Lady may sue after falling in Fountain while texting at the Mall

[Frimp]

I'm assuming this is a reference to the "hot McDonalds coffee" lawsuit. In that case, I would recommend you find a different example. The common media representation of the case is utterly flawed.

The lady in question bought hot coffee and spilled the contents in her lap while trying to remove the lid. That doesn't sound like much of a reason to sue, does it? Or for a jury to award a large sum, right?

The case is A LOT more complicated than that. The coffee in question was INSANELY hot, completely impossible to drink or even sip from. Despite hundreds and hundreds of similar cases, the restaurant refused to change its serving temperate (unlike that of every other major chain). At the temperature it was served, the coffee would cause 3rd degree burns in just a few seconds of contact.

As for the injuries sustained... how about 3rd degree burns to 6% of the body, including inner thighs, groin and genital area. OUCH! The lady also attempted to settle for $20,000 to help pay for the 8-day hospital stay and numerous skin grafts, but was flatly rejected.
 
The restaurant KNEW that the coffee, as it was served, would seriously injure anyone consuming it. Customers regularly complained. Practically no other restaurants served coffee at this temperature. The manager didn't give a rats ass. The argument was that take-out coffee wasn't meant to be consumed immediately, but rather taken home and consumed there.

In this particular case, the problem was that the restaurant knew it was a problem, didn't care, didn't want to change anything, and had no intention of warning anyone in any way. A jury (and several subsequent judges) didn't take too kindly to that level of arrogance.

Plenty of sites around the net have extensive information on the case. Here's one of the more official ones:

http://www.caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=facts

What happened was unfortunate for her, but we all know if the coffee had been cold, she would have been right back in the McDonalds bitching about it being cold.

[Dave Gray]

Excellent post, fyo, and you're exactly right.

The McDonalds Coffee case is misrepresented a lot.  If you look at all the details, they were negligible and knew that their coffee was boiling, but refused to take action.  Accidents happen, but if you don't take reasonable action to prevent those accidents, then you're liable.

However, it's not a good headline, so people only run with the ridiculous version.

[bsmooth]

I'm assuming this is a reference to the "hot McDonalds coffee" lawsuit. In that case, I would recommend you find a different example. The common media representation of the case is utterly flawed.

The lady in question bought hot coffee and spilled the contents in her lap while trying to remove the lid. That doesn't sound like much of a reason to sue, does it? Or for a jury to award a large sum, right?

The case is A LOT more complicated than that. The coffee in question was INSANELY hot, completely impossible to drink or even sip from. Despite hundreds and hundreds of similar cases, the restaurant refused to change its serving temperate (unlike that of every other major chain). At the temperature it was served, the coffee would cause 3rd degree burns in just a few seconds of contact.

As for the injuries sustained... how about 3rd degree burns to 6% of the body, including inner thighs, groin and genital area. OUCH! The lady also attempted to settle for $20,000 to help pay for the 8-day hospital stay and numerous skin grafts, but was flatly rejected.
 
The restaurant KNEW that the coffee, as it was served, would seriously injure anyone consuming it. Customers regularly complained. Practically no other restaurants served coffee at this temperature. The manager didn't give a rats ass. The argument was that take-out coffee wasn't meant to be consumed immediately, but rather taken home and consumed there.

In this particular case, the problem was that the restaurant knew it was a problem, didn't care, didn't want to change anything, and had no intention of warning anyone in any way. A jury (and several subsequent judges) didn't take too kindly to that level of arrogance.

Plenty of sites around the net have extensive information on the case. Here's one of the more official ones:

http://www.caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=facts

And every restaurant you go too will tell you no matter how hot they make the coffee people will complain it is not hot enough.
Not only that but she was a passenger. So with two free hands, she was not able to remove the lid off of a cup without spilling the cup on yourself.
Getting 3rd degree burns sucks, as I know from personal experience, but we need to have some sort of personal responsibility in this country.
You cannot get medium rare meat or sunny side up eggs in certain restaurants because people have sued because they ordered it and got sick.
Suck it up and except the fact that just about everything has risks. She is lucky I was not on her jury because she would not have gotten that much money.

