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.
It's pretty screwed up how the media made light of this lawsuit.
A lawsuit that ended in gross negligence, and the media shamed the lady involved for a decade.
It's pretty scary how media can influence us so much, even when we think they aren't, and even when we think "only dumb people fall for it." No my friend, the majority fall for it. Not cause they're dumb, but because they've scienced the hell out of human nature and know precisely how to do it right under our noses. It started with marketing and advertising that works well, unfortunately. They've cracked the psyche code. Media adopted it. Big tech improved it. Gah... this is turning into a rant about capitalism; I didn't intend to go there. Eek.
Manufacturing consent is a good book on this topic.
We ALL fall for it, just not all the same things at the same time.
That's what's so insidious. I'm sat here thinking "you rubes, I read into the details right away, and knew something was off about the story". So then I have to ask myself, "ok, smartass, what are you falling for that you think you know".
Its just so damn insidious.
I'm just glad for her that almost no one knows her name. Can you imagine the doxxing and death threats she would be getting if this happened today?
Corporations gonna corporate
I even was thinking if that episode from Seinfeld not just a scheme pulled by McDonald's.
The woman's scalds were almost enough to kill her. She spent weeks in hospital and needed skin grafts. To make it worse, McDonald's had received multiple complaints about the temperature of their coffee.
Her lawsuit was just to help cover the medical expenses. McDonald's didn't want a precedence of being sued so their PR cooked up a narrative of greedy frivolous lawsuits and America bought this story hook line and sinker.
She even started out planning to accept the $800 oopsie poopsie money McDonald's offered her until her family was like "um. No? You've gone from independent living senior to permanently disabled. You deserve for them to pay the full medical bills"
They had a slush fund set up specifically to pay out settlements for coffee burns.
They knew it was a problem, but decided it would be cheaper to pay off burn victims than to serve their coffee at a safe temperature.
When you dive into that case, you definitely side with the lady. She had some pretty serious burns, like way beyond what most of us would get if we spilled coffee that we made at the house.
If my memory serves me well, she originally only asked them to cover the medical expenses. So their greed ended up costing them far more.
It was used as the definitive "Frivolous Lawsuit", but... in reality McDonalds just told Media Companies "Make us look like the victim here, or we're pulling our precious advertising dollars."
The picture of that poor woman's thighs is all you need to see to know this was not a frivolous suit
Also, McD's had years of complaints from their own store managers that the coffee was too damn hot.
Important to note that the women initially just asked McDonald's to pay for her treatment, and they told her to get fucked.
I just wish the victims lawyers had responded to those claims with the pictures of that poor woman's third degree burns. she suffered horrifically and for years.
And media did a bang-up job portraying the victim as a petulant child who is too dumb to drink coffee. Classic corporate Uno reverse card.
The good news is the only way they're able to get away with it was because the internet hadn't caught on as much, and because this was before the media was afraid of catching defamation lawsuits.
Must be one of the more successful smear campaigns in recent history. I'm not even from the us and we heard about that shit and used it as an example of greed and frivolous lawsuits. It was only like 5 years back I learned the truth. Believed that shit for 25 years..
Edit: oops should've responded to the media part of thread
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
Thanks to the successful smear campaign executed by the corporate lawyers.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13971482/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit-stella-liebeck
This smear campaign is clear and obvious defamation. Someone should get in trouble for this, but unfortunately no one will.
I wonder how much Jerry Seinfeld got.
but yet people will still dismiss it as a stupid lawsuit by some greedy woman. gotta protect those big corps
People, or "people"?
Redirecting the narrative away from your faults helps protect your profits.
both. the corporation for starting a smear campaign and the public for buying into it and not doing their own research
Both can be true.
They could be, but they aren't. The woman literally had her labia fused together from the burn and just wanted them to pay for her fucking surgery.
They had also been warned several times previously to stop doing it.
Stop what? Brewing coffee with hot water?
If they started waiting until it cools down there would be massive complaints that it takes them too long.
