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Comment by Tichy | Hacker News Reader

So is 170° too hot for coffee? I still don't quite get it. is that Fahrenheit, or Celsius (the latter probably physically impossible, but still)? What temperature is coffee now (at McD and at Starbucks?)?

Feeling sorry for someone doesn't appear to be beneficial to people's judgement.

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Fahrenheit. Yes, it is too hot; home-brewed coffee is ~140 degrees. McDonalds was warned multiple times, at least once by a burn victims' society, that their coffee was dangerously hot prior to this case but chose to do nothing about it. I don't know the exact temperatures that McDonalds & Starbucks currently serve their coffee at, but that specific McDonalds franchise lowered the temp by ~10 degrees afterwards, and though I've never measured the temperature of my Starbucks coffee (from multiple franchises), it's never been much hotter than the drip coffee I make at home.

Yet, the jury put part of the blame on her, and further attempts to sue corporations for serving (or making) hot coffee has gone nowhere. The temperature issue is probably just a legal McGuffin here; in reality, she got the money because McDonalds blew it in the first round, when they refused to contribute to her actual costs.

I'm no lawyer, so I'll take your word on the legal aspects. But from an ethical perspective, I think the temperature of the coffee is important. They intentionally sold a dangerous product. The woman's only faults were being kind of clumsy and assuming that the "hot" coffee was ouch-hot, not ER-hot. 140 degree coffee is ouch-hot, and serving coffee so hot it would injure you if you tried to drink it right away is absurd.

Juries are just people, and people blame victims of things all the time.

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