During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills of coffee. This policy by the fast food chain is the reason the jury awarded $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages in the McDonald’s hot coffee case. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for their inappropriate business practice.
It was used as the definitive “Frivolous Lawsuit”, but… in reality McDonalds just told Media Companies “Make us look like the victim here, or we’re pulling our precious advertising dollars.”
I just wish the victims lawyers had responded to those claims with the pictures of that poor woman’s third degree burns. she suffered horrifically and for years.
Fortunately we have actually come aways since then, if a company tried that kind of stunt today, Not only would they be called out for it online, but they would also likely catch a second lawsuit for defamation.
hopefully, she deserved so much better.
And media did a bang-up job portraying the victim as a petulant child who is too dumb to drink coffee. Classic corporate Uno reverse card.
I thought this was indeed one of those ridiculous American lawsuits. Until I heard of the injuries later. No I would never wish this settlement money for myself if it included those injuries on that part of my body. Justice was served to the McD.
Yes… Melted labia is not something I was expecting. $2.7M seems too low of a punitive damage for the big arches clowns.
It’s more the fact that McD was aware that their coffee strategy was a ticking time bomb due to many complaints from staff and customers, but they didn’t fix it.
IIRC the reason they heated the coffee that much in the first place was that it prolonged the time the coffee tasted fresh, so they didn’t have to make a fresh batch as often. Aka more profit.
The good news is the only way they’re able to get away with it was because the internet hadn’t caught on as much, and because this was before the media was afraid of catching defamation lawsuits.
It’s pretty screwed up how the media made light of this lawsuit.
A lawsuit that ended in gross negligence, and the media shamed the lady involved for a decade.
The woman’s scalds were almost enough to kill her. She spent weeks in hospital and needed skin grafts. To make it worse, McDonald’s had received multiple complaints about the temperature of their coffee.
Her lawsuit was just to help cover the medical expenses. McDonald’s didn’t want a precedence of being sued so their PR cooked up a narrative of greedy frivolous lawsuits and America bought this story hook line and sinker.
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Inner thighs and labia :-(
Bro?
Yeah, it was kinda the stuff of nightmares. I think it actually… fused … some things together.
180°©?!? Did they keep the coffee from flashing to steam instantly?
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Oh man there is so much to this case. First, she asked for like $40k, enough to cover the cost of the medical bills. To be clear, she received extensive burns as the coffee was so hot that it would burn in seconds (the wiki had a breakdown of the times/temps and they were illuminating). Moreover, it wasn’t even the hottest coffee available. Starbucks was serving much hotter coffee at the time (the hottest I think recorded). In the end, she got paid, but McDs never cooled their coffee (nor did anyone else), all they did was make better lids lol.
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It’s my native tongue and I admit it has hardly a shred of orthagonality.
People love narratives that are simple and have an easy to understand moral to them even if they’re absolutely wrong. In this case, the narrative is that she asked for hot coffee and got hot coffee, and the moral is that people are greedy and stupid and you have to protect yourself from them. I’ve often found that one well-constructed point can blow these narratives up though. I was talking with my dad about this particular case, he’s a big “gotta do something about these frivolous lawsuits” guy because he used to own a business that was adjacent to real estate and real estate is probably the most litigated business in America. I’m a big “frivolous lawsuits is a term exploitative industries use to get people excited to give up their rights” guy, so we were at loggerheads about this one. Eventually I was like “Have you ever spilled coffee? When you did, who paid for your skin grafts?” Turns out that when crafting their narrative about how she was “suing them for giving her what she asked for”, the industry lobby left out the part where she had to spend 8 days in the hospital and have multiple reconstructive surgeries.
I once worked in a chain and spilled fresh brewed coffee on my arm. Looks half a pot. Got second degree burns.
Company paid for my ER visit, naturally. No way in hell was our coffee as hot as McD’s, by a long shot. And I we still in pain for weeks.
the same goes for the Dingos Ate My Baby woman
dingos did eat her baby.
And she only asked McDonalds to cover her medical bills. It was the jury who threw out her request and instead punished McDonalds with the huge settlement, because they were horrified by how grossly negligent the company had been and decided her request wasn’t a strong enough punishment.
But, butt… if she spilled the coffee, then it’s on her for being clumsy… right? /s
they gave it to her without a lid when she ordered in the drive thru
Ouch… that’s an asshole move, they deserve the punitive damages.
The fact that someone actually was dumb enough to sue over coffee being hot was a punchline in the 90s and 2000s. It’s amazing what kind of misinformation can run amok in a world where you don’t have easy access to the internet and whatever corporate wants the spin to be, that’s what every Outlet is going to tell you.
Thankfully proper research has revealed that news groups were strong armed by McDonald’s into leaving important details out to save their stock prices… and this version of the story is the one that’s catching on.
