What's With These Holographic UL stickers?

No matter what anyones opinion on it. it was McDonolds Fault for settting the temp to high. Thats why they had to Pay-out.

so

They had previously been sued for exactly the same thing and so knew what they were doing - *that's* why they got hit so big!

Ken

the

so

still

minutes,

On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 18:10:02 GMT, "Techie" Gave us:

The hell she did. She bought hot coffee, and should know not to stick the damned thing in between her legs.

She didn't deserve a goddamned dime.

On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 18:43:57 GMT, "daestrom" Gave us:

The coffee pots have fixed plate temperatures. Line voltage can swing... yada yada yada.. still same temp. in the pot.

On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 19:14:22 GMT, Spehro Pefhany Gave us:

snip

It was initially $90M, and that got reduced, and I believe the reduced figure got reduced.

In other words... she all but lost on appeal.

On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 22:37:29 GMT, "Techie" Gave us:

Were that true, which it is not, it would have been Bunn Corporation paying as it is they that set the temperature of their coffee machines.

It was a frivolous suit pretty much.

Keep a fire exstinguisher handy!!......Ross

Drinl it at 180F? Not likely. It's not likely "she" was burned by 180F coffee either. It cools rather quickly though 160F wouldn't be unusual. At 120F, keep it.

A good friend had a DD franchise when this nonsense went down. Their specification was 180F (give or take three). If they didn't *maintain* that specification they were fined by corporate. Coffee is brewed hot and isn't worth squat cold. Sorry.

Again the Dunkin' DOughnuts specification was 180F, so McD's wasn't out of line. The stupid broad who put it inbetween her legs and the lawyers milking the system were at fault. We're all paying for stupid people and the lawyers who prey on them.

--
  Keith

Err, we do like to exaggerate. She was 81. ...old enough to know not to put a cup of coffee between her thighs, WHILE DRIVING! Sheesh!

--
  Keith

Actually, they were notified with about 600 complaints of burns caused by their coffee being substantially hotter than usual for coffee. Also about their coffeecup lids being unusually tight and lacking cutaways for sipping, so that people often ended up dislodging the whole lid with a jolt that often led to a spill. The palintiff in that famous lawsuit at first asked for only reimbursement of her medical bills, but McD's refused. Despite the fact that it was obvious that she would not have incurred such medical bills if the coffe was not at an unusual temperature for coffee.

-----------------------------------------------------------

As for those who want to complain about trial lawyers? I say there are more obvious targets!

1. Wyeth-Aherst (I hope I got this right) marketed the "Phen-Phen" (I hope I spelled this right) weight loss drug combination. This resulted in some cases of heart damage and a class action lawsuit that claimed specific numbers/ranges of various degrees of heart damage. And the defendant did indeed get caught with politically incorrect memos about the plaintiffs as well as being caught understating or misstating the risks. But the class action costs them billions, probably mostly from innocent peoples' IRAs and 401K plans. But it does not stop there. Mostly from a few small regions (sometimes just a small cluster of counties, at most a moderately low population U.S. state or maybe a couple neighboring ones) individual actions from plaintiffs that separated from the class action arose, counting on jurors in those counties being culturally being very generous with other peoples' money. Those individual actions had more claimed cases of the most severe form of heart damage than predicted by the plaintiffs' lawyers in the class action! Not that I have any sympathy to money-grubbing US pharmaceutical companies, but I think those lawyers are costing common USA residents more than anyone else!
2. As reported in the Philadelphioa Inquirer (a newspaper drawing complaints about being part of the "liberal press"!) a month or two ago, a small law firm moved into the Philadelphia area from Florida and has apparently been on a mission to find petty little violations of the Americans with Disability Act by local small businesses. The businesses get no complaints prior to notice that they are being sued. The law firm offers to settle for a couple kilobucks or something like that to avoid a trial that requires more than that in a defense. This law firm sued even upon such basis as a toilet being 1 inch displaced outside the required position range in a stall that a golf cart can drive into (Would the defendant spend K or 10K to say in court that moving a wall 1 inch is not a "reasonable accomodation"), and no handicapped parking being provided by a business that did not even have a parking lot. The article mentioned that a Congressman from Florida (Foley if I remember correctly) wants to introduce legislation that requires that ADA lawsuits can only be filed after the prospective defendant has been notified of violations (I hope in specifics!) and has been given 90 days to correct them (and I hope suits are based on the specific violations which the defendant was on notice of for at least 90 days). But I fear this takes a back seat to flashier issues of partisan politics...

