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TIL In the Hot Coffee lawsuit against McDonalds,punitive damages were given due to McDonalds intentionally overheating coffee to save money on refills (www.poolelg.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/til@lemmy.world
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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. 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.

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[–] -5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    The jury also heard evidence how there had been multiple serious injuries before this lady and yet McD intentionally refused to lower the temperature as the bean counters realized they saved money keeping it hot... people couldn't drink very much of it in restaurant as they ate their breakfast and therfore didn't ask for refills. Even though they had paid out claims previously, it was cheaper to keep it hot and keep paying them out despite injuries. The jury thus decided on significant punitive damages to motivate McD to do the right thing.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I mean fair. I'm not trying to side with mcds here, really because I do believe they deserve blame, but I also believe it's not black and white. They don't deserve all of the blame here.

    If an employee had spilled on her then yes but she literally did it to herself.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Consider however that she wasn't served this coffee in a store, but in a car. The possibility of spilling the drink is significantly more likely, especially since she wasn't given a lid. This isn't the woman's fault at all, it was a horrible accident just waiting to happen. It's like if a roller rink covered the floor in grease and periodically had spike pits.

    I did a bunch of chemistry lab classes in college, I think I had one each year actually. We regularly heated liquids and worked with concentrated acids. If we had spilled a liquid this hot on ourselves in a similar volume, we would have seen similar burns. It would take longer than 2 seconds to rip off a glove (which is probably fused to your skin very quickly anyway) or disrobe our labcoats. The coffee being spilled on us like this would have given us incredibly severe burns too, and that's with PPE and emergency safety equipment right there. It would take far, far longer to get to one one of the showers and activate it even.

    And this is in a controlled lab environment! There was no heightened risk of spills because of being in a moving vehicle nor having an open cup.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And guess what, neither did the jury. They assigned 20% of fault to her.

    But you seem to not know this, yet keep on victim blaming.

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