[fyo]

Suck it up and except the fact that just about everything has risks. She is lucky I was not on her jury because she would not have gotten that much money.

If you note the link, the jury awarded her an obscene amount (well over $2 million). A judge subsequently reduced it and then a further 20% was taken off the top with the judge considering her 20% responsible. If you look around, you can find full court records (they're public) and some of the quotes by the judges are pretty staggering.

The problem with serving boiling water in a styrofoam cup is that you can't tell what the temperature is. You have no way of knowing that a few seconds of exposure is going to result in skin-graft-needing 3rd degree burns. I would strongly argue that a "reasonable person" would have absolutely NO reason to assume such an injury was a risk or that the coffee just bought was in no way suitable to consume in any way, shape, or form. I would not have assumed it and I consider myself fairly reasonable.

This isn't like a tripping over a lose tile on a sidewalk or whatever. There was a long history of complaints and (small) out-of-court settlements. And when the defense at trial says they're going to do absolutely nothing to prevent further such injuries, then you're just begging a jury to award a huge amount of money.

[Landshark]

Or the lawyers for the mall determine it might be best just to settle which happens quite a bit.

You're right, and that's what sucks about the court of public opinion.  The mall would rather pay her ten or twenty grand to get her to shut up and go away rather than prove her lawsuit is frivolous at the trial and face the negative publicity that would come with it.

[Frimp]

And every restaurant you go too will tell you no matter how hot they make the coffee people will complain it is not hot enough.
Not only that but she was a passenger. So with two free hands, she was not able to remove the lid off of a cup without spilling the cup on yourself.
Getting 3rd degree burns sucks, as I know from personal experience, but we need to have some sort of personal responsibility in this country.
You cannot get medium rare meat or sunny side up eggs in certain restaurants because people have sued because they ordered it and got sick.
Suck it up and except the fact that just about everything has risks. She is lucky I was not on her jury because she would not have gotten that much money.

I've said over and over whenever that conversation came up that if I had been on the jury, we would still be deliberating to this day, or a mis trial would have been declared. If I were there, I would have just kept saying "The bitch ordered COFFEE and would have bitched if it were cold!"

[Frimp]

You're right, and that's what sucks about the court of public opinion.  The mall would rather pay her ten or twenty grand to get her to shut up and go away rather than prove her lawsuit is frivolous at the trial and face the negative publicity that would come with it.

Just once, I'd like to see the company in one of these lawsuits actually go through with it to make an example of the plaintiff. This bitch wasn't even hurt. She just got wet, and was exposed as the idiot that she is.

[bsfins]

^^^ I would be happy,with them just repeating over,and over...

"Personal Responsibility"

Have some, get some...hmmm mmm good....

(sorry weird mood...)

[StL FinFan]

Don't the coffee lids have a space you can punch out to drink through?  Why was she trying to remove the lid from a hot cup of coffee in a moving car?  If she wanted to put cream or sugar in, she should have stopped or ask the driver to stop for 30 seconds so she could do that.

Sorry, I was being rational again.

[Dave Gray]

The thing that people are glossing over is this:  spills happen.  There is a reasonable expectation that people will spill coffee on themselves, at some time in their lives.  In this particular case, she was probably more complicit in the spill than most -- she was partially negligent in how she held the cup between her legs, for example.

But there is also the expectation that the coffee served can be consumed.  There is a reasonable expectation that coffee (even hot coffee) will not scald the person.

Sometimes, these things are just bad luck that can't be avoided.  But in this case, there was reason to believe that McDonald's knew about this problem and that it went against their own standards, but refused to act on it.  By doing so, they are partially responsible.

I agree about the insane sum of money, but that's a different issue.  I am not sue-happy.  I don't come from a family that's like that.  However, we've had two incidents of negligence from companies that injured people in my family, and the lengths that you have to go through to get compensation can take away lots of your time and energy.