Serving as hot as they did. Try reading the legal case. It is common everywhere for there to be a maximum temp you are allowed to serve hot drinks at for this reason. The store was cited multiple times for serving over that limit.
It was so hot it fused her labia together. Do you really think most places make coffee that hot?
Except for the YEARS of McD's own managers complaining about the excessive temp and requesting to reduce it.
It caused third degree burns. I've spilt half a pot of fresh food-service coffee on my arm and had both first and second-degree burns, but not third. You know, because food-service coffee makers all heat to the same temp, except for McD's, which has their's set much higher. (Go research why McD's milkshake machines are always down, despite being the same machines everyone else uses).
Having worked in many restaurants and some fast-food joints, they're all the same, and don't seem to have the supposed problem you claim.
Oh man there is so much to this case. First, she asked for like $40k, enough to cover the cost of the medical bills. To be clear, she received extensive burns as the coffee was so hot that it would burn in seconds (the wiki had a breakdown of the times/temps and they were illuminating). Moreover, it wasn’t even the hottest coffee available. Starbucks was serving much hotter coffee at the time (the hottest I think recorded). In the end, she got paid, but McDs never cooled their coffee (nor did anyone else), all they did was make better lids lol.
AND she was in a car with no cup holders. It wasn't a standard feature in sports cars in the 90s. She had borrowed it from her son.
And you're right that it didn't change coffee temps that much:
“During the Liebeck court proceedings, McDonald’s said it served its coffee between 180 and 190 degrees,” according to The New York Times. “The company has refused to disclose today’s standard temperature, but Retro Report shows a handbook for franchisees calling for temperatures 10 degrees lower.”
If it doesn’t sound like much, it’s because it’s not. McDonald’s chooses to keep their coffee scaldingly hot because, according to attorney Butch Wagner, hot coffee stays fresh for longer. They save money by doing this (millions per day, in fact, across their US franchises alone), even if it means paying out for other hot coffee settlements—of which there are plenty.
No pictures? Disappointed, McDonalds spent millions trying to scrub them from the Internet.
I have to admit that i didn't expect that not boiling water could do so much damage.
She was wearing jeans. The superheated water absorbed into the fabric, and held it right against her skin. Part of the case was that McDonald's knew it was handing these cups of near-boiling water down, into vehicles, in which people were restrained. It made their conduct more negligent.
I had a soda spill on me once at a drivethrough. Everyone in the drive through business surely knows that things spill, down, onto customers.
FYI I Can't see it because it's blurred and I don't have an account.
Damn, that was far worse than I could imagine. Poor woman
People love narratives that are simple and have an easy to understand moral to them even if they're absolutely wrong. In this case, the narrative is that she asked for hot coffee and got hot coffee, and the moral is that people are greedy and stupid and you have to protect yourself from them. I've often found that one well-constructed point can blow these narratives up though. I was talking with my dad about this particular case, he's a big "gotta do something about these frivolous lawsuits" guy because he used to own a business that was adjacent to real estate and real estate is probably the most litigated business in America. I'm a big "frivolous lawsuits is a term exploitative industries use to get people excited to give up their rights" guy, so we were at loggerheads about this one. Eventually I was like "Have you ever spilled coffee? When you did, who paid for your skin grafts?" Turns out that when crafting their narrative about how she was "suing them for giving her what she asked for", the industry lobby left out the part where she had to spend 8 days in the hospital and have multiple reconstructive surgeries.
And she only asked McDonalds to cover her medical bills. It was the jury who threw out her request and instead punished McDonalds with the huge settlement, because they were horrified by how grossly negligent the company had been and decided her request wasn’t a strong enough punishment.
Don't forget they had previously been ordered several times to reduce the temperature and refused.
the same goes for the Dingos Ate My Baby woman
dingos did eat her baby.
They also left out the fact that this was not the first injury nor the first complaint and that McDonald's knew their coffee was inappropriately hot. The majority of damages weren't to because of medical costs, but we're punative as punishment for knowingly serving a dangerous product. It was intended to make them change their practices. That didn't happen though. McDonald's had the amount reduced in appeals and continues to serve coffee that is hotter than almost anyone wants.
