Y
Yousuf Khan
Lee said:
He's making AMDroids wanna go buy a Pentium.
Yousuf Khan
He's making AMDroids wanna go buy a Pentium.
Yousuf Khan
T
Tony Hill
Hmm.. having the read the details I am now sufficiently convinced that
it was *DEFINITELY* a frivolous lawsuit of the worst kind.
The fact that consumers were not aware that the coffee was so hot that
it could produce burns simply demonstrates that consumers, in general,
are complete morons. But apparently we must protect people from their
own stupidity, or else we get frivolous lawsuits like this particular
case.
T
Tony Hill
Well, it's any consolation, she probably DIDN'T get a dime in the end,
it probably all went to pay for her legal fees anyway. :>
M
MyndPhlyp
Tony Hill said:
As I prefer to word it, the herd needs a little thinning.
R
Robert Redelmeier
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Tony Hill said:
Ah, so you expect considerable expertise from consumers.
How much? Does everyone have to know everything?
Some SUVs have stiffer springs which makes them more prone
to roll-over when they hit a bump during over-sharp turns.
Some cars have gas-tanks extending too far aft and more likely
to be punctured during a collision. Some tires are perfectly
adequate under normal conditions, but sometimes blowout under
extreme stress because they are missing belts.
Or closer to home -- some motherboards fail prematurely due
to low-quality capacitors leaking out.
Are all of these things "caveat emptor"? How would you
discourage manufacturers from cutting corners? Is reputation
enough? Enough in view of investor short-termism? Do you
want a market so paranoid that reputation is everything
and hence closed to new entrants? (Europe?)
I don't much like punitive damages. But there is lots of slop
in the legal system, particularly people who suffer in silence
or get soaked by lawyers fees (IANAL) or silent because.
The threat of punative damages are a counter-weight. How would
you keep the corps mindful of the true loss they can cause in
the face of a clear duty to maximize profit for shareholders?
-- Robert
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Wes Newell
We;re talking coffee here, not SUV's are anything complex. I'm certain
most 4 year olds know hot coffe will burn them. If they don't, their
parents should be horsewhipped.
R
Robert Redelmeier
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Wes Newell said:
The same principle applies. Hidden defects and/or unexpectedly
bad consequences.
-- Robert
D
David Schwartz
That's not the issue. The issue is whether the coffee was delivered at a
significantly higher temperature than it should have been delivered and
whether this 'defect' is responsible for the magnitude of the injury.
We all know that children chew on crayons and that swallowing crayons
could cause injury. However, if a child chews on a crayon and dies because
the crayon contained something toxic, it would not be unreasonable to say
that the *magnitude* of the injury was high because of a defect in the
crayon.
Again, it is not unreasonable to argue that this lawsuit is frivolous.
However, it is not obviously frivolous and arguments like "everyone knows
coffee is hot and will burn you" totally miss the actual issue. The actual
issue is, was the coffee "defective" (in the technical sense) because it was
served much hotter than coffee is normally served, and if so is this
"defect" responsible for the *severity* of her burns.
Add to this that McDonald's was aware of previous burns and knew that
they served their coffee much hotter than typical. They judged the benefits
of hotter coffee (stays enjoyable longer) to be worth the increased risks of
burns or the increased severity of burns. Of course, this is not
unreasonable -- nobody makes dull axes. However, it is also not unreasonable
to argue that especially sharp axes, like especially hot coffee, is
excessively dangerous.
I personally think the lawsuit was frivolous, but it's a terrible
example to use precisely because it was such a complex issue -- given the
glut of obviosly frivolous lawsuits.
DS
T
Tony Hill
It's a matter of expectations. I expect that my SUV will not roll
over under normal driving conditions, but I am fully aware that if I
push it to hard that it won't be able to handle it. Similarly I
expect my coffee to be hot, but fully expect that if I dump the thing
in my lap it will continue to be hot and burn me.
