cup somewhere sensitive. I guess it would be nice if they waited for it to cool before serving or something, but I don't think serving freshly brewed coffee ought to be illegal. (And even if you disagree, certainly that's a policy that should be enacted through the legislature, not arbitrarily and ex post facto by the courts.)
- hansvm 1y ago
  Even from afficionados the best temperature at extraction time isn't near boiling. The best drinking temperature is even lower. Typical temperatures at other chains are in the 140-180F range. McDonald's chooses to use much higher temperatures for ... reasons? Their customers don't want it, and their scalded patients don't want it.
- const_cast 1y ago
  There are literally, actually, degrees of burns. I don't know what to tell you, we've already established these measurements. I don't know what to tell you. If you disagree take it up with scientists? I guess?

dragonwriter 1y ago

> At worst McDonald's was probably like 10% responsible 80%, according to the jury. > The jury actually did find the woman was partially responsible Correct, which was factored into the award of actual damages, reducing the $200,000 in damages to a $160,000 award, since it was in a comparative negligence jurisdiction. > it was the judge that decided on the absurd damages amount. It later got reduced and settled out of court No, it was the jury that returned the original $2.7 million punitive damage award, which the judge reduced to $480,000, for a total actual+punitive award of $640k in the trial judgement. The parties did settle out of court while an appeal of the trial judgement was pending.

ljsprague 1y ago
It's funny how small $2.7 million sounds to me today. A guy got $50 million from Starbucks recently. https://youtu.be/xSC6qLsLcgU https://youtu.be/xSC6qLsLcgU
Ajedi32 1y ago
I see, so it was the jury that was responsible for the ridiculous ruling, not the judge. My mistake, I misread. Definitely seems like there were some systemic or possibly cultural issues at play here.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > I see, so it was the jury that was responsible for the ridiculous ruling, not the judge No, a jury verdict that is not reflected in the trial judgement is not a ruling at all. There was some rush-to-publish reporting of the jury verdict prior to the ruling which is the source of the whole popular perception of the case, because the misunderstanding of the case has deliberately magnified ao it can be weaponized by people wanting to limit perfectly warranted recovery from actually-at-fault corporatiojs by spinning false tales of out-of-control judgements.
  - Ajedi32 1y ago
    That's a fair criticism of the media headlines, but the final ruling of $480,000 just in punitive damages ($1M inflation-adjusted) is still pretty ridiculous given, again, that handling too-hot-to-immediately-drink beverages is a normal, reasonable risk that almost everyone encounters as part of everyday life. We could quibble about about the compensatory damages (80% McDonald's fault seems too high to me, but it's also probably not 0%), but I feel that certainly there should be no punitive damages for such things.