McDonalds is giving free French fries in return for waiving the right to sue
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The title of this submission "McDonalds is giving free French fries in return for waiving the right to sue" is also editorialized compared to the linked article's title "McDonald's New Terms And Conditions Have People Deleting The App" which is directly against the HN guidelines.
Lawsuits are things that occur within a public court of law, by definition.
Two parties concluding a dispute privately, without government involvement, is not a lawsuit. Even if someone does sue over the arbitration contract itself should apply, that's a separate legal question from the underlying tort.
And yes, that can mean without any papers filed anywhere.
Hell, you can sue for peace.
> A father brought a civil suit after his son had been sexually assaulted and stalked at boarding school by another student when he was 12. He argued that St. John’s was on notice of the perpetrator’s strange behavior towards the child, knew of other incidents of physical and sexual assaults on other students on campus and breached its duty to protect them.
> The court found that the arbitration agreement was valid and enforceable and ordered all claims into arbitration.
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> Family members brought a wrongful death lawsuit after 90-year-old resident Charlotte Fischer died from an assault allegedly committed by a Colorow employee. The county coroner ruled her death a homicide. According to reports, a nurse’s assistant allegedly threw her against a wall and fractured her hip; he was charged with third-degree assault.[5] When Fischer entered the facility, her daughter filled out the admissions paperwork. Among the documents signed as part of the entry packet: an arbitration agreement compelling arbitration for any claim arising from or relating to Fischer’s relationship with the facility.
> the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that only substantial compliance with the formatting requirements of the Act was needed and, as such, the case could be forced into arbitration.
Basically the difference between ordinary mistakes versus "WTF were you thinking".
https://www.nursinghomelawcenter.org/significant-award-made-...
$2.7 million for a nursing home negligent death arbitration is pretty large.
In an ideal world, yes, a regular consumer could just make that observation and *poof* common sense would prevail... but I'm very cynical that it'll work that way in practice.
The multi-billion dollar global corporation and its battalions of lawyers will say that your tort falls under the words "arising from" and is resolved "exclusively" by private arbitration:
> You agree that [...] any claim or dispute (whether in contract, tort, or otherwise) you may have [...] arising from or related to the online services or these terms will be resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration
Are there examples of consumers cheaply and easily escaping this kind of language without spending oodles of time and money trying to "put the system on trial" first?
(I’m not saying it’s easy to sue a large company once in court. I think everyone understands that would be a complex process and either require legal funds assistance or such a lucrative case (e coli, boiling coffee) that good lawyers would accept contingency.)
Again, I agree that's how things ought to be, but in practice it seems like the "wrong" outcomes are still happening anyway.
For example [0] a company allegedly sold a customers products contaminated with bedbugs--a physical, tangible good with a harmful defect--and one guy started a class-action lawsuit over it. However the company managed to get a judge to cancel the lawsuit and force everything back into arbitration, based on the website ToS.
If you read the details [1] you'll see the consumer made all the sensible arguments just like the ones you're saying would easily prevail against McDonalds... but they didn't work.
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[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/mandatory-binding-arbitratio...
It's a troubling case and I understand why you are afraid of judges accepting spurious arguments from corporate defense, and I understand how many people don't appreciate how the difference in wording affects them and so can be intimidated.
Maybe it’s worse because they are doing it preemptively without saying it aloud until it’s too late.
This whole practice of “by breathing in our airspace you’ve agreed to arbitration” has to stop.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/terms-and-conditions.html
I wonder how one can tell if one has agreed to a particular T&C at any point. Do companies have to maintain an api so I can query if I have agreed to a particular version of the T&C?
90% of companies just have a Boolean in a db.
(Edit: eu for context)
"Our Terms and Conditions have changed. Please take a moment to review the new McDonald’s Terms and Conditions by clicking on the link. These include a binding arbitration provision and waiver of your right to a trial in court, including your right to a jury trial, as well as updates to the arbitration and dispute resolution process. By continuing to use our website, you are indicating that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms and Conditions including the binding arbitration provision. You are also indicating that you understand that you are agreeing to a legally binding contract and intend to do so."
> Our Terms and Conditions have changed. Please take a moment to review the new McDonald’s Terms and Conditions by clicking on the link. These include a binding arbitration provision and waiver of your right to a trial in court, including your right to a jury trial, as well as updates to the arbitration and dispute resolution process. By continuing to use our website, you are indicating that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms and Conditions including the binding arbitration provision. You are also indicating that you understand that you are agreeing to a legally binding contract and intend to do so.
