Warning: mountains are high!!!

sleek, burning yourself with coffee is like walking outside naked in a blizzard and wondering why you get frostbit.

 

No its not, because you don't walk anywhere by accident. Burning yourself with a liquid given to you at 200 degrees with no prior information on that fact other than general knowledge that coffee is best served hot is totally different than conscious decision. You're right though, both situations do involve temperature change. The assumption that coffee is hot however, is not necessarily a justifiable position to take. What if they served it at 5000 degrees? Whose fault would it be if you were burned? Oh, it wasn't our fault, its a widely known fact that coffee is served hot, we're just extremely zealous about it.

Here's a better anaology:
Selling coffee at 200 degrees farenheit is like telling someone to be sure to dress cool, because its hot outside, except you live on the sun.

 

Whether or not McDonald's is even slightly to blame, a million dollars is ridiculous. Maybe the money to cover the cost of the skin graft surgery, if it's needed, but that's even reaching. An accident is a fucking accident. When I tripped and fell and split my chin on a shopping cart at Pathmark in New Jersey, was it Pathmark's fault that they didn't pad the carts? No, it was my fault for being clumsy.

 

OK OK, think about that one sentence from the article Dark Elf found.

"2.7 million dollars; or 3 days of McDonald's total coffee sales"

Thats a slap on the hand for a billion dollar company like mcdonald's.

What you don't seem to grasp is that they sell this stuff for people to consume, they dont make shopping carts for people to massage their chins with. If someone was in a hurry and gulped down a swallow of Mcdonald's 200 degree coffee they could do some serious damage to themselves. Also she wasn't actually rewarded a million dollars, she got $640,000 according to DE's article.

 

Ok, its been over 14 hours since I last posted, and no one has come up with a response, excuse, or rebut. I win. May be now you all feel like the horrible ass holes you are. I can't believe you argued that a 79 year old woman got what she deserved/ was asking for when she urned the fuck out of her vagina with McDonald's coffee. Think about that, the doctors said she recieved third degree burns to 6% of her body, all of this took place in the area of her thighs and vaginal area. 6% of the whole thing sure sounds like 100% of her vagina to me, can you possibly justify this? Probably not.



As a result of your idiocy I am banning all users who argued in favor of vaginal incineration for a period of 7 days. Hopefully you'll return with renewed respect for the dusty old vaginas of the elderly.

 

I'm with whoever said they should get the surgery and rehab paid for. I'm sorry, but I just can't see someone waking up in the middle of night, screaming about the styrofoam coffee cups leaving McDonald's in their droves to spill boiling coffee all over them.

And even if they did, 1 million dollars ain't going to make the dreams go away. I'm strongly against punitive damages for pretty much any sort of injury, unless it's a permanent, life-affecting one. If someone cut off my left arm, I'd demand everything they, their family and their descendants owned or ever would own in compensation. And then I'd want to see them all rot in jail until they died.

 

1 million dollars is going to make sure they change their policy! What if every time a company ivjured someone with their product all they were legally required to do was pay the hospital bill? I don't want to live in that world. Sure 1 million dollars between two people in a car accident is ridiculous and crippling, but a multi-billion dollar corporation like Mcdonald's can afford it, and they'll remember it, and make changes, and be more cautious with their products in the future.

Its also a good thing that this happened to McDonald's and not a smaller company, this way an example is made without putting anyone out of business or costing any jobs.

Plus that 640 grand would probably soften the blow of having your vagina destroyed at the age of 79.

If someone sold you something you thought was safe and then it wound up boiling the top 3 layers of skin off of your testes may be you'd be singing a different tune about punitive damages.

 

Different tune?.... you bet your ass you'd be singing a different tune, if i burnt my testes, i'd be sreaming like a little girl.

 

No it wouldn't. How can you put a price on searing pain and agony, humiliation, and God knows what else this poor woman suffered? Why not give her a billion gajillion dollars?

Did it? I was under the impression that they still served coffee vaginally-burning hot.

So, punitive damages, no matter how ridiculously high, are justified simply because "mcdonalds can afford it"? That sounds like a sorry reason for excusing millions of dollars. How is it fair to McDonalds? So what they've got that much money in their bra, why not charge a mom and pop breakfast cafe the same amount, should somebody spill hot shit on their smelly bits? Something here smacks of ambulance chasing, methinks.......

Not right away. Raw hamburger meat, and raw frozen chickens are sold to consume, too. Do so right out of the container, I dare you.

I'm with Jar on this one. I'm pretty much against punitive damages, just because it's soooo open to emotion, justification... How can you put a price on charred genitilia? What if it were a man that burnt his Captain Winkie, and that man was trying to knock up his wife, they being without child? Should he get more than a 79 year old woman whose eggs have long since dried up? What if it were a woman who, say, really, really enjoyed sex, but now she couldn't because of pain? More money throwed at her, then?

Money comes from somewhere, Sleek. 99% of the time, from yours and my pockets. If not directly, maybe in that a court would be tied up, holding up other trials, taxing the community, putting strain on the legal system. The madness gotta end, brotha man.

 

B.S.

McDonald's was responsible for burning this woman, do you really think they should have been able to get away with only paying for her medical help? For the rest of her life she has to sit at home with a scarred vagina, thats why the punitive damages, (which were 640,000 dollars, not 2.7million) at least symbolically ease the blow.

When it comes to the raw meat thing, give it a rest, they don't serve the meat raw, they DO serve the coffee scalding. If you look in that article it says they almost immediatly lowered the temperature of the pots to around 150 degrees.

