The Last Poster Wins! [v21]

[Noblejanobii]

Still, you don't put coffee on your lap! Or anywhere near your crotch for that matter, especially if it's a drink that's natively known to be hot. Use a cup holder. That's why they exist in cars. Come on, that's basic. McDonald's probably didn't want to pay the medical bills because then loads of people would be doing that nonsense. Oh, I spilled ice cream on my clothes and I want McDonald's to buy me new clothes now. They shouldn't have made their sundaes so gooey and sticky! Or my dog Spot ate all my Hershey's chocolate, got sick, and died! Hershey shouldn't make their chocolate so... chocolate-like! Come on. Once you set a precedent by paying for people doing dumb things to themselves, it can quickly become a give an inch and people want a mile thing. How do you think insurance fraud became a thing? That ends up being $150 billion a year. And people wonder why companies are heading overseas to do business elsewhere.

You know what I do with a restaurant that screws up and doesn't do a good job with their food? Boop, I don't go there. That's just how capitalism works. If I had gotten an extremely hot cup of coffee to the point where I found it unpleasant to even hold the cup and didn't like it, bam, you'd see me getting coffee elsewhere. Instead, now I get to see "caution, drink may be hot" or "edges are sharp" splattered all over the place on things like that where it should be completely obvious. Oh yes, I need a reminder not to stick my hands in the blender while it's plugged in or not to grab the working side of the chainsaw while it's running. I mean come on, it's not like the sharks in the ocean are suddenly going to be wearing "caution, I may be hungry" t-shirts or the sky suddenly warning everyone "hey, this thunder and lightning? Yeah, might zap ya. Might kill ya." This is basic self-preservation stuff people should know and yet by golly, they don't.

That's the thing that bothers me. Did McDonald's have their coffee stupidly hot? I'd say so, but to me, that's just a lousy way to prepare a common drink item and I'd probably say "hey, looks like I'm off to Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks instead." I love a good, hot cup of coffee, but I don't need it to boil, of course. Otherwise I'm sitting around for a longer time just waiting for it to cool down.

That's my thing. I respect your opinion about this case, but I still think there's a lot wrong with the outcome of things.

She was a 79 year old lady, Neo! She was trying to open the lid of the cup! Trust me that's not exactly an easy task to do in a car's cup holder, moving or otherwise. It's easier to pop the lid off a cup when it's in your lap than it is when it's in a cup holder, at least for me it is, maybe not for you but it obviously was a much less difficult task for Stella to open it that way. And Neo, please be reasonable. There's a difference between a 79 year old woman getting third degree burns, going into shock, and nearly dying and my dad spilling coke on his pants yesterday. In one case, you just wash your clothes and no lawyer would actually take up a civil case for that, but in the other case, it's someone being injured by unsafe business practices of coffee being heated to about 200 degrees. 200 DEGREES. And the main reason companies go overseas is because labor is cheaper, I would know it's why my dad is gone half the year, because he has to travel to those overseas plants to make sure they're doing their jobs. Sure insurance fraud is certainly a factor but that's not the whole story and neither is your warped perspective of a case that it was obvious you knew nothing about.

Yeah your second paragraph here kinda convinces me you didn't read what I said, at all. Sure, Stella can now go to Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks for coffee, but that wasn't what she sued over. She sued over the fact that she nearly died and then McDonalds refused to help pay her medical bills. So yes, now she can participate in capitalism but only because she survived going into shock after being burned by coffee that was way too hot! Yeah, coffee is hot, you know this, I know this, Stella knew that. But if you spill coffee on yourself do you expect to go into shock and nearly die from third degree burns? I certainly don't. That is not common sense, Neo, that's called something learned from experience, either your own, or someone else's.

Okay but you missed my point. This wasn't public knowledge prior to Stella's case. No one knew that they prepped the coffee to be 200 degrees besides the workers at McDonalds. It didn't come out that they were using these unsafe business practices until after Stella's case. It's because of Stella's case that this became public knowledge. It's because of Stella's case that they had to change that. It's because of Stella's case that you can now make such snarky remarks about something she had no knowledge of because it wasn't well known to the public at the time. She didn't know her coffee was over 170 degrees until after she was in the hospital. Which I might also point out that Starbucks got dinged by this too because they did the same thing at the time this was going on. Stella was just as much at risk of this happening had she gone to Starbucks.

I don't think you really do since the counterarguments you brought up were addressed in my initial post. And while there are stupid people out there that probably would try to sue over spilling ice cream on themselves, this wasn't that type of case. Trust me I've studied those (my favorite is the urban legend about an RV case on the difference between auto pilot and cruise control). This was a case that nearly killed someone over something that she could have never known about but could have easily been prevented if corporations weren't greedy and you're just saying "oh she could have just gone somewhere else if the cup was too hot". Newsflash, all coffee cups feel hot, that's not a good way to judge how hot coffee is.

EDIT: OH AND ALSO "Liebeck was in the passenger's seat of a 1989 Ford Probe which did not have cup holders." Like I said, do your research before you make a conclusion jump.