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

The coffee was at a temperature unusually high for coffee (most coffee does not cause the burns that occurred), the lid was notably unusually difficult to dislodge from the cup without spilling said unusually hot coffee (McD's got a good 600 complaints about these issues), and the plaintiff's first move was to request only reimbursement of her medical bills.

Those who want to complain about lawsuits and trial lawyers should easily find cases where the plaintiffs and/or their lawyers were a lot more undeserving. See my other post in this thread!

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

No, the original award was about 2.something or close to 3 million, reduced to closer to 2 million by the jury because the jury determined that the problem was 20% her fault. Reduced on appeal and settled out of court.

Those who want to complain about lawsuits and trial lawyers should have an easy time finding other cases to support an anti-trial-lawyer cause that I can easily agree with. See my other post!

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

No, McD's had the temperature set unusually hot on the advice of a consultant (or more than one). As for reason - I keep hearing two competing ones: A) Coffee is unusually hot so it remains hot after many miles on the road B) Unusually hot coffee emits aroma that stimulates coffee sales.

The burns were real and the fact that the coffee was unusually hot for coffee was real. The fact that the coffeecup lid was more difficult to open without spillage than was available was real. The fact that it is easy to find many lawsuits much more frivolous than this one is real. Those who want to bash trial lawyers (something I often agree with) should use as examples those really frivolous ones rather than a high profile one that conservatives latch onto but which is not one of the really frivolous lawsuits if you know all the facts!

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Actually, they were notified with about 600 complaints of burns caused by their coffee being substantially hotter than usual for coffee. Also about their coffeecup lids being unusually tight and lacking cutaways for sipping, so that people often ended up dislodging the whole lid with a jolt that often led to a spill. The plaintiff in that famous lawsuit at first asked for only reimbursement of her medical bills, but McD's refused. Despite the fact that it was obvious that she would not have incurred such medical bills if the coffe was not at an unusual temperature for coffee.

-----------------------------------------------------------

As for those who want to complain about trial lawyers? I say there are more obvious targets!

1. Wyeth-Aherst (I hope I got this right) marketed the "Phen-Phen" (I hope I spelled this right) weight loss drug combination. This resulted in some cases of heart damage and a class action lawsuit that claimed specific numbers/ranges of various degrees of heart damage. And the defendant did indeed get caught with politically incorrect memos about the plaintiffs as well as being caught understating or misstating the risks. But the class action costs them billions, probably mostly from innocent peoples' IRAs and 401K plans. But it does not stop there. Mostly from a few small regions (sometimes just a small cluster of counties, at most a moderately low population U.S. state or maybe a couple neighboring ones) individual actions from plaintiffs that separated from the class action arose, counting on jurors in those counties being culturally being very generous with other peoples' money. Those individual actions had more claimed cases of the most severe form of heart damage than predicted by the plaintiffs' lawyers in the class action! Not that I have any sympathy to money-grubbing US pharmaceutical companies, but I think those lawyers are costing common USA residents more than anyone else!
2. As reported in the Philadelphioa Inquirer (a newspaper drawing complaints about being part of the "liberal press"!) a month or two ago, a small law firm moved into the Philadelphia area from Florida and has apparently been on a mission to find petty little violations of the Americans with Disability Act by local small businesses. The businesses get no complaints prior to notice that they are being sued. The law firm offers to settle for a couple kilobucks or something like that to avoid a trial that requires more than that in a defense. This law firm sued even upon such basis as a toilet being 1 inch displaced outside the required position range in a stall that a golf cart can drive into (Would the defendant spend K or 10K to say in court that moving a wall 1 inch is not a "reasonable accomodation"), and no handicapped parking being provided by a business that did not even have a parking lot. The article mentioned that a Congressman from Florida (Foley if I remember correctly) wants to introduce legislation that requires that ADA lawsuits can only be filed after the prospective defendant has been notified of violations (I hope in specifics!) and has been given 90 days to correct them (and I hope suits are based on the specific violations which the defendant was on notice of for at least 90 days). But I fear this takes a back seat to flashier issues of partisan politics...

