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’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.
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And she only wanted to be reimbursed for the hospital bills…
My mom broke her tooth on a small stone in some cereal while all that was swirling around the collective consciousness. She wouldn’t sue because she “didn’t want to be like the McDonald’s lady.” The dentist wasn’t even suggesting to sue for some kind of “pain and suffering” money, just literally the $1500 it cost to fix the tooth.
There’s no evidence to suggest that they paid to spread disinformation, that would be massively illegal and open them up to way more lawsuits. Ragebait has just always been popular.
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Soup!
This is ultimately why I hate capitalism.
These corporations spend tons more money fighting against stuff than they do paying it out. The woman wanted her hospital bills paid, that was it. Instead, they go to town spending so much money with the intent to misinform and spread propaganda than just paying it.
Many of these large employers do the same with unemployment cases and on-site work injuries. Spending more time and money doing fuck all than just paying it out like the greedy pigs they are.
This has little to do with capitalism, capitalism doesn’t dictate that the more powerful smear the weaker into submission and autocracies around the world show that it doesn’t need capitalism for the powerful to suppress the weak. This was a failure of the justice system. They could’ve ordered McDonalds to spend as much money as they spent on smearing the lady to fully admit guilt and apologize. It is the justice system that failed.
A lot of people around here say “capitalism” when they mean something more like “the Kali Yūga”, “this fallen world, this vale of tears”, “the age in which the Tao is lost”, or “this age of muck and clay, in which we are lesser than our fathers of iron, who were lesser than their grandfathers of silver, who were lesser still than the ancients of gold.”
The folks who speak this way, if you asked them, “Was there any wrongdoing in the world before the first stock certificate was issued?”, would say “Of course there was!”
If you asked them, “Did pre-capitalist kings or judges ever favor the unjust over the just because the unjust gave them riches?”, they would say “Yes, they did!”
If you asked them, “In ancient times, were there rich and well-fed tribes, and poor and starveling tribes, and did the richer tribes lord over the poorer ones?”, they would say “Certainly.”
Which all goes to show, at some level they do know they’re not really talking about “capitalism” in the economic or historical sense. They’re not talking about an economic structure or a stage of Marxist history. They’re taking about wickedness, graft, injustice, abuse of power – things which are much, much older than capitalism.
They’re merely using their favorite snarl word instead of just saying “evil”.
And why do we blame capitalism instead of generic “evil”?
Because capitalism is the system that actively promotes it and is in every facet of our lives.
It’s greed not evil.
Murdering a baby is evil, letting millions starve to death is business.
Capitalism opens an avenue for greed to be used for the benefit of the many, whereas any other form of resource distribution has no place for greed and as such no place for the greedy. At that point it becomes the same kind of discussion as the prohibition discussion. Do you ban it or do you allow and regulate it. Banning greed won’t make it go away, it will only force it into hiding and to undermine the current system. Capitalism forces greed to the surface, at which point people can have a discussion about how much greed should be permitted.
an avenue for greed to be used for the benefit of the many
Wow, that’s some impressive horse shit! The very nature of greed means that it will always benefit the few over the many and the nature of capitalism is that greed is elevated to a virtue, inevitably hurting the many to serve the few rich and powerful.
any other form of resource distribution has no place for greed and as such no place for the greedy
First of all, that’s false. Pretty much every centrist and right wing structure of government centers the individual and thus caters to the greed of the individual over the needs of the many.
Besides, if that was true, that would be a good thing! Being greedy isn’t some inescapable natural urge that must be satisfied or you explode. Making space for the most base parts of human nature isn’t good with cruelty, deceitfulness or (except in the ordered and consensual context of sports and even that is a bit iffy in many cases) violent tendencies, so why do you want to nurture and protect greed?
Banning greed won’t make it go away
Sure, but just like the other vices I just mentioned, discouraging it and making it disadvantageous to act in a greedy manner will suppress and lessen its impact on society.
Capitalism forces greed to the surface, at which point people can have a discussion about how much greed should be permitted.