I once worked in a chain and spilled fresh brewed coffee on my arm. Looks half a pot. Got second degree burns.
Company paid for my ER visit, naturally. No way in hell was our coffee as hot as McD's, by a long shot. And I we still in pain for weeks.
Didn't realize the reason was this petty. I always thought it had something to do with how many beans it took, or the time or something like that. Not that it just took longer for a customer to drink Beca they'd be burning their mouth. I'm glad she got what was owed to her. Poor woman.
I remember hearing that it was based on market research that a significsnt number of people would pick up coffee on their way to work/home, and drink it once they got there. So they superheated the coffee so that it would be at its ideal taste/temperature when they got to their destination.
But the refill thing sounds much more likely
Yeah cuz mcds was losing millions on ....checks notes...coffee in the 90s
EVERY coffee shop overheats the drinks in the UK and it's infuriating. Every chain coffee just tastes like scorched milk and burnt beans and you can't drink it for 30 mins.
I'm unsure whether, unlike this case, they serve it hot enough that if you spill it, your labia fuses together from the heat of the burns. Horrifying.
It is less negligent to hand boiling water to you over a counter than it is to pass it down to you into a vehicle where you are seatbelted in place.
That was part of the case
I switched to iced coffee years ago for precisely this reason and never looked back. I'd rather have watered down coffee than sit there for half an hour waiting for it to cool. I have an ice tray for big cubes that don't melt as fast, so I freeze coffee in them. That way I don't water down my coffee at home and it's perfect.
Interesting, actually, in Russia I've never had that particular problem.
Maybe there actually is some regulation in place, makes me wonder.
Are they wrong to do this? I believe so, and I can't comment on UK law but US law agrees with me. But can I tell you why they do this? 18 years in foodservice and one of my most common complaints was coffee or tea that isn't hot enough. Sometimes it was that I poured a cup and then had to go do something else before I dropped it off, but a lot of times it was just done brewing and I had walked the pot straight to the table only for someone to send it back and tell me to microwave it until it boiled.
Can someone explain this to Dunkin Donuts and their molten coffee?
Ask for less ice, or even better than that, make coffee at home.
Fun fact. The guy who served her the cup of coffee is related to the owner of a Panera franchise that I use to work for. Both him and his brother-in-law (I think that's how they were related) would talk about how that was their claim to fame back when they we're franchising with McDonalds
That must have been not far off boiling!
Only a couple degrees off, yeah. The elderly woman who spilled it ended up getting third degree burns across her entire lower torso and had to have multiple skin grafts done.
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.
People aren't understanding the coffee science here. Optimal brew temp is 195-205 degF.
Now it should be regulated that the coffee is required to cool to a certain temperature, probably 160, before they're allowed to serve it. But coffee is supposed to be brewed at a dangerous temperature.
It wasn't fresh coffee though
Yeah, I was confused by this as well. The lady screwed up, coffee is hot by default.
You weren't confused. You're just stupid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Businesses are not allowed to sell "dangerous by default" products to their customers without a clear warning and sometimes even a signed waiver.
Stuff like "don't put cat in microwave", and similar.
At home my breville delivers espresso’s at 93 degrees C. But it cools quickly in porcelain cups. Did they serve the coffee at boiling temperature?
82-88 *C, according to the Wikipedia page for the Liebeck vs McDonald’s case. McDonalds also serve their hot coffee in paper cups. I’m not a materials expert, but I have to think paper wouldn’t dissipate that heat as quickly as ceramic.
Makes sense in light of their new decision to do away with self serve soda fountains to fight "food theft."
Or they could just charge per cup
It still baffles me that Americans drink liters of coffee and even ask for a refill. I drink 200ml and it's enough for the whole day for me.
A lot of the world drinks a lot of espresso or at least French press, while most of what we drink in the US is drip coffee which is weaker. And when we do go for espresso drinks, a lot of us tend to favor ones that are fairly diluted (often with sugary flavored syrups and such which it's own kind of American insanity I suppose)
Overall we do drink a lot of coffee, but it's a bit less insane when you account for that.
