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Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

I presume same dollar signs as some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot.

On a more serious note, most jobs have all kinds of biases. Army doesn't take older recruits, nor 50% of all recruits are not women/gay/whatever group is right now poplar to fight for. Or commodity traders - one of my ex-gf succeeded in this field, but the amount of macho sh*t she had to go through and still pops up almost daily is unbelievable. Also, some members of her current trading team, which are more on introvert side (yes, there are some traders like that) were asking their boss on private meetings how to handle a WOMAN as their colleague. Some are 50-something, and never worked with woman directly.

She just ain't crybaby like these pathetic people and actually works hard to prove herself in such an environment.

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"Anecdotal" here means "made up". You are most likely referring to Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaur... . She received third-degree burns in her pelvic region.

Millions of dollars have been spent as propaganda to spin what happened in order to push tort reform changes that minimize consumer rights. It seems to have worked on you.

Biases are generally acceptable in job hiring. You can refuse to hire someone due to a lack of experience.

However, it's illegal to have biases based on a small number of protected classes: sex, military service, religion, national origin, and a few others. The law does allow some exceptions. There can be a bona fide occupational reason. For example, a strip club is allowed to hire only women performers. Similarly, a church can require that ministers be members of the given faith. The Army's age restriction on recruits falls into this category.

So while it's true that nearly all jobs have biases, that's irrelevant for this discussion, because there is no bona fide occupational reason for age discrimination in hiring at Google.

Your last line incorporates victim blaming. You appear to be using name calling to chastise people who wish to exercise their legal rights.

> some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot.

There are lots of frivolous law suits out there. If you look into this one you will find that it was a legitimate case, and it wasn't her mouth that got burned. Your argument will be more valuable if it is based on facts.

    I presume same dollar signs as some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot.

Please, please stop saying this. It wasn't just hot.

http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/10/23/3568411/clovis-woman-74-...

No, but it was being brewed at the recommended temperature (and still is today, but now the cup is covered in lawyer-safe warnings).

Mickey D's sells at least 500M cups of coffee every day, and this was back in 2006[1]. Given that some high-nineties percentage of those people didn't manage to scald themselves, courts be damned (they're arbitrators of law, not correctness), Liebeck was an idiot. Anyone who puts hot and crushable containers of liquid between their legs isn't acting responsibly.

[1]http://www.franchise-hit.com/franchisors-news-wire/McDonalds...

I don't think you understand what third-degree burns mean see: (third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent) Also she won less than 1Million and much of that went to pay for her attorney they also settled for confidential amount before an appeal was decided. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...

PS: Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.[

Severity of the injury does not change my evaluation of the matter seeing as how it was entirely self inflicted.

700 people over 10 years (rough estimate of 1.8 trillion cups if we use the 500M number above) burning themselves isn't even statistically significant.

It sucks, hard, that this lady had to spend the last few years of her life in that kind of pain (skin grafts are no joke), but the idea that it's McD's fault is nuts.

Applying the principles of comparative negligence, the jury found that McDonald's was 80% responsible for the incident and Liebeck was 20% at fault.

The principle at work is by selling something vastly more dangerous they were responsible for the extra damage due to increased temperature. In other words at a normal serving temperature she would have suffered but not nearly that much.

PS: The same thing applies in cases like a defective airbag. Yes, the manufacture is not responsible for causing the accident, but they are responsible for increase in damage due to a defect. Or more broadly MD was not responsible for that specific accident, but they know in general terms there would be accidents and they would be making those accidents worse.

I get the legal principle, really, I do, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily correct or that I agree with it.

> Severity of the injury does not change my evaluation of the matter seeing as how it was entirely self inflicted.

The jury in the case did not find the injury to be entirely self-inflicted.

People on online, tech-related forums, IME, tend very often to have a much more exclusive view of responsibility than either the law or society at large.

Which probably shouldn't be surprising; its easy to see how exclusive views of responsibility and crisp if/then/else logic can easily appeal to the same aesthetic sense.

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