TIL In the Hot Coffee lawsuit against McDonalds,punitive damages were given due to McDonalds intentionally overheating coffee to save money on refills
TIL In the Hot Coffee lawsuit against McDonalds,punitive damages were given due to McDonalds intentionally overheating coffee to save money on refills
During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills of coffee. This policy by the fast food chain is the reason the jury awarded $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages in the McDonald's hot coffee case. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for their inappropriate business practice.
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Just developed the ability to do critical thinking. Many people suffer third degree burns in a variety of accidents. They are horrific. Why should only the people that these injuries in the vicinity of a corporation have their medical bills paid? Because it benefits law firms like the one that wrote the article above?
Consider the source of the information you get on the internet (personal injury law firm). Consider the motives (make suing others over accidents more socially acceptable). Consider the information they're leaving out in constructing a narrative (people commonly handle boiling water and people do suffer from third degree burns because of it). Be wary of emotional appeals (the photos of the injury).
Set aside emotions and think. Where is the real problem? Lack of health care resulting in a society that's overly litigious. Not something you're going to hear from a personal injury law firm so there's no money behind that kind of message is there?
I must say, these are the types of replies I'd like to see. It allows me to re-examine everything on the incident from another side and possibly form a better take.
I'll give you another angle. I'm familiar with safety hazard analysis in industrial settings -- HAZOPs and LOPAs, if you've heard of them. By our guidelines, this event would be a significant violation. This would be considered giving a disability to a member of the public, which ranks as either the highest severity or second highest severity incident possible (varies depending on the risk matrix in question).
Considering the liquid can cause severe burns in 2 seconds, was served without a lid, and was given to someone in a moving vehicle, the likelihood of this incident would be incredibly high. Taken together, an industrial analysis would call for at least 3 independent layers of protection to prevent the incident from occuring, where each layer reduces the likelihood of the event by a factor of 10. There are no protections or safeguards in this situation.
Mitigating this risk would be incredibly high priority. It's at the point where you might shut down, i.e. stop serving coffee, until you have robust protections in place. I can't stress enough that what McDonald's was doing is riskier than you'll see in industrial plants.
The best take you can arrive at by simply sticking a thermometer into a cup of coffee. I did that this morning... 88C! Then laugh at how ridiculous this meme about McDonald's being evil supervillains for serving coffee at "insane" temperatures of 80C.
The reality is, that's just the temperature of coffee. The lesson here is don't trust what personal injury lawyers say and be careful with coffee... it's hot!