Personally, and I'm not sure how this stacks up against my countrymen, but I take a 20oz (a bit less than 600ml) thermos of coffee to work with me most days and drink it throughout the morning until lunch time. Caffeine wise, that's maybe a bit more than having 2 double shots of espresso, which doesn't strike me as too insane, though again I'm coming from a very American perspective.
There's actually a lot more caffeine than you probably think, and quite a bit more than two double espressos.
Still, two double espressos is still quite a bit, I think here in Italy the average is around 2 normal espressos in the morning, which would be equal to one double. Four to five espressos in a day is considered the limit to what you should drink, more than that it's a bit much.
Also all the sugar and syrups you pour in can't be healthy.
I mean, in Brazil drip/filter coffee is the most common way of drinking it and still nobody drinks in a day as much as an american drinks in a single serving. The only reasoning I can see is if american coffee is really watery and there's barely any caffeine in there.
I think drip is stronger, per bean if you know what I mean.
Finland is similar to US in that we have high coffee consumption and we like our drip coffee. I usually have two to three mugs (400 – 600 ml) of coffee throughout the day but I would imagine others might drink more than that. I don't need that much in the morning. One time I had so good cortado (not sure if it was single or double shot) at a café that I had to order another one.
Butter dispensers at the cinema to soak their popcorn is my favourite. Like it's fucking tomato sauce on a hotdog or something!
That's because US coffee is made like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tiFDTsblltU
Tolerance can vary a lot. I used to be able to do 3 cups a day easy. Then I started taking ADHD medication and the process of finding the right medicine and dosage made me pretty much cut out all caffeine for a while. Now my tolerance is barely 2 cups a day, and if I don't want to be jittery, it's 1 cup of coffee and 1 cup of black tea.
On the flipside, I've known people who drank 8 cups a day.
I still have trouble understanding this. The last time I saw this discussed, someone said they super heated the coffee, but this articke says it was 180-190 °F, which is still quite a ways below what it would be when you make it (92-96 °C = 197-205 °F). Would coffee normally lose a lot of heat when being poured and this was somehow poured differently so that didn't happen? Because when I make coffee and it's near boiling, I pour it and drink it almost immediately.
You likely make coffee by boiling some water... then let it fall into a cold container that soaks up much of the heat, and maybe even pour it into another cold container afterwards, which is where you drink it from.
They brew the coffee the same, but then keep it in a heated container, and pour it into another disposable container (paper cup, styrofoam) that doesn't soak out barely any of the heat.
They don't make it fresh for every customer, it's heated up to almost boiling temperature.
I'm just confused about these free refills. When did Maccas offer free refills?
It's an USA thing
My rule of thumb is if it's hot enough to make utensils burn you imagine what that drink is doing to your insides
< deleted. pls find info on fb/yt > ..
Shocker of the century.
I respond by asking them for a cup of ice with it. Asking for ice in it leaves too many of them confused.
This thing has been going around a long time. McDonald's is bad and people will believe anything anyone makes up about the case. People on the internet tend to be contrarian, so they jump on the chance to say "well actually the women that sued McDonald's was in the right, I know this because I'm much smarter than anyone that thinks otherwise!"
The flaw with this meme is making coffee involves boiling water. You can't actually heat water above 100C without it turning to steam. The coffee served to the woman was significantly less than the boiling point of water, because McDonald's isn't able to change physics. The injuries the woman were horrific, but anyone would suffer even worse injuries if the spilled water on themselves while making a pot of Mac & Cheese. Like anything that involves boiling water to make there's an expectation that you need to be careful when handling it.
The reality of the story is the lady that got burned admitted it was her fault. The reason she sued was to pay her medical bills. The real issue is lack of healthcare. Handling boiling water is a common thing, an accident can happen to anyone. Having a system that depends on either having a corporation associated with the accident you can sue or face bankruptcy whenever you have an accident is the real stupidity here.
I mean who would you sue if you tripped while carrying a pot of Mac & Cheese and got burned because of it? The Kraft Corporation maybe? Dumb system that brainwashed people into trying to blame accidents on a nearby corporation instead of fixing the real problem.
