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I think the point is exactly that the serving termperature was, in fact, wrong. It was hotter, several minutes after being handed to the customer than the average person's intuition would lead them to expect. And that difference was enough to cause life-threatening injury. That's a reasonable fault, in my opinion.

Then there's the angle of why they did this. Disclaimer: I haven't sourced this, so maybe I'm mistaken, feel free to verify this info. It's been pointed out that McDs benefited from serving coffee hot enough that customers were unlikely to be able to consume it before leaving the store. They were using free refills as a marketing technique and someone figured out that the hotter you served the coffee, the less free coffee was given out, while presumably still getting most of the benefit of offering it. This explains why they wouldn't lower the temperature when told it was unsafe, and also why it makes sense to hit them with a large cash penalty, to counter the financial incentive to continue unsafe but profitable practices until you get caught.

That is how I end up looking at this kind of lawsuit. You can't regulate every single potentially unsafe idea anyone can have. But having a flexible system that makes the risks of getting sued outweigh the financial benefit of potentially unsafe but lucrative practices means we get an overall safer environment, because it aligns the best interests of consumers with the best interests of the big companies.

> when we all recognize coffee is a hot substance.

190 degrees is not at all drinkable (though perfect for out of the brewer) and McDonalds had already received complaints about it being too hot.

So are they supposed to have a "cooling process" to bring the temp down to a standard temp? If there is no such standards, it kind of leaves things undefined and perhaps we should have one, although I imagine a few coffee bars flouting the standard.

The complaints may or may not be relevant, I think because you will have people complain it's not hot enough, or too hot, etc. and in terms of proportion to servings served it was a miniscule percentage. Never the less we all know from experience when we brew at home that coffee is hot. We know to be careful around the stove or range.

>So are they supposed to have a "cooling process" to bring the temp down to a standard temp?

No, just a warning label.

They didn't need a cooling process. The coffee was brewed and left in a pot on a warmer. They just needed to turn down the temperature on the warmer. They were literally selling a drink that was hot enough to burn/melt flesh. They were told this practice was dangerous several times and multiple people were injured, yet McDonald's still refused to decrease the temperature. Sometimes a lawsuit is the only way to get a business to stop dangerous behavior.

There's so much disinformation on this case. For instance, I was once told that the McDonald's franchisee was violating even McDonalds policy by keeping his coffee "even hotter"—because he liked it that way. And that one of the outcomes of the case was McDonalds removing the temperature control from their coffee machines to ensure consistency.

I have no idea if that's true, but I suspect not.

No coffee is drinkable for me when served, it's always at a temperature that will burn my tongue and gums. I always have to cool it down.

A lot of people apparently like coffee hot, so they can take it to work or wherever and it's not luke-warm 30 minutes later. I'm not one of them, but that doesn't mean this apparently popular product variant should no longer be offered by any vendor. It's not like McDonald's has an effective monopoly on serving coffee ...

Coffee should be served safely drinkable for the same reason that Burger King doesn't hand you a beef patty while it's still on fire.

Ok, so are office Mr Coffees at work serving me coffee the wrong way? Should they serve coffee at lower temps? Or if I use a percolator....

So I agree McD was callous and unsympathetic. I also think they should have looked after their customer... But I still find the argument that McDs was at fault a bit unsettling because we all know that coffee is intrinsically hot. It's not something you gulp down. It gets sipped for a reason.

What you're not understanding is that the Mr. Coffee's and percolators you are using are not serving you coffee that is as hot as McDonald's was at the time of the lawsuit. The coffee scalded the woman instantly--she would have been injured whether it spilled on her or she tried to drink it. Indeed, at the levels served, she could have suffered far worse injuries if she had just tried to drink it, from the coffee scalding her throat and trachea.

Companies changed their behavior after the lawsuit. Now they serve coffee hot, but not scaldingly hot.

A Keurig brews at 192 degrees by default. After dispensing into a room temperature mug, it can fall 10-15 degrees. McDonald's served theirs at 190. 15 degrees may not sound like a lot, but it means the difference in 3rd degree burns is a few seconds vs. 10s of seconds.

When you're up above 80 degC, the difference between 2nd-degree and 3rd-degree burns is measured in tenths of a second. Granted, liquids don't stay that hot for long without a vacuum insulated vessel, but common sense says that you should not serve anything in a restaurant that can cause permanent disfigurement after a spill faster than the victim can possibly react to the situation.

You might as well serve cups of 10 M HCl. It doesn't matter how well you label it as "CAUTION! Strong acid! Do not ingest or touch!" because eventually, everything in a restaurant will get spilled. Logically, you would either serve it diluted to 0.1 M instead, and then keep an open can of baking soda within easy reach, or you would sock something away for the victims' compensation fund every time you sold a cup.

Everything spills in a restaurant. Everything. No exceptions. You absolutely cannot predicate your business strategy on the assumption that one particular thing will never get spilled on a customer. Every engineer knows Murphy's Law, and every last one could have predicted that serving 190 degF coffee will produce a nonzero quantity of hospitalizations.

Brew at whatever temperature you need. But don't let any human near it until the liquid cools to a safer temperature.

Here's the outline of the argument.

1. McDonald's knew or should have know that their temperature could cause third degree burns.

2. McDonald's received complaints and did nothing. They did not even put a warning label on the menu.

3. Because there was no warning label, plaintiff did not know she could receive serious injury which may have impacted her decision to not buy it.