[Neo Emolga]

She was a 79 year old lady, Neo! She was trying to open the lid of the cup! Trust me that's not exactly an easy task to do in a car's cup holder, moving or otherwise. It's easier to pop the lid off a cup when it's in your lap than it is when it's in a cup holder, at least for me it is, maybe not for you but it obviously was a much less difficult task for Stella to open it that way. And Neo, please be reasonable. There's a difference between a 79 year old woman getting third degree burns, going into shock, and nearly dying and my dad spilling coke on his pants yesterday. In one case, you just wash your clothes and no lawyer would actually take up a civil case for that, but in the other case, it's someone being injured by unsafe business practices of coffee being heated to about 200 degrees. 200 DEGREES. And the main reason companies go overseas is because labor is cheaper, I would know it's why my dad is gone half the year, because he has to travel to those overseas plants to make sure they're doing their jobs. Sure insurance fraud is certainly a factor but that's not the whole story and neither is your warped perspective of a case that it was obvious you knew nothing about.

Yeah your second paragraph here kinda convinces me you didn't read what I said, at all. Sure, Stella can now go to Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks for coffee, but that wasn't what she sued over. She sued over the fact that she nearly died and then McDonalds refused to help pay her medical bills. So yes, now she can participate in capitalism but only because she survived going into shock after being burned by coffee that was way too hot! Yeah, coffee is hot, you know this, I know this, Stella knew that. But if you spill coffee on yourself do you expect to go into shock and nearly die from third degree burns? I certainly don't. That is not common sense, Neo, that's called something learned from experience, either your own, or someone else's.

Okay but you missed my point. This wasn't public knowledge prior to Stella's case. No one knew that they prepped the coffee to be 200 degrees besides the workers at McDonalds. It didn't come out that they were using these unsafe business practices until after Stella's case. It's because of Stella's case that this became public knowledge. It's because of Stella's case that they had to change that. It's because of Stella's case that you can now make such snarky remarks about something she had no knowledge of because it wasn't well known to the public at the time. She didn't know her coffee was over 170 degrees until after she was in the hospital. Which I might also point out that Starbucks got dinged by this too because they did the same thing at the time this was going on. Stella was just as much at risk of this happening had she gone to Starbucks.

I don't think you really do since the counterarguments you brought up were addressed in my initial post. And while there are stupid people out there that probably would try to sue over spilling ice cream on themselves, this wasn't that type of case. Trust me I've studied those (my favorite is the urban legend about an RV case on the difference between auto pilot and cruise control). This was a case that nearly killed someone over something that she could have never known about but could have easily been prevented if corporations weren't greedy and you're just saying "oh she could have just gone somewhere else if the cup was too hot". Newsflash, all coffee cups feel hot, that's not a good way to judge how hot coffee is.

EDIT: OH AND ALSO "Liebeck was in the passenger's seat of a 1989 Ford Probe which did not have cup holders." Like I said, do your research before you make a conclusion jump.

Really, if your car doesn't have cup holders, don't you still think that hey, maybe it isn't a good idea for me to open this cup right above my legs? Maybe I shouldn't be drinking this in the car if I have no where to put it? Am I really going to hold this hot thing the entire car ride long? And if it feels hot, hey, maybe I should be careful with it? To me, if you didn't have cup holders in the car, holding a hot cup of coffee for the entire car ride doesn't sound like a bright idea. Especially if she's 79. She could have said to her grandson "hey, this isn't working, maybe let's go inside and drink it." Part of basic survival is recognizing when a situation has potential danger. And newsflash, that's not always something that's obvious in nature either.

And sure, cheap labor is one among many reasons that companies go overseas, but the laws and lack of restrictions are that way too. That's essentially how China gets away with polluting the heck out of the planet. Why set up a factory here where there's tight restrictions on pollution controls when you can go all out in Shanghai if you want to?

Did Stella know the coffee was 170 degrees? No, but she knew it was coffee and she knew it was hot the second her hand touched the cup. I mean heck, the grandson should have been thinking "hey, maybe this coffee's too hot for grandma to handle" also when he picked it up off the counter after paying for it. She was 79 after all. Her hands aren't as strong as they used to be. I don't think I'd give a 79 year old lady something that would be dangerous if she mishandled it. I wouldn't even feel right giving someone that old a pair of everyday scissors if I didn't think they were capable of handling them. A cup of hot coffee for a car ride with no cup holders in the hands of a 79 year old lady sounds like disaster just waiting to strike. Any bump, sudden stop, or what have you would have made a mess, and the grandson should have known this.

My whole thing is just feeling strongly about how people need to be responsible for themselves. I just feel this is way more on her and her grandson than McDonalds. And yes, I'm definitely aware there are cases where corporations should get nailed for stupid negligence, but when it comes to who was responsible for this, I would say McDonald's was maybe 10% at fault while the grandson was at 30% fault and she was 60% at fault.

And still, even if stupidly-hot coffee was a thing all across every food franchise at the time, don't have it, then. Brew your own coffee to however you want it. Heck, that's what I would do. Let them lose the business until they do it in a way that I'm good with.