worst court decisions in our history

700 cases. $500,000 worth of pay outs. And the chain doesn't reevaluate it's coffee policy. That's a pretty clear cut case of negligence.

Obtaining the whole picture usually changes peoples' preconceptions.

 

I don't that the issue here is one of layman vs. expert. I think that it is possible to get so caught up in the minutia that one loses sight of the bigger picture.

 

EventHorizon, you don't know what you're talking about. You clearly know only a few of the facts of the McDonald's coffee case. It's a study in poor risk management, not bad court decisions. The car was parked, she wasn't the driver, the coffee was served between 180F and 190F (hot enough to be undrinkable AND to cause 3rd degree burns), the lid design was defective and isn't used any more, she initially only sought $20k in medical reimbursement, and the jury gave her $200k in actual damages (reduced to $160k because they found her 20% at fault) and 2 days worth of coffee sales as punitive damages (later reduced to 3x compensatory). The judge called McDonald's "reckless, callous and willful." Not really the poster child for bad decisions you hold it up to be.

As for the Winnebago case, it NEVER HAPPENED. You're citing a case that doesn't exist. Here:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/cruise.asp

Actually its posts like yours that are more likely spinning Darwin.

 

are you telling us that since we're not lawyers or judges, we couldn't possibly comprehend how the law works, how it reads, or understand the constitution?

 

No, I don't think that's what he's saying at all, Duane. It's pretty obvious that he's talking about the preconceived notions that lots of people have about the way the law actually works. Just like EventHorizon tried to cite the McDonald's case based his own flawed knowledge of the facts and a debunked urban legend as an aggregious legal injustice, lots of folks learn what they know about the law from places like "Law and Order" or "CSI". What @kirstang's said is that most folks don't know what they're talking about when it comes to specifics and they aren't willing to do the work to correct that ignorance. You may be an exception, but this thread already has a clear-cut example of exactly what KirStang means.

In other words, don't try to start another flame war by putting words in someone else's mouth. You already tried it once - don't do it again.

 

If a lawyer hands you a well reasoned legal opinion that you should go kidnap someone and force feed them herring, is it a sign of legal naivete to hold fast to the belief that doing so is a bad idea?

 

Did those people break their contracts? I'm not sure your point here, can you clarify? I'm on about 4 hours of sleep here.

 

I understand, then, but I still don't see the relevance to what I wrote.

 

How about now?

 

Thank you. I'm slow today.

 

Not long ago, Roachboy jumped on me for interpreting 'democracy' very very simply, as the word is undergirded by a lot, a lot of studies and research. Similarly, in a contract, while the word 'assign' may just mean 'assign' to you, in reality, it's also fraught with a bunch of caselaw and interpretation (i.e. for example, that even though the contract says the contract is assignable, it really is not once you read the contract in full and weigh what the parties are getting in exchange for permitting assignability).

FWIW.

Sorry I had a bad day at work with a lot of lay clients bitching about the law even though I tried to explain the concepts.

 

Duh.

i assure you it's more than just my posts in a forum that are achieving that effect.

lets get through the obvious stuff first: i agree with the facts, i agree with the outcome, and i am glad McDonald's got what was coming to them

that being said, how many cups of magma-coffee do you think micky-ds served on a daily basis under that exact same protocol? how many of those people crispified their skin because of McDonalds? 700 a year, yeah, a little less than 2 a day. how many cups of coffee does ONE McDonald's sell a day? alot more than that. her inability to control hot liquid is what caused those burns, not McDonald's shitty policies on treating coffee temperature in Celcius like points in a basketball game.

it's totally right that McDonald's got a few mil taken from them from a safety standpoint. they wouldn't have changed anything had it just been the medical bills that they had to cover, so i'm glad they got bit into enough to change the way they operate. as for who's fault it is that the coffee landed on her: hers.

all this says to me is that the cup had even less to do with it. if lid is so poorly made that i can't contain liquids from a jostling car, its a shitty lid, if a lid can't keep liquid in a cup because some old lady decided to take it off to add cream and sugar. also, what difference does it make if she was driving or not if the car was parked?

EDIT: 700 in 10 years, my mistake

 

It is not unreasonable to understand that people spill coffee. I spilled coffee on myself yesterday. It wasn't 180 degrees so it wasn't a big deal. It's the same as putting seat belts in cars - it's reasonable to know that accidents are going to happen and that consumers need to be afford the most basic steps of protection. It's why it's a good idea to put out "wet floor" signs after mopping or making sure that broken glass gets cleaned up quickly.

that's reflected in the jury's verdict. They assigned 20% of the blame to her. She spilled the coffee. But if the coffee hadn't been 180 degrees, it wouldn't have caused the burns when she spilled it. They knowingly served a dangerous product that could cause immediate bodily injury. In other words, you're blaming the victim.

You really don't pay attention, do you? The car wasn't jostling. It was parked. I mentioned that because one of the usual factual errors of critics of that case make is that she was driving and the car was moving. She had a good place to add her cream and sugar - a stationary car. When she did so, she spilled the coffee on herself. Usually - oops, something to send to the dry cleaners - but because McDonald's heated their coffee so much, it caused some pretty horrific third degree burns, and she had to get skin grafts in some sensitive spots. If you've never read anything about it - which you clearly haven't - it's a pretty bad injury.

/smack in the back of the head

 

the cupholder/common sense defense has been proven effective in this particular battle. it's not exactly a secret.

i'm blaming a stupid person for being stupid. this i will concede. i'm honestly surprised that they didn't reduce her gains by even more because McDonalds didn't spill the coffee on her, she did.

pretty sure that was the last, not to mention bolded, word of my last post, but you're right. I was the one not paying attention.

she did it to herself, hence the "dumb dumb" category i assign to her

while i agree a stationary car is a great place to fuck about with your hot drinks, your lap is not a good place. we could get all Dr. Seuss if you want to with how many different places she could've been safe from the hot coffee demon, but the fact is that nobody else put that hottest of coffee in between her legs except her

she didn't invent spilling coffee on oneself so it isn't like shes pioneering some new form of litigation, she just got hurt extra bad and had the balls to go for Ronald McDonald's cash jugular. was she justified? yup. was it excessive? believe it.

 

Have you seen Hot Coffee, the documentary about the McDonalds case and about tort reform? It's quite good, imho.

 

I've been going back and forth in mind on the San Antonio school district case where the Court ruled that education is not a right covered by the 14th amendment equal protection clause and school funding based on property taxes is constitutional. IMO, it is another example of separate but not equal.