Dude her labia fused to her leg. I think that coffee might have been just a bit too hot.
Yes yes, the emotion of it all. Let's bring it back to logic. You would suffer more injury if you spilled a pot of Mac & Cheese over your groin. Injuries be nasty, boiling water be dangerous, these are just facts of science.
Unless your mom cooks all your food for you, then you are at risk of similar injuries nearly every day. Most of us have learned the importance of being careful around the dangerous things we encounter every day to avoid these nasty injuries.
The reality of the story is the lady that got burned admitted it was her fault.
The bottom line though is that McDonalds sold/served it at an unsafe temperature (for the type of container it was put in), to make more money, making it an unsafe product to sell, which companies are not allowed to do.
Except that coffee doesn't need to be brewed at the literal boiling point of water, so you're wrong there.
Also the lawsuit demonstrated that even 82-88c (as the manual described) was negligently high, and that 60c was plenty hot enough and in fact what most establishments served coffee at
In fact human cells denature at about 60c so any hotter causes damage to your body.
The trial was never anchored around 100c at all
Yeah nobody is disputing the hot water can injure someone. You think I don't understand what boiling water can do to someone? And it doesn't matter if other companies serve cold coffee.
How do you even cook food? You understand the danger and are careful about it. It's commonly understood that coffee is hot and therefore people need to be careful of it. Don't put yourself in a situation where a whole cup could spill all over your groin. I've been boiling water every day at the shockingly high temperature of 100C and somehow I've managed to avoid putting it in my groin area. Crazy, I know!
The link is to a personal injury law firm. How do you think their business would be affected if there was proper health care and accidents don't result in people in a desperate situation where they have to sue someone or go bankrupt? Probably enough of a negative impact that personal injury lawyers are incentivized to promote the idea that McDonald's was evil for serving coffee slightly hotter than other companies. Because they gotta promote the idea that suing someone that gets injured so they can pay their medical bills is a good and correct way of doing things. Which is why this silly meme persists.
Wow you must be some kind of cunt scientist, moaning about the fact that the water obviously wasn't boiling because it was liquid. Significantly under 100C, sure.
Water at a temperature as low as 54C "can result in a full-thickness skin burn in 30 seconds" as in, 3rd degree burns.
How fast can a 79 year old strip in a parking lot?
In a kitchen you are an least handling your boiling liquids in rigid containers instead of cardboard. Why would you be walking around with that full hot pot anyway? Did you order your pot of mac and cheese to go?
The stupid thing here is instead of the government enforcing safe products that are fit for purpose, this kind of damage to a person is civil and a tort.
Nah I'm the kind of scientist that actually measured the temperature of a cup of Maxwell House instant coffee. Because actual scientist test instead of just believing rando articles from personal injury lawyers.
Black (just coffee crystals and water): 88C With two spoonfuls of sugar: 80C With sugar and cream: 68C <- I drank it at this temperature, it was nice!
Feel free to peer review my findings. You only need instant coffee, a kettle and a thermometer.
Nice try, McDonald's lawyer.
Nice try personal injury lawyer.
Who the fuck drinks mcdonalds coffee??
That’s.. not really the point here…. …?
My home coffee setup is quite frankly obscene and I used to be a snob about it. It took me a while to realize I was just being an asshole and that every cup of coffee doesn't need to be an "experience" or masterpiece.
So to answer your question: people that aren't snobs. It's cheap, convenient, and inoffensive drip coffee -- and sometimes that's all someone wants.
Apparently, people in the US
Yeah,I figured ...
They didn't serve the coffee at that temp to save money, they did it because that was the recommended holding temp for coffee.
After this lawsuit, they didn't lower their coffee temps, they just made better cups and lids, and added more warnings.
Recommended by who, is the thing. The recommended holding temp for coffee is 110°, McDonalds of that era was holding it at 200°, and claiming it was so that when you arrived at your destination with your coffee it would have cooled down to drinking temperature, even though that is not what people use drive throughs for