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I suggest you go and read the details of that case. The store was knowingly serving coffee at temperatures too hot for human consumption, and had received prior complaints of injuries. The cups they served coffee in at the time were also known to be extremely flimsy and easy to accidentally collapse. The woman in question had third degree burns and required skin grafts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Rest...

If you go looking you can find images of the burns on her groin. They’re pretty grisly.

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As someone that lived there, and drank their coffee, everyone knew it was hot. It was served that way because of the huge number of university students that grabbed a cup before class and it was still warm after walking across campus. The exit of that parking lot is also a known issue. It has/had a steep dip out of the lot and onto the road because that's how the roads were built down there rather than putting in sewers. Finally, there is a traffic light right next to that McDonalds. A LOT of people hit that dip hard trying to get onto the road before that light changes.

All of these things contributed to the issue. Sticking a hot cup of coffee between your legs while someone is driving is stupid, especially in that parking lot. Serving coffee so hot that it stays warm while you walk to class is also pretty stupid. The way McDonalds handled the issue is what made them the bad guys here. They could have easily helped this woman with her medical bills and it would have cost them far less money than the amount they spent on the their PR campaign and lawyers.

For what it’s worth, they were parked when the spill happened. But agreed re:McDonald’s behaviour. I believe the jury was also deeply unimpressed, which is why the punitive damages were so high at first.

I think they should have made better cups to retain the heat longer.

What happened to Stella Liebeck was terrible, but her coffee was not excessively hot by modern standards.

Stella's coffee was served within the temperature range that was, and still is, recommended by professional coffee associations like SCAA and NCA [1]. The NCA recommends that coffee be held and served at around 180-185 deg F (~80-85 deg C), which is likely near the temperature at which Stella was burned. This is a perfectly reasonable service temperature, widely used by coffee shops, restaurants, and home brewing machines to this day.

Stella Liebeck took her cup of coffee and squeezed it between her legs in order to fiddle with the lid. The result was tragic, but completely expected. If I spill a fresh cup of Starbucks coffee on my crotch today, I fully expect to sustain third-degree burns. So I take a little extra care with it until it has cooled to drinking temperature, which happens pretty quickly.

Tea is generally even hotter. Any good tea shop will serve a pot of freshly boiled water, at least twenty degrees hotter than hot coffee. Spilling that on yourself is guaranteed to melt your skin. Great care is warranted.

Again, what happened to Stella was terrible. She didn't deserve it, and she didn't deserve the hate she got afterward. But she did something really stupid. I sympathize, because I do stupid stuff all the time, and I have the scars to remind me.

We're surrounded by extremely dangerous things that require great care to use properly. It's useful for coffee to be held and served hot, just as it's useful for knives to be sharp and cars to be able to reach highway speeds. There will inevitably be accidents, but making the world completely safe for people who use these things carelessly would mean depriving everyone of their proper use.

1 - https://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/How-to-Brew-Coffee

Tea temperatures are supposed to be 170 degrees Fahrenheit, definitely not boiling temperature. Higher temps destroy catechins.

Saying that "tea temperatures are supposed to be x" is like saying that "food should be cooked at x". But regardless, if you go to a good tea shop you are likely to have a pot of freshly boiled water placed in front of you, which some folks in this thread consider an unnacceptable hazard worthy of a lawsuit.

Technically, it depends entirely on the tea. Black teas are universally recognized to require the highest steeping temperatures, to the point that high-altitude brewing is a problem because the boiling point of water is too low. Sweet, amino-heavy teas like a good gyokuro are definitely better done at lower temperatures. But most green teas are quite forgiving, and are commonly brewed at near boiling temperatures. Freshly boiled hot water is also often necessary for herbals, especially short-steeping acidic herbals like hibiscus.

And none of this has anything to do with catechins, which are not significantly more stable at 170 deg F than they are at 200. Theaflavins on the other hand are quite unstable, but they start degrading at temperatures lower than any accepted steeping temperatures, so losing them is unavoidable.

From https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2013/fo/c2fo3009...:

> In essence, the researchers found that in solution, both green tea catechins and black tea theaflavins are unstable and have a tendency for rapid degradation, especially at high temperature or basic pH.

> The thermal stability of catechins is better than that of theaflavins. For example, after a 3 hour open-air storage in a water solution, the amount of catechins and theaflavins was not found to have decreased at 24 °C, whereas catechins had a 25% reduction at 70 °C and a 29% decrease at 100 °C; theaflavins on the other hand had a 56% decrease at 70 °C and amounts were undetectable at 100 °C after 3 hours. The discrepancy in the aqueous stabilities of catechins and theaflavins can be postulated to be due to the large difference in chemical reactivity between the two groups of compounds: relative inertness and less steric hindrance of catechins vs. higher reactivity, especially anti-oxidant activity because of the ring-fusing, increased number of hydroxyl groups and steric hindrance surrounding the benzotropolone core.

This. Punitive damages were punitive for a reason. They had every opportunity to fix it and they didn't so they got smacked with a big number.

She originally only sued for her medical bills but the jury awarded her punitive damages after it was revealed that McDonald’s had been sued several times and never lowered the temperature to levels standard in the industry

No, Stella's coffee was served at a temperature that was and still is an industry standard. From the wikipedia article:

> "Since Liebeck, McDonald's has not reduced the service temperature of its coffee. McDonald's current policy is to serve coffee at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C),[37] relying on more sternly worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future liability, though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee.[37][38] The Specialty Coffee Association of America supports improved packaging methods rather than lowering the temperature at which coffee is served. The association has successfully aided the defense of subsequent coffee burn cases.[38] Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald

So why have they still not fixed it?

That coffee was not too hot by independent measuremtns.

There was a lot of BS said about that case by all sides. But, the claim that hot coffee was too hot is one of them.

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