They are very prominently noting the "right to trial in court" being waived; they refer to it three times in a five-sentence paragraph. This is on a fast food website where people are buying burgers and fries, is someone's "right to a jury trial" usually a thing in someone's mind when they go to a fast food chain to download an app and get fun prizes and stuff? It seems to be for McDonalds itself. Then they try to claim that clicking this banner is a legally binding contract, even though it has no idea what my name or address is; which is ludicrous for a website. But for the app, and by the time you're getting your free food, it's likely a little more well thought out.
It seems extremely obvious that McDonalds is trying to get as many of their customers as possible to click this button and reduce the number of people with the right to sue them in court. The "free french fries" thing is unusually generous, which means clicking this button is worth a lot of money for them.
None of this seems "sensationalist" to me. It seems perfectly clear and obvious once the two pieces are put together. Hence I put these pieces together in my headline and a lot of other people have gotten it now too.
This shit desperately needs to just be made illegal across the board.
edit: the terms say (emphasis my own)
> any claim or dispute […] you may have with McDonald’s or any other Members of the McDonald’s System arising from or related to the online services or these terms will be resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration
So I suppose that this really only applies to lawsuits related to the use of the app and that any foodservice claims are still valid? IANAL.
By this reading, I think this statement in the article is incorrect.
> Essentially, the new terms state that, if a customer tries to sue over hot coffee, for example, they can't take their case to trial.
So, if you order a gluten free burger using the app, and a software bug messes up you order? You pick it up at the counter, and they give you a regular burger. You end up getting sick and having expenses or missing income, you can’t sue them in court, I guess.
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Just adding that, IIRC, this is _the_ reason coffee cups say "caution: contents of this are hot" (or whatever to that effect).
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Rest...
> McDonald's required franchisees to hold coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C)
> coffee they had tested all over the city was served at a temperature at least 20 °F (11 °C) lower than McDonald's coffee
> They also presented the jury with expert testimony that 190 °F (88 °C) coffee may produce third-degree burns (where skin grafting is necessary) in about three seconds and 180 °F (82 °C) coffee may produce such burns in about twelve to fifteen seconds. Lowering the temperature to 160 °F (71 °C) would increase the time for the coffee to produce such a burn to 20 seconds.
and the vast numbers you hear about in this settlement are a result of that. All the victim wanted was medical expenses covered.
> Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her actual and anticipated expenses.
In case you're unaware of the context, in short:
McDonald's launched a smear campaign against the lady who spilled hot coffee on her lap. The elderly lady was in the passenger seat of a parked car at the time, and the coffee was so hot that it fused her labia and she needed multiple skin grafts to recover. She asked McDonalds to check their coffee equipment (surely it was malfunctioning if coffee was that hot) and asked them to pay her medical bills, but they refused. During the trial, it was discovered that McDonalds had received hundreds of complaints about the temperature of their coffee and done nothing. The jury awarded her more than she was asking, which amounted to something like the profit from one day's coffee sales.
https://www.rd.com/article/hot-coffee-lawsuit/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaura...
McDonalds reportedly used higher temperatures to extract more coffee, and kept their coffee very hot, enough to cause third degree burns in the Hot Coffee case IIRC. They had many complaints and refused to lower the temperature.
So, McDonalds don't need to cool it so much as not heat it so much. Drinking temperature is below 70 C, McDo were reportedly giving it to people at 90+ C, reports say 20 C above industry norms; hotter than being temperatures.
Blaming customers who are very familiar with buying coffee for not knowing you purposeful heat it to a much higher temperature would be crass in the extreme. Like selling Chicken Korma (a very mild curry) and putting ghost peppers (very hot spicy peppers) in it, and refusing to add a warning or anything when lots of people complained.
It looks like MacDonalds will cover the arbitration costs of anything over $250, so it's probably a lot easier to take them to arbitration than suing them. That being said, arbitrators might side with large corporations more than a judge would. Alsom, IANAL but part 11 of the settling disputes section seems to say that it's still possible to do a class action lawsuit against them.
For example if you order an item and they happen to be out of it and your party is ruined, you would almost certainly not be able to sue for damages in court. If your child ate the food and died, you would almost certainly be able to take it to court.
You would have thought that it would be limited to arbitrators who agree to some kind of due process.
Oh, I see this has been flagged. Pity as the discussion of okay
It's like grinding except for actual food.
Fine by me. I feel no need for extensive legal protection to drink a coffee.
"terms and conditions" in apps are universally bullshit, there's no good reason they should exist at all.
No they aren't.