If my motherboard came with a 3 year warranty I would expect that it
would last for those 3 years without failing. However I do recognize
that after a certain period of time it WILL fail for one reason or
another (be it capacitors, blow diodes, fried resistors or severe
physical damage by my being frustrated with a slow, outdated
computer). If I buy a cheap-ass motherboard that only came with a 1
year warranty and it dies 2 years down the road, I have no one to
blame but myself.
There are simple expectations that people should have before
purchasing anything. Anyone and everyone who buys coffee should be
well aware that it's hot, and even most toddlers know that hot things
can burn. Even if McD's coffee had been only 150F or so it could
still very easily burn someone if spilled in their lap.
This is one of the real problems with the "corporate veil", it removes
responsibility. However I don't think that the way to fight this is
by removing responsibility from consumers as well to the extent that
no one is properly responsible for anything. That's what we're seeing
in this case. McD's hiding behind the corporate veil so that no one
will be responsible for their coffee being hotter than other companies
coffee, and the woman is hiding behind her apparent right to ignorance
that hot coffee can burn.
In the end, all the money just ends up getting shuffled around into
lawyers pockets and neither the corporation or the consumers benefit.
D
David Schwartz
I don't think very many people would expect that spilling McDonald's
coffee on your lap could result in third degree burns requiring
hospitalization for 8 days and skin grafts.
That's not the point. The point is that because McDonald's coffee was
unusually hot, it caused unusually severe burns.
She never said she had no idea hot coffee could burn. She said she had
no idea that McDonald's coffee was so hot that it could cause third degree
burns. Frankly, I would not have thought that spilled coffee could cause
third degree burns either, but I never really thought about the case where
very fresh coffee spilled on a person who was in a confined space and so
couldn't easily get the hot liquid away from their skin.
This is a case about an unusually dangerous product that caused an
unusually severe injury.
DS
R
Robert Redelmeier
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Tony Hill said:
Precisely! If I spill coffee on my lap, I expect to get burned
about the same as I was burned last time (typically a few years
ago). A first degree burn. I do not expect that the stuff is
30'F hotter so that it will give me a third-degree burn.
OK, that's fair enough. Then how would you pierce the
corporate veil? Jail the employees responsible for deciding
the thermostats should be set +30'F? Fine them into penury?
No problem, lots more people waiting for management jobs.
Competitive churn. Maybe pay them a very little more.
I don't much care what happens to the money. Perhaps punative
damages should be paid to the state, not the plaintiff.
The bigger question is how it changes people's behaviour.
The law is all about prevention. Punishment afterward does
damn little good.
These inflammatory awards do get on the corp risk-managers
radar screens. They start to factor in the cost of large
awards and the much larger reputational loss (Firestone)
into the risks they decide to take every day. I've seen it
at work, and believe it results in better decisions for all.
-- Robert
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Wes Newell
There was no defect in the coffee. The only defect was in the brain
of the stupid old woman that spilled the coffee on herself. The only thing
at issue here is wether any reasonable person would expect to get burned
if they spilled hot coffee on themselves and then sat there like a moron
and let it continue to burn them. Yes, any reasonable person would expect
to be burned IMO, and If I'm sitting on the jury, she gets nothing. I can
run my hand through a blow torch for a short period of time. Only an idiot
would leave it there and not expect to get burned.
T
The Chief
Unfortunately you're also trying to communicate with a bunch of morons.Wes said:
It seems the predominate U.S.A. mentality is they are not responsible
for their own action, the government is supposed to provide everything
to them free and they don't feel obligated to pay any kind of taxes to
support their government, and to sue anybody and everybody for anything
they can.
And to support all this, we fill our juries with morons that have the
same mindset!
R
Rob Stow
David said:
Having coffee slosh over my hand for whatever reason
happens once in a while.
Everywhere else I've gotten coffee from it has just been
a matter of shrugging off a little pain from a mild scalding
and ten minutes later there is no visible sign on your hand
that anything ever happened.
