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Comment by nerdawson | Hacker News Reader

> I hear people saying the hot coffee lawsuit should have been thrown out , and to me that's just crazy that anyone would want to allow safety standards to go on ignored to that level.

I think it's a matter of taking personal responsibility rather than finding someone to blame when you make a mistake.

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If it was just “ow I spilled some coffee” I’d totally agree but it was serious burns requiring hospitalization. It looked like an industrial accident not something one should get from spilling food.

If a steak house brings you a super hot plate they warn you profusely. McDonald’s didn’t do that here. I for one would never expect coffee handed through a drive through window to be so hot I am at risk of second and third degree burns. That’s crazy.

I don’t think the severity of the injury should dictate whether a corporation is at fault or not.

Accidents happen in unexpected ways.

If you drop a glass in a restaurant and cut yourself on a shard, is the restaurant to blame? After all, they could have served your drink in a plastic cup instead.

Hearing some of the responses to my post, I suspect there may be a slight cultural difference in expectations. Being from the UK, I wouldn’t find it remotely surprising to be handed a boiling hot liquid.

I personally don't think it's reasonable to assume that something intended for human consumption would be served hot enough to fuse one's labia to one's thigh if spilled on one's lap. In light of that, "personal responsibility" doesn't seem to be very applicable in that particular case.

I am absolutely empathetic to that poor women, but never really understood the physics behind it. You can’t superheat water under normal pressure, so it capped out at 100C (sorry, don’t know that in F, but boiling point of water). Which is pretty expected for tea, and not unheard of from coffee (without milk). I do get the economic.. money-grab on the company side that you can’t feel how bad the coffee tastes if it’s too hot, and also that it will get to a drinkable temperature when you’ve walked back to your office, but I don’t see any evil on this part and 90C coffee would not have caused much lesser damage. Of course their reaction after the fact was very disturbing (ridiculing the poor victim), but we’ve just forgotten how truly terrible any kind of burn is, and boiling water is just extremely hot.

Like, any number of news where someone poured boiling water on their cheating husband is just behind stupid and just shows an absolute lack of understanding of basic reality. I’m sure they didn’t intend that much damage, but they are just dangerously stupid at that point.

According to the case, Mcdonalds admitted it knew that 185f coffee caused exponentially worse burns than 135f coffee (typical home coffee temp).

Nsfl/gore warning: https://www.deshawlaw.com/blog/the-real-facts-of-the-mcdonal...

Yeah, they knew it could burn. They served coffee at the temperature people wanted it served. She was very stupid in handling a hot liquid.

> They served coffee at the temperature people wanted it served.

I can guarantee you that if McDonald's or Starbucks or what have you served coffee at the proper 135F-150F instead of "literally boiling" the percentage of customers complaining about it would have enough zeroes on the left-hand side for Japan to have another go at bombing Pearl Harbor.

Like many British people, I drink several cups of tea per day. A process that entails boiling water to 100C. Most people here make coffee at home in the same way. We trust children to have enough common sense to realise that boiling hot water can cause a nasty injury.

To put a cup of practically boiling water between your legs is utterly absurd. The companies actions are irrelevant, they did something silly and only have themselves to blame.

> A process that entails boiling water to 100C

That doesn't mean it's actually served at that temperature, for the same reason that me baking a pizza at 200C in my oven doesn't mean it's actually 200C when served. Serving temperatures are typically far lower than cooking/brewing temperatures - in the case of tea or coffee, typically below 80C - unless, of course, it's McDonald's or Starbucks overcooking the bejeezus out of their beverages for the sake of cheapness and consistency.

The problem with that is the world never gets any safer if we have full acceptance for companies creating unpredictable danger.

There are standards people are expected to follow, so we know what to expect in most situations.

I feel you’re presenting a straw man. I’m not suggesting we hold corporations blameless in all circumstances, merely that we can’t abdicate all personal responsibility for our own safety.

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