Hacker News Reader

> At worst McDonald's was probably like 10% responsible

80%, according to the jury.

> The jury actually did find the woman was partially responsible

Correct, which was factored into the award of actual damages, reducing the $200,000 in damages to a $160,000 award, since it was in a comparative negligence jurisdiction.

> it was the judge that decided on the absurd damages amount. It later got reduced and settled out of court

No, it was the jury that returned the original $2.7 million punitive damage award, which the judge reduced to $480,000, for a total actual+punitive award of $640k in the trial judgement.

The parties did settle out of court while an appeal of the trial judgement was pending.

I see, so it was the jury that was responsible for the ridiculous ruling, not the judge. My mistake, I misread. Definitely seems like there were some systemic or possibly cultural issues at play here.

> I see, so it was the jury that was responsible for the ridiculous ruling, not the judge

No, a jury verdict that is not reflected in the trial judgement is not a ruling at all.

There was some rush-to-publish reporting of the jury verdict prior to the ruling which is the source of the whole popular perception of the case, because the misunderstanding of the case has deliberately magnified ao it can be weaponized by people wanting to limit perfectly warranted recovery from actually-at-fault corporatiojs by spinning false tales of out-of-control judgements.

That's a fair criticism of the media headlines, but the final ruling of $480,000 just in punitive damages ($1M inflation-adjusted) is still pretty ridiculous given, again, that handling too-hot-to-immediately-drink beverages is a normal, reasonable risk that almost everyone encounters as part of everyday life. We could quibble about about the compensatory damages (80% McDonald's fault seems too high to me, but it's also probably not 0%), but I feel that certainly there should be no punitive damages for such things.

> That's a fair criticism of the media headlines, but the final ruling of $480,000 just in punitive damages ($1M inflation-adjusted) is still pretty ridiculous

Given subsequent McDonald's incidents of the same type, it was clearly inadequate to serve the function of punitive damages, that is, to be sufficient to dissuade the willful tortfeasor from repeating the same willful tort. (It’s quite likely that the original $2.7 million award would also have been.)

> handling too-hot-to-immediately-drink beverages is a normal, reasonable risk that almost everyone encounters as part of everyday life.

That's not an argument that the punitive damage award was ridiculous, that's an argument that the jury assessment of comparative negligence that figured into the actual damage award was wrong. Punitive damages are not even in theory about the degree of care that the injured party should have applied, that's the comparative negligence part of actual damages.

My point is I don't think McDonalds needs to be legally dissuaded from serving hot coffee in the first place, certainly not by a court with no law making powers. The minutia of the legal statues aren't relevant to my argument.

I'm open to the idea of awarding damages for harms caused by inherently risky activities as a way of incentivizing companies to take extra steps beyond what is legally or morally necessary to mitigate those risks, but in such cases the damages should be compensatory, not punitive, and use a comparative negligence-like standard based on the degree to which the risks could have been realistically mitigated and the degree to which the plaintiffs are themselves personally responsible.

> My point is I don't think McDonalds needs to be legally dissuaded from serving hot coffee in the first place

"Willfully causing injury in this way should not be a wrong at all" is a very different argument than "the damage award was inappropriate for willfully causing injury in this way", so it would help if you would not disguise your argument for the former positions as one for the latter position if you want to have a productive exchange.

There was certainly no willfulness involved in this situation, unless you mean to say they willfully made the coffee hot.

My argument is that both of those things are true. Willfully serving hot coffee is not wrong at all, and a punitive damage award is highly inappropriate for unwillfully contributing to the harm caused by woman spilling it on herself.

It's funny how small $2.7 million sounds to me today. A guy got $50 million from Starbucks recently.

https://youtu.be/xSC6qLsLcgU

> The dangers of... hot coffee?

I don't expect hot coffee to put me in the hospital needing skin grafts.

It can and will if you spill enough of it in the wrong place, regardless of whether it was made by McDonald's or an electric kettle. This is true of any hot beverage or even soup.

Depends on the temperature. If I had burned myself 500 times, I think I'd learn and turn down the temperature.

Note that both customers and store managers had complained many times.

Brother, there are levels of hot coffee. I might burn my lips a little bit here and there, but I don't want molten lava poured on me.

If it's hot enough to burn your lips it's hot enough to burn your skin. Generally coffee is brewed at close to boiling temperature; it doesn't get much hotter than that. If it's freshly brewed, it's necessarily going to be hot enough to cause serious damage if you pour the entire cup somewhere sensitive. I guess it would be nice if they waited for it to cool before serving or something, but I don't think serving freshly brewed coffee ought to be illegal. (And even if you disagree, certainly that's a policy that should be enacted through the legislature, not arbitrarily and ex post facto by the courts.)

Even from afficionados the best temperature at extraction time isn't near boiling. The best drinking temperature is even lower. Typical temperatures at other chains are in the 140-180F range. McDonald's chooses to use much higher temperatures for ... reasons? Their customers don't want it, and their scalded patients don't want it.

There are literally, actually, degrees of burns. I don't know what to tell you, we've already established these measurements.

I don't know what to tell you. If you disagree take it up with scientists? I guess?