However McDonald's coffee is so much hotter that it caused
blistering that took about two weeks to heal. No prolonged
exposure was necessary - and it is painful to think about
how much worse it would have been if I had spilled it
someplace where my clothing would have held the hot liquid
in place.
My reaction was simply to stop buying McDonald's coffee, but
I do have a *lot* of empathy for those who decided to sue.
K
keith
Competative advantage? Perhaps competative pressure. A friend had a
Dunkin' Donuts franchise and we were talking about this issue when it hit
the presses. They were *required* by franchise agreement to keep their
coffee at 180F +/- 3F. The corporate inspectors would show up unnanounced
and measure the temperature. They were heavily fined if it was
out-of-spec. Contrary to the claims in this thread 180F is not unusual for
coffee.
The ass that put the cup in their lap. Dunno about you, but I'm smart
enough not to get even 150F water near my johnson!
One expects hot coffee. One doesn't expect tire blowouts and vehicles
catching fire *THESE DAYS*. There was a time where such was
reasonable. There has *always* been a time where hot water and private
parts don't mix.
That much is obvious. The proof is that wee-Willie Gates has a roof over
his head. ;-)
K
keith
You equate the length of a warranty with life expectancy? I should
expect my truck to fail because the warranty just expired?
That is the bigger issue. The littigation lottery costs us all big money.
I've been called to sit on civil jurries, but every time they had the good
sense to settle out-of-court. ;-)
R
Rob Stow
keith said:
There is no excuse for coffee that hot. It will be
interesting to see what happens if one of your friend's
customers needs a skin graft after spilling his coffee.
"I vas chust following orders" is not an acceptable
excuse for blatant stupidity so I would expect your
friend to be personally liable.
You've never had an accident ? Nobody has ever spilled
their coffee on you or caused you to spill yours on
yourself ?
And 150 or 160 degrees or is no big deal - you scream and
cuss and then you go home to change your clothes and the
event is soon forgotten. *THAT* is what people expect when
they spill their coffee. 180' coffee is an entirely different
story.
150 to 160 degree is plenty hot for coffee yet safe
if you spill it on yourself and that is what people
expect. 180 degrees is simply stupid and dangerous
and nobody expects that
L
Lee Waun
He he He. Maybe he really is an Intel plant. Makes sense if you reallyYousuf Khan said:
think about it. No one can really be as stupid as he seems to be. It has to
be an act to make AMD look bad. It is working too.
M
MyndPhlyp
Lee Waun said:
Genius has its limitations, while stupidity knows no boundaries.
G
George Macdonald
Since you have admitted you don't drink coffee, it naturally follows that
you don't have a clue about making and drinking it: it should *not* be
brewed at 212F... something which seems to be done by the cheap coffee
joints to extract the maximum of what are actually undesirable components
from the cheap over-roasted beans they use. Good coffee requires a water
temp of ~195F max for the extraction step and by the time it's passed
through the apparatus used to prepare it and hit a cool jug it should be
close to the perfect drinking temp of 135-140F or preferably cooler... for
me personally. If "burners" are used to keep it hotter, they have nothing
to do with good coffee.
The fact is that, as admitted by the sellers, they are assuming that the
buyer is intending to take the just purchased coffee to an office where it
will be drunk 10-20mins later... apparently by someone who doesn't care
about the taste and likely thinks that slurping as a form of in-line
cooling is err, OK! Personally, I'm sick to death of finding that the
coffee I buy at a highway-stop is served scalding hot and in a styrofoam
cup which only serves to extend the waiting period before it becomes
drinkable... as a poor substitute for the real item.
The only question here is whether a cup of coffee as purchased is fit for
drinking, in fact not dangerously and unnecessarily hot... never mind
spilling, without risk of *serious* injury - obviously not! Nope - McD's
et.al. needs to err, cool it. Why don't they get the umm, message?...
insufficient economic penalty for their sins?? Hell the woman only wanted
her medical costs paid initially.
Rgds, George Macdonald
"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??