Here are the two things that happened to us:

My Dad got run off the road by a company truck with an unsecured load.  Things started falling off the back of the truck.  So, when the driver realized, he jerked off the road, into my dad, sending him off of I-95, down a ditch and into a tree.  It almost killed him, totaled the car, and he was injured (neck and back) for a long time.  In addition, my Dad, who is a really tough guy, was afraid to drive and was having nightmares all the time.  It really shook our family to have our rock be so fragile.  We had private investigators hanging around our house, trying to capture a picture of my Dad doing anything physical, so that they could prove that he was faking.  It made him unable to do any of the things he loved, like gardening even a little bit, for nearly 2 years.

The other was in a CVS type store...can't remember what it was called, but it was a chain.  They were selling rocking chairs, but they had positioned them on top of the aisles.  The legs of the rocking chairs hung over the edge.  Then, they installed carts that had the long pole on them so you couldn't roll them out the door into the parking lot.  My 80 year old grandmother pushed the cart down the aisle, it dragged the edge of the rocking chair, and it fell on her head.  I don't believe we ever sought litigation, but that was definitely the store's negligence.

[fyo]

Don't the coffee lids have a space you can punch out to drink through?  Why was she trying to remove the lid from a hot cup of coffee in a moving car?  If she wanted to put cream or sugar in, she should have stopped or ask the driver to stop for 30 seconds so she could do that.

And she did.

She was a passenger and the car was parked when it happened.

[Spider-Dan]

Any time someone cites the McDonald's coffee case, some corporate lawyer gets his wings.  It's the textbook example of a huge megacorp deciding that they simply don't care what the consequences are, they are going to make whatever decisions they find most profitable and to hell with the consumer.

This is precisely the reason why we have the judicial system we do; so that the court of public opinion doesn't simply say "suing the restaurant for spilling coffee on yourself?  WTF SO FRIVOLOUS".  McDonald's consciously abused the system and their position of power over multiple injured customers, and had no intention whatsoever of modifying their behavior, no matter how many people suffered life-threatening injuries from a spilled drink.

If a law stating that the loser pays all court costs for all parties in civil suits, these frivolous lawsuits would stop.

That's one possible result.

Another possible result is people don't sue the makers of Tylenol for distributing contaminated medicine that caused the death of their child, because losing that lawsuit would bankrupt you (after paying the costs for a stable of corporate lawyers).  This is what happens in "loser pays" jurisdictions; moneyed interests have very little to fear from individuals, as the risk in suing a megacorp is far too great.

Personally, I'd rather see a system where the judge determines whether or not the lawsuit is frivolous (on a case-by-case basis) and fines the plaintiff accordingly.

[Frimp]

^^

God point. Never thought about it like that. You could say that a case like Tylenol would not lose, but who knows.

[bsmooth]

If you note the link, the jury awarded her an obscene amount (well over $2 million). A judge subsequently reduced it and then a further 20% was taken off the top with the judge considering her 20% responsible. If you look around, you can find full court records (they're public) and some of the quotes by the judges are pretty staggering.

The problem with serving boiling water in a styrofoam cup is that you can't tell what the temperature is. You have no way of knowing that a few seconds of exposure is going to result in skin-graft-needing 3rd degree burns. I would strongly argue that a "reasonable person" would have absolutely NO reason to assume such an injury was a risk or that the coffee just bought was in no way suitable to consume in any way, shape, or form. I would not have assumed it and I consider myself fairly reasonable.

This isn't like a tripping over a lose tile on a sidewalk or whatever. There was a long history of complaints and (small) out-of-court settlements. And when the defense at trial says they're going to do absolutely nothing to prevent further such injuries, then you're just begging a jury to award a huge amount of money.

I have read that before. I do not think she was assigned enough responsibility. She was trying to take the lid off in a moving.... I will say that again, a moving vehicle. Wether the coffee was super boiling or not, everyone knows a hot liquid will burn you if spillied, and it is stupid to remove the lid while in a moving vehicle as this significantly increases the chance of spillage.

[Phishfan]

One person says the car was moving, another says the car was parked. Anyone know for sure?