RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:stitch626 wrote:
Then again, McDonalds lost the HOT coffee suit.
And that forever lowered my hope for humanity. Mind other things have lowered my hope for humanity, but that was also a thing that lowered it.
I never got why people considered that a frivolous lawsuit.
The woman is described as being burned, which gives most people the idea that it was a sort of "owie, that's hot! *blow* *blow*.... oh, it's okay now" sort of thing.
In reality, the coffee caused her third degree burns on her thighs and genitals. The woman needed skin grafts as a result.
Nor was it an isolated event. McDonald’s had received more than 700 previous reports of injury from its coffee, including reports of third-degree burns, and had paid out settlements in some of those cases.
Mrs. Liebeck offered to settle the case for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses and lost income. McDonald’s never offered more than $800, which is why it went to trial.
The jury did find Mrs. Liebeck to be partially at fault for her injuries, reducing the compensation for her injuries accordingly.
It was the punitive damages that made the headlines — McDonald’s had refused to change a policy that they knew had injured hundreds of people, so the jury awarded a punitive amount equal to two days worth of coffee sales revenue for the restaurant chain.
The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and biomechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm from coffee at the temperature McDonald's is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation, the leading scholarly publication in the specialty.
McDonald’s admitted it had known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years. The risk had repeatedly been brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits.
An expert witness for the company testified that the they did this because "the number of burns was insignificant compared to the billions of cups of coffee the company served each year."
At least one juror later told the Wall Street Journal she thought the company wasn’t taking the injuries seriously. To the corporate restaurant giant those 700 injury cases caused by hot coffee seemed relatively rare compared to the millions of cups of coffee served. But, the juror noted, “there was a person behind every number and I don’t think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that.”
McDonald’s quality assurance manager testified that McDonald’s coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into Styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat.
McDonald’s admitted at trial that consumers were unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at McDonald’s then-required temperature.
McDonald’s admitted it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not.
So really, what was so terrible about this lawsuit?
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