You can make the argument that just because there was a warning label doesn't mean she would have read it.

But on the contrary, if the warning label is not there, she has no chance to read it.

> we all know that coffee is intrinsically hot.

I know that the coffee I come into contact with on a daily basis is cool enough, in a 2-minute walk from the machine to my desk, to poke a finger into it without being burned (momentary exposure is uncomfortable, but doesn't result in injury).

Consulting a burn chart [1], I've got to assume that it's a temperature somewhat under 160 degrees by that time. From a coworker's experience, at that point you can dump it on yourself and end up with 1st and 2nd degree burns, rather than the 3rd degree burns from McDonald's coffee. Still, by any reasonable measure, the coffee is certainly "hot".

The problem here isn't accuracy, it's precision. "Hot" might mean > 100F/38C. Or it might mean > 200F/93C. If a temperature isn't specified, you're likely to make a judgement based on the past experiences that inform your intuition.

It follows that a company selling a product, without providing more precise information about its properties, should provide it in a state that matches a reasonable customer's intuition of what they're buying. I don't think that's an unsettling concept. I think it's one that most people would take as a given.

[1] https://www.armstronginternational.com/files/products/valves...

I have never seen a coffee served drinkable in my life.

On the other hand, I've never seen a coffee served that was so hot as to be undrinkable within 5 minutes. A 190 degree cup of coffee is much hotter than I would expect, based on past experience.

Your argument is missing this concept of degree. They still serve "hot" coffee. Maybe had they sold "scolding hot" coffee they could have got out of it. I could go start selling "cold" drinks (cooling them with liquid nitrogen) but I should probably warn people their fingers are going to freeze and break off.

How about you bump into someone at Starbucks who just got his fresh coffee and coffee spills over you? My expectation wouldn't be that the coffee is so hot that I get 3rd degree burns.

Kind of like when I'm cooking at home and I don't expect children to bump into me while I'm cooking hot meals? I mean, accidents happen. I don't expect that to happen but it very well could.

To make a more obvious case, a hotpot restaurant. You cannot get around having a very hot plate. Accidents will happen. People get burned. Should we close them down or else ensure the plates are not sizzling?

If people kept getting serious burns from plates at a hotpot restaurant, I would really hope that the restaurant would get punished. If you cannot safely provide your service/product, you should adjust your service to make it safer. McDonald's was serving extremely hot coffee in flimsy cups, and people were getting seriously burned by their coffee. McDonald's refused to make their product safer and got punished for it.

So you think it's OK to get 3rd degree burns when somebody spills coffee?

NO, obviously not. Just like I don't think people should get seriously injured in traffic accidents. But people do and car manufacturers are not liable unless there was a defect or there was negligence somewhere.

I am pretty sure they are liable if there is a known problem and they refuse to address it. I would compare the coffee temperature issue with a car killing you if you bump into another car at low speed. Well known issue and avoidable.

> When you make it at home you know you are not to allow it to spill over yourself.

She was served coffee, they got in a car and drove a few minutes, the car pulled over and she burnt herself so severely she needed several surgeries and her life was at risk.

I suspect that most coffee made at home would be at a lower temperature after the same length of time. Mostly because mugs and metal teaspoons conduct heat better, and people use chilled milk, and mugs don't have lids.

And while we all know "coffee is hot" we don't expect it to cause life threatening injury. That's the thing that really bugs me about this case, is that people don't understand just how serious full thickness burns are.

In England if you get a full thickness burn, especially on any joints or the face or neck or genital regions you make your way to your nearest A&E department or MIU, and that hospital then transfers you, by ambulance, to a more specialist burns unit.

Having been inside several burns units (Bristol Frenchay; Salisbury; Birmingham Selly Oak; and Chelsea & Westminster) I know they're not fucking around when it comes to burns.

> but how were they at fault for her injury?

Several safety organisations had called for coffee to be served at a reduced temperature. That's still too hot to drink, and will still cause burns. It just reduces the risk of severe burns. McDonalds decided to ignore that request to reduce temperature.

And no-one is asking them to stop serving extra hot coffee. They just asking them to only serve it on request.

I think you make a pretty good case for the regulation of the temperature at which coffee is served. And if we had such then yes, McD would be at fault for violating the law. It would make sense to me that if coffee injuries are seriously injurious that we should have such regulation. As it was though, there didn't seem to be such regulation and as such I would imagine that common sense on the side of the producer and consumer would have been expected and in such case we'd have split the fault more 50:50 rather than the 90:10 it was.

The underpinning of your thought process here seems to be something like "People can't be fully liable for harm they cause if they weren't breaking the law in the process." But that's not so. If I wildly wave my arms around in a somebody's house and break their expensive china, that's not against the law, but I can't say, "Oh, I only owe you half the cost since it's your fault you didn't protect yourself against the perfectly legal action of me flailing around the room."

These are the topics the jury received evidence on, heard from expert witnesses about, and was argued thoroughly during the case. Perhaps your questions will be answered if you look into the case further.

Of course this case is settled. But my question is not about this articular case but rather a more general question. And also assuming that cases and precedents can be overturned. Or simply have different outcomes in different jurisdictions.

Let say I prepared my own coffee at home -and let's say I made it scalding not expecting to have to drink it till I got to the office 5 minutes later... but as I step out my door someone runs by and knocks the coffee out of my hand and spills it onto themselves and me ... Am I at fault, is anyone?