As for justifying punitive damages, the person or corporation being punished has to feel as if they are being punished. I've never heard of a jury, or judge ruling that a mom and pop establishment had to pay anyone 2.7 million dollars, there is a degree of sanity to these processes.

The thing I really love about your argument is the way you seem to contradict yourself,

So are you for or against? Would you rather live in a society where all you get is an apology, and your medical bill paid for when someone accidentally paralyzes you? "Oh don't exagerate, thats different than getting your vagina burned off..." No No No, thats for courts to decide. "Money comes from somewhere..." And in this case it came from McDonald's.

 

I think retard was being sarcastic in that statement about the gajillion billion or whatever.
Sleek I never want to argue with you. EVER

 

1. Said woman is 79. Chances are she'll be dying soon anyway.

2. McDonald's did not put the coffee cup between her legs. I don't see her suing the car manufacturer because they thoughtlessly forgot to include a token cup holder.

3. EVERYONE knows not to have hot drinks wedged between your legs when you're driving. It's asking for trouble.

4. It's her own dumb fault for doing it. She bought the coffee. She put it between her legs. She spilt it. All McDonald's did was serve it hot. Maybe a little too hot, but you don't buy cold coffee do you?

 

May be a little to hot was hot enough to give her 3rd deree burns!!!!!! If she had consumed it at that temperature shed have burns on her esohphagous!!!!

"She'll be dying anyway, she doesnt need that vagina."

Please.

Its not a question of money, its a question of whose fault this was. I spilled a whole cup of coffee on my lap when I worked a the last diner I had a job at, and I walked away fine. The whole thing went right on my crotch, it was hot, but it didnt even give me more than a few seconds of pain. No one ever complained about the coffee not being hot enough.

 

It's not a fucking corporation's fault because some pimple-faced douche who's been held back in 8th grade for six years makes the coffee too hot. Not that I'm a fan of McDonald's (haven't eaten there in years), or that I shed a tear for them, but the woman put the goddamn cup between her legs! Not McDonalds, the woman. It sucks that she spilled it, but how the hell was the corporation supposed to predict that? That's like someone suing a knife manufacturer because they were carrying the naked blade in their pocket and slit their scrotum open. That's the damn idiot's fault, and he deserves to have his nutsack sliced for his bad knife safety. Kind of like when dickhead kids blow their own heads off with a shotgun. How the fuck do you do that? Five thousand bucks says none of those kids were raised using guns. If you learn how to use them safely from a young age, and fire them often, you have a respect for the damage they are going to do and therefore are less likely to do stupid things with them.

 

Completely agreed. There is a reason why coffee is served hot. If you didn't serve it hot, you wouldn't be making coffee. Thats called bacteria farming.

 

What kind of idiot would gulp coffee without first sipping it to see how hot it is? I also think that she would have been able to feel the heat of the coffee through the styrofoam cup. I don't know about McDonald's in the US, but when I get coffee at work, I can feel the heat through the cup, and it seems like a pretty standard one to me. I've also failed to burn myself so far, perhaps because I use common sense.

But then, I'm not a 79 year old half-senile deadshit who'd put coffee that is so hot it will give me 3rd degree burns between my legs without a second thought.

 

Good god.

Sigurd, did you read the article?

Once again, ou people are blaming this woman for being an idiot, instead of recognizing the fact that McDonald's product, at the time of serving, is DANGEROUS TO YOUR BODY.

You can make all the arguments you want that she was stupid for burning herself, but it doesn't matter, because McDonald's enabled it. Jarinor, she had no idea the coffee was hot enough to give her third degree burns. May be not all of us are blessed with ability to tell the exact temperature of a liquid with our fingertips through a styrofoam cup.

When a restaurant serves you food , they serve generally serve it to you ready for consumption. May be you've been served food in a mexican restaurant on one of those super-hot black plates? I forget what they're called I just remember the waiter warning me that the plate was very hot, and to be careful, i still touched it accidentally, but I didnt even recieve a blister, and food on the plate, though in contact with the "extremely hot plate" were at a temperature at which I could consume them without fear.

McDonald's, however, served the coffee at a temperature 40-50 degrees over the temperature at which a burn hazzard exists.

Knives are dangerous, coffee is not. That comparison is pretty ridiculous. You might as well be saying "Coffee between your legs? Thats like fucking a shotgun!" You can make all the wild, outrageous illogical comparison's you want, but the fact is, coffee is food, you don't eat knives do you? Everyone knows knives are dangerous, not everyone knows that coffee can give you third degree burns.

"What kind of idiot would gulp coffee without first sipping it to see how hot it is?"
"Plaintiffs' expert, a scholar in thermodynamics applied to human skin burns, testified that liquids, at 180 degrees, will cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds."

All of your arguments are totally bogus. What if she put it in a cup holder and then 2 seconds later their car was broadsided and they flipped over and she recieved third degree burns to her face? This is not a case of personal stupidity, its a case of McDonald's serving a liquid at a temperature that could cause SERIOUS INJURY. Please remember that she didn't just burn herself, she recieved THIRD DEGREE burns.

I dare you to go make a pot of coffee, heat it to 190 degrees and then drink it. Please, do it.

"During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This history documented McDonalds' knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard."

Please, TRY to justify that. I need a good laugh.

 

The standard temperature for Starbucks coffee is 190F. I used to work there. I drank it out of the pot. Perfectly doable. Not too hot to sip. In fact, if it's colder than about 165, coffee is undrinkably cold. Like shower water.

Not that I love the Starbucks corp. Just saying you can drink the coffee.

 

sounds weird, since water supposed to boil at 100F... is the difference due to the amount of impurity? coffee being a sludge, it boils slower?