Yeah, that’s the same thing people said about right wing extremists when Trump emboldened them and look how that turned out…
Bottom line is that capitalism directly encourages greed and in doing so indirectly encourages cruel indifference towards the lives, health and happiness of anyone who stand in the way of greedy people and corporations. This lawsuit is 100% a symptom of how capitalism hurts people.
Okay, maybe you really do think kings and warlords were more virtuous than shareholders or CEOs. Alas, it was not that way. They were buttholes too. Buttholery is not controlled by the economic system of the day.
You seem to think that I wouldn’t also reject authoritarianism?
It might not be a DIRECT result of capitalism, but guess what screwed up the “justice” system? Underregulated capitalism!
It’s specifically designed to work for the rich and powerful and against everyone else, because that’s who make the laws and keep the lawmakers in somehow legal bribes.
It’s pretty scary how media can influence us so much, even when we think they aren’t, and even when we think “only dumb people fall for it.” No my friend, the majority fall for it. Not cause they’re dumb, but because they’ve scienced the hell out of human nature and know precisely how to do it right under our noses. It started with marketing and advertising that works well, unfortunately. They’ve cracked the psyche code. Media adopted it. Big tech improved it. Gah… this is turning into a rant about capitalism; I didn’t intend to go there. Eek.
Manufacturing consent is a good book on this topic.
We ALL fall for it, just not all the same things at the same time.
That’s what’s so insidious. I’m sat here thinking “you rubes, I read into the details right away, and knew something was off about the story”. So then I have to ask myself, “ok, smartass, what are you falling for that you think you know”.
Its just so damn insidious.
I’m just glad for her that almost no one knows her name. Can you imagine the doxxing and death threats she would be getting if this happened today?
Corporations gonna corporate
I even was thinking if that episode from Seinfeld not just a scheme pulled by McDonald’s.
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.
She even started out planning to accept the $800 oopsie poopsie money McDonald’s offered her until her family was like “um. No? You’ve gone from independent living senior to permanently disabled. You deserve for them to pay the full medical bills”
They had a slush fund set up specifically to pay out settlements for coffee burns.
They knew it was a problem, but decided it would be cheaper to pay off burn victims than to serve their coffee at a safe temperature.
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.
The injuries involved the phrase “labia fused to leg”.
Oh… I can’t unread that…
And you canot unsee it if you ever saw the court pictures
And you can’t unsee the imagined version of that if you imagined what that eould look like
Well then. TIL that third degree burns can fucking fuse your body parts together. Jesus Christ
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.”
The picture of that poor woman’s thighs is all you need to see to know this was not a frivolous suit
Also, McD’s had years of complaints from their own store managers that the coffee was too damn hot.
Important to note that the women initially just asked McDonald’s to pay for her treatment, and they told her to get fucked.
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.
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
Thanks to the successful smear campaign executed by the corporate lawyers.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13971482/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit-stella-liebeck
This smear campaign is clear and obvious defamation. Someone should get in trouble for this, but unfortunately no one will.
I wonder how much Jerry Seinfeld got.
Both can be true.
They could be, but they aren’t. The woman literally had her labia fused together from the burn and just wanted them to pay for her fucking surgery.
She didn’t seek out that much money. She only wanted money to cover her medical costs. If you feel upset about the amount then you should blame the jury. They’re the ones who came up with the amount. (Which the judge lowered.)
It’s not about the money. Its about her being as dumb and as irresponsible as mcds.
Except she fucking wasn’t, you twat. Stop victim blaming.
Fuck you shithead. There are no victims in civil suits.
The woman who received serious burns from McDonald’s overheated coffee was a victim, sparky.
There can absolutely be victims in civil suits. A company isn’t a person so it’s not like they can go out and mug someone, often the only way to get justice against a company is in civil court.
Well actually there are some formats of a company that will be seen as a person from the perspective of the law
I’m very familiar with this case because of Randy Cassingham’s True Stella Awards (sadly discontinued). Here’s a few facts -
- She wasn’t driving the car, her nephew was.