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

150 F I have to sip it slowly. When I want coffee the usual reason is that I want caffeine. Especially should I buy it from McD's, whose coffee is $#!+ at any temperature. Whe I buy coffee I want it to be not so hot that I burn my tongue if I drink more than 2 grams of it at a time!

Any takeout coffee temperature directives for higher temperature have to be for one of these reasons:

1. Make it too hot to taste how bad it is
2. Make it hot enough to be hot after a commute
3. Make it hot enough to emit an aroma that stimulates coffee sales (I want whatever good flavor that their coffee has to remain in my coffee!)

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT 


"Jazz is not dead.  It just smells funny." -F.Z.

There is, of course, a website:

Dean

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In art. , Dean Hoffman wrote:

I took a glance, no news to me yet!

I propose a few things that I have proposed on Usenet before. These should be enough to get trial lawyers lobbying for job retraining programs!

1. Non-economic damages, such as pain-and-suffering, can only be awarded if the plaintiff can show a preponderance of evidence of being blameless. That means no pain-and-suffering to jaywalkers and non-seatbelt-wearers. No pain-and-suffering to some who uses a lawnmower as a hedge trimmer, even if the injury would not have occurred if the hedge trimmer was not defective (pay medical bills and reasonable portion of lawyer fees only).

1. Punitive damages get awarded not to the plaintiff but (after deducting for lawyer fees) to some branch/level of government. I propose distribute, proportionately to population as of most-recent US Census, to the general funds of the 49 states other than the one that the trial was conducted in.

2. (Requires state constitutional amendment in some states) Some states have insufficient ability to reduce excessive jury awards. Pensylvania seems an example to me. This touches on a debate of high medical malpractice insurance. Doctors want the 0K cap that California enacted in the 1970's, while lawyers want no cap at all. One of Philadelphia's two major newspapers proposes a cap of 250K increased by inflation since CA got theirs (approx. 900K), but the two sides appear too polarized to consider this. Another consideration is that at least in Pennsylvania, careful doctors pay the same premiums as careless ones that have already been successfully sued multiple times. Although the data appears to me to show that about half of these suits happen to any doctor no matter how careful they are, it is also apparent that doctors appear to stick together and protect the bad ones. Further complicating this issue is that generosity of jurors varies so much from county-to-county that plaintiff's lawyers try (often successfully) to move a case into a county where the alleged offense did not occur in. County-by-county variations are so extreme that a case with obvious malpractice outright gets found in favor of the defendant only 3 counties away from one (in the same state) with a big national reputation of being generous to plaintiffs! Pennsylvania recently addressed this, but cases filed before this are still in progress.

Back to Point 3: Besides the issue of caps, in some states (including Pennsylvania) judges do not have an easy time reducing obviously excessive jury awards.

1. Enact Foley's (Congressman from Florida) proposed modification of the ADA to have lawsuits only result from violations that go uncorrected after

90 days notice to the prospective defendant.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 02:08:55 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@manx.misty.com (Don Klipstein) Gave us:

Unusually hot coffee kept hot from a single element below burns within ten minutes of hitting the pot, and tastes for shit. The aroma would be likewise burnt smelling, old, evaporated coffee.

Their coffee and their machines are the same as it ever was.