I certainly hope that a better research clears up other misunderstandings ( the amount of people who actually believe Mother Teresa was a sadistic serial killer thanks to Christopher Hitchens riding the New Atheist wave of the early 2000’s with his easily debunked Hell’s Angel book is… way too high. The book claims among other things that she ran sham hospitals when in fact she ran hospices long before the concept was a thing in mainstream medicine and is credited for pioneering the concept of palliative care.)
Are you a ChatGPT bot comment?
You /s but someone in this very same conversation posted a comment above basically saying the same thing.
Must be one of the more successful smear campaigns in recent history. I’m not even from the us and we heard about that shit and used it as an example of greed and frivolous lawsuits. It was only like 5 years back I learned the truth. Believed that shit for 25 years…
Edit: oops should’ve responded to the media part of thread
Poor lady. Her labia was physically fused together from the heat, but she was still called dramatic. I can’t imagine everything that she had to go through.
Or they could just charge per cup
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When you dive into that case, you definitely side with the lady. She had some pretty serious burns, like way beyond what most of us would get if we spilled coffee that we made at the house.
If my memory serves me well, she originally only asked them to cover the medical expenses. So their greed ended up costing them far more.
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
People, or “people”?
Redirecting the narrative away from your faults helps protect your profits.
They didn’t serve the coffee at that temp to save money, they did it because that was the recommended holding temp for coffee.
After this lawsuit, they didn’t lower their coffee temps, they just made better cups and lids, and added more warnings.
Recommended by who, is the thing. The recommended holding temp for coffee is 110°, McDonalds of that era was holding it at 200°, and claiming it was so that when you arrived at your destination with your coffee it would have cooled down to drinking temperature, even though that is not what people use drive throughs for
The recommended drinking temp of coffee is higher than 110F.
I can almost guarantee you nobody is drinking 200° coffee. Hell, not even 160°. Closer to 140° is where it gets bearable without burning your mouth, but that’s still pushing it
Did I say people drink their coffee at 200F? I was responding to someone claiming that coffee should be held at 110F, which is fucking crazy.
Drinking temps are usually 125-140F, holding and serving temps should be higher than drinking temps, especially if people might add cream to it.
I drink mine at 168F (measured it this morning). That’s after I add a lot of sugar and cream to it. It’s 190F before I do that.
It seems a lot of people in this thread don’t own a thermometer and won’t try dipping it into a cup of coffee to see what temperature it actually is. Just believe whatever the personal injury lawyers say, don’t verify it!
Yeah, I know it’s pointless to try to educate people, but I can’t help myself. I knew the downvotes were coming, but the truth needs to be told.
I got downvotes for saying that 110F was too low for drinking. That’s barely over hot tub temps. People are crazy.
Yeah, it’s the “I did my own research on the internet” compulsion. Something on the internet lets you in on a little secret and if you buy into it, it makes you smarter than everyone who’s not aware of it. Once someone’s been convinced that they’re special for having some knowledge that most people aren’t aware of, it’s very hard to convince them that the majority is correct about it, not matter how many facts are presented that contradicts the special knowledge.
It’s why flat earthers exist. Of course that’s way more extreme (it’s almost a lifestyle really) than this thing. But this thing takes a lot less effort to verify scientifically, just stick a thermometer into a cup of coffee. The compulsion is different by degrees, but the psychological cause is similar.
It still baffles me that Americans drink liters of coffee and even ask for a refill. I drink 200ml and it’s enough for the whole day for me.
it’s watery weak stuff
In Italy we joke that it’s “acqua sporca” or “dirty water”.
We call it Abwaschwasser, water leftover after doing the dishes.
Classic German one word to describe a sentence /s
Dishwater?
Tolerance can vary a lot. I used to be able to do 3 cups a day easy. Then I started taking ADHD medication and the process of finding the right medicine and dosage made me pretty much cut out all caffeine for a while. Now my tolerance is barely 2 cups a day, and if I don’t want to be jittery, it’s 1 cup of coffee and 1 cup of black tea.
On the flipside, I’ve known people who drank 8 cups a day.
During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money.
People aren’t understanding the coffee science here. Optimal brew temp is 195-205 degF.
Now it should be regulated that the coffee is required to cool to a certain temperature, probably 160, before they’re allowed to serve it. But coffee is supposed to be brewed at a dangerous temperature.
It wasn’t fresh coffee though
Yeah, I was confused by this as well. The lady screwed up, coffee is hot by default.
You weren’t confused. You’re just stupid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Businesses are not allowed to sell “dangerous by default” products to their customers without a clear warning and sometimes even a signed waiver.
Stuff like “don’t put cat in microwave”, and similar.