- The car wasn’t moving, he pulled over and stopped so she could put in the cream & sugar.
- MOST IMPORTANTLY, the coffee that McDonald’s served was not consumable by a human because of the excessive temperature.
- She was hospitalized for 8 days with 3rd degree burns, followed by 2 years of medical treatment.
- She only sued for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses.
Those facts are not in dispute, but, instead of quietly paying her medical bills (which is all she wanted) and moving on, McDonald’s PR decided to publicly smear her and paint her as “DuH, sHe OrDeReD hOt CoFfEe ThEn BuRnEd HeRsElF. DuRr HuRr….”
She absolutely was the victim, but McDonald’s turned her pain into a punchline. All the way to the point that most average people today still believe that it was a frivolous lawsuit, when she deserved what she got and more because of her severe pain.
Also, if there were no victims in civil suits, there would be no civil suits. That’s the entire point, one party has been aggrieved, and they want compensation from the other party.
So she could have gotten out and she spilled it on herself.
Still her own fault.
Others have already very kindly explained how you’re completely, totally wrong, so I’ll just add:
Neener neener, you’re a stupid asshat and nobody likes you :D
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Right. Her getting third degree burns means she wasn’t a victim.
How was she dumb? How was she irresponsible?
Gee I spilled hot coffee in my lap…let me just do nothing and sit in it.
Ur labia don’t get fused cuz coffee gets splashed on them.
I take it you’ve never seen or experienced burns from boiling water – second degree burns happen nearly instantly, with third degree burns taking seconds.
The coffee they served her was near boiling.
They do if the coffee is as hot as McDonald’s had it.
The temperature it was at can cause third degree burns in three seconds. Please tell me how an elderly woman buckled in a car can get all of the scalding coffee off of herself in under three seconds.
Did you know that liquid at 150F can cause 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds? This was 200F, 133% hotter than liquid that can cause 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. The woman, who it would behoove you to recall was elderly, was sitting down, buckled in, wearing jeans.
Please, explain to me how, in this scenario, you would suggest that an elderly woman remove her now-scalding jeans in 2 seconds or less.
You can’t, because it’s impossible. Now fuck off, you complete piece of human garbage. Go suck corporate dick on reddit.
I drink my coffee above 150 wtf r u smoking???
They do if the coffee is just that damn hot which it was.
Yep cuz she spilled it on herself trying to put cream in and then she sat in it for like a minute. No way some coffee just poured on ur arm is hot enough to instantly fuse flesh .
Mcd should have paid the initial settlement I agree but the vast damage from this lady’s experience was a result of her own actions.
That’s what people can’t get over.I get how a jury could get it wrong and pay her for her suffering. And I pity her this experience What I dont get is why people completely absolve her of any responsibility here when her own actions were the first contributing factors.
Even if the coffee wasn’t “too hot”. Her own actions still would have left her burned. That is a fact.
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.
both. the corporation for starting a smear campaign and the public for buying into it and not doing their own research
They had also been warned several times previously to stop doing it.
Stop what? Brewing coffee with hot water?
If they started waiting until it cools down there would be massive complaints that it takes them too long.
Serving as hot as they did. Try reading the legal case. It is common everywhere for there to be a maximum temp you are allowed to serve hot drinks at for this reason. The store was cited multiple times for serving over that limit.
I’ve spilled freshly brewed coffee at home on myself, and I just needed to run my hand under the faucet for a bit and then clean up the mess.
This woman needed skin grafts from third degree burns. Saying the coffee was too hot is an absolute understatement.
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It was so hot it fused her labia together. Do you really think most places make coffee that hot?
Except for the YEARS of McD’s own managers complaining about the excessive temp and requesting to reduce it.
