Peter Connor wrote:
Just out of curiosity, and speaking as an attorney, in what way was
McDonald's negligent?
Attorney John F. Thomas, who I think might now be gone from this group,
sent me an email which contained this:
McD's got tagged for serving their coffee
at 210F, which was dangerously hot. Seems
that McD's used cheap beans, and the way
that they would save money off their coffee
and speed up the brewing time would be to
extract coffee from them at a super high
temperature (most coffee pots brew around
180F). McD's did a lot of research about
how to brew their coffee at high tempera-
ture, and spent a lot of money having
custom-made coffee pots.The difference between 180 and 200F is the
difference between a scald of first degree
and a scald of 2/3rd degree. You can
expect to spill coffee on yourself and
have it be hot, but do you expect to
receive full-thickness burns from it? No.
That's where McD's was liable... for
serving UNEXPECTEDLY and unreasonably hot
coffee.
I have never read the opinion nor do I know whether there is a dissent.
In fact, I was not aware that the matter had ever been appealed in the
first place for their to even be an opinion. More than likely this
case had been decided by a jury, and jury are notorious for making
occasional lame-brained decisions, and the McDonald's case just sounded
like another one that was based more on sympathy for a little old lady
than on any sound logic concepts of law. But _perhaps_ they were
right, even though she was no doubt guilty of contributory negligence.
Bill Velek
ยทยทยท
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
From: Bill Velek <billvelek@alltel.net>
Date sent: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 18:25:14 -0600
Subject: Re: [vpFREE] Re: Stations Taking More Anti-advantage player measures?