It caused third degree burns. I’ve spilt half a pot of fresh food-service coffee on my arm and had both first and second-degree burns, but not third. You know, because food-service coffee makers all heat to the same temp, except for McD’s, which has their’s set much higher. (Go research why McD’s milkshake machines are always down, despite being the same machines everyone else uses).
Having worked in many restaurants and some fast-food joints, they’re all the same, and don’t seem to have the supposed problem you claim.
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.
No pictures? Disappointed, McDonalds spent millions trying to scrub them from the Internet.
I have to admit that i didn’t expect that not boiling water could do so much damage.
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212° is the boiling point of water
212 is the boiling point. Either way, that’s going to cause some nasty burns.
if it was past the boiling point it would have already boiled off
°F not °C
FYI I Can’t see it because it’s blurred and I don’t have an account.
Damn, that was far worse than I could imagine. Poor woman
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.
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.
Don’t forget they had previously been ordered several times to reduce the temperature and refused.
the same goes for the Dingos Ate My Baby woman
dingos did eat her baby.
They also left out the fact that this was not the first injury nor the first complaint and that McDonald’s knew their coffee was inappropriately hot. The majority of damages weren’t to because of medical costs, but we’re punative as punishment for knowingly serving a dangerous product. It was intended to make them change their practices. That didn’t happen though. McDonald’s had the amount reduced in appeals and continues to serve coffee that is hotter than almost anyone wants.
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.)
If you want to defend Saint Teresa of Calcutta and how she funneled charity money to the Vatican while being unable to afford analgesics in her hospices, calling pain “Jesus’s kisses”, or defending child molesters and getting an exorcism to heal her heart attack while opposing both abortion and contraception, then you shouldn’t encourage people to do better research… which they can start with at:
Did you even read this link before you sent it?
Other than the parts I copied from it? Yeah, probably. You?
Are you a ChatGPT bot comment?
You /s but someone in this very same conversation posted a comment above basically saying the same thing.
Sort by “top”, they’ll be below… *sigh* there’s always gotta be a reason to require the /s, ain’t it?
Why is she in quotes?
Emphasis maybe?
Why are you “asking”…? (there, edited, hope that helps the tokenizer 🙄)
because I’d “like” to “know”. Some people use them to communicate dubiousness, some people use them to indicate they’re actually quoting someone, some “people” use them for emphasis.
“Assume good faith unless proven otherwise”… should be a rule. Anyways, we good now?
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.
Didn’t realize the reason was this petty. I always thought it had something to do with how many beans it took, or the time or something like that. Not that it just took longer for a customer to drink Beca they’d be burning their mouth. I’m glad she got what was owed to her. Poor woman.
EVERY coffee shop overheats the drinks in the UK and it’s infuriating. Every chain coffee just tastes like scorched milk and burnt beans and you can’t drink it for 30 mins.
I’m unsure whether, unlike this case, they serve it hot enough that if you spill it, your labia fuses together from the heat of the burns. Horrifying.
Everyone else has finished their drinks half hour ago and I’m still sipping on my black coffee trying not to burn myself…
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Interesting, actually, in Russia I’ve never had that particular problem.
Maybe there actually is some regulation in place, makes me wonder.
Are they wrong to do this? I believe so, and I can’t comment on UK law but US law agrees with me. But can I tell you why they do this? 18 years in foodservice and one of my most common complaints was coffee or tea that isn’t hot enough. Sometimes it was that I poured a cup and then had to go do something else before I dropped it off, but a lot of times it was just done brewing and I had walked the pot straight to the table only for someone to send it back and tell me to microwave it until it boiled.
Can someone explain this to Dunkin Donuts and their molten coffee?
Ask for less ice, or even better than that, make coffee at home.
Fun fact. The guy who served her the cup of coffee is related to the owner of a Panera franchise that I use to work for. Both him and his brother-in-law (I think that’s how they were related) would talk about how that was their claim to fame back when they we’re franchising with McDonalds
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Inner thighs and labia :-(
180°©?!? Did they keep the coffee from flashing to steam instantly?
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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.
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.
It wasn’t fresh coffee though
