Brewed coffee begins to lose its optimal taste moments after brewing so only brew as much coffee as will be consumed immediately. If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit. It should never be left on an electric burner for longer than 15 minutes because it will begin to develop a burned taste. If the coffee is not to be served immediately after brewing, it should be poured into a warmed, insulated thermos and used within the next 45 minutes.
Do the tanks at McDonalds use electric heat to maintain the temperature for longer than 15 minutes at a time?
Because if they do, then maintaining coffee at high temperature for extended periods of time actually makes the coffee taste worst, not better.
You don't get to hide behind NCA guidelines if you aren't willing to follow them all the way through.
Also, brewed coffee loses optimal taste after a few minutes and should be consumed immediately. I'm pretty sure McDonalds doesn't do that.
Honestly, it sounds like the 180-185 guideline is the direct result of the "serve immediately" rule. i.e., if coffee is brewed at 195-205 and served within the next few minutes, then it will be 180-185 by the time you serve it. The temperature will then drop further when you pour it into a small cup, and when you add your cream.
Serving coffee below 180-185 degrees is bad, not because anything cooler is too cold for coffee, but because the lower temperature means that you've been letting it sit out for too long.
Of course, since McDonalds is already violating the "serve immediately" rule, as well as the "don't keep on electric burners for more than 15 minutes" rule, the entire guideline is irrelevant.
BTW, the Business Week article I linked suggests adopting a Swedish-style malpractice board system, where instead of litigating, you first file your complaint to the state board. They look at your case and determine whether malpractice was a cause, and if so, they dispense damages based on a schedule of fees.
Having a schedule of fees for medical injury is the easy part - we already do that in California (and as far as I know most other states) for workers comp. Lose a finger, get $X. Lose your hand, get $Y. Etc.
That said, the Swedish system gives the patient (or physician, I think, but I don't remember for sure) the option to litigate if they are still dissatisfied after the board's decision. The overwhelming majority don't go to trial, through.
Except there is no problem with medmal in the US. It's the least successful of the personal injury torts.
Does it being the least successful mean there isn't a problem? Are the cases that are going to court and winning huge the one with the most egregious faults? Would it possibly be better for society if more people were getting smaller awards and doctors saw losing a court case as something to learn from rather than a career ending event?
I haven't looked into the Swedish system, how do they determine if the doctor was at fault?
Right, the problem with the system isn't in the ratio of winning doctors vs losing doctors, it's that it's essentially random. Cases where egregious errors occur get nothing, cases where it's obvious there was no wrongdoing win millions.
BTW, the Business Week article I linked suggests adopting a Swedish-style malpractice board system, where instead of litigating, you first file your complaint to the state board. They look at your case and determine whether malpractice was a cause, and if so, they dispense damages based on a schedule of fees.
Having a schedule of fees for medical injury is the easy part - we already do that in California (and as far as I know most other states) for workers comp. Lose a finger, get $X. Lose your hand, get $Y. Etc.
That said, the Swedish system gives the patient (or physician, I think, but I don't remember for sure) the option to litigate if they are still dissatisfied after the board's decision. The overwhelming majority don't go to trial, through.
Except there is no problem with medmal in the US. It's the least successful of the personal injury torts.
Does it being the least successful mean there isn't a problem? Are the cases that are going to court and winning huge the one with the most egregious faults? Would it possibly be better for society if more people were getting smaller awards and doctors saw losing a court case as something to learn from rather than a career ending event?
I haven't looked into the Swedish system, how do they determine if the doctor was at fault?
Right, the problem with the system isn't in the ratio of winning doctors vs losing doctors, it's that it's essentially random. Cases where egregious errors occur get nothing, cases where it's obvious there was no wrongdoing win millions.
You can't, because they are completely unwilling to consider that coffee served at a temperature capable of causing severe tissue damage in a reasonable scenario might just be inherently defective. Their argument boils down to this:
Everyone knows coffee is hot, that's why you buy coffee. (I doubt people know that coffee served at these temperatures is capable of causing third degree burns.)
The coffee was served at an "industry standard" temperature, so McDonalds was doing nothing unusual. (You'll pardon me if I view an industry standard that needlessly produces a product that can maim as not being legitimate.)
The NCA supports these industry standards. (Duh. They are the industry trade group. It's sort of their job.)
Other cases similar to this were ruled for the defendant. (Stare decisis is important, but it's not the end all be all.)
McDonalds took precautions, and considered lowering the temperature but decided against it. (And Iacocca evaluated putting self sealing liners in the Pinto's gas tank. We know how that ended. )
The only reason she won was because the jury was swayed by emotion. (Yes, because there is no way a jury would have found for her otherwise. Besides, emotion is a feature, not a bug.)
There's also a willful disregard for the basic laws of physics.
Hey, you know how ice melts as it cools down, as the temperature of the ice and the temperature of the liquid attempt to reach an equilibrium?
Well, hot coffee will cool down as it heats things up. So even though 140 coffee could theoretically lead to burns after 6 seconds, it wouldn't stay at 140 degrees for that long.
You can't, because they are completely unwilling to consider that coffee served at a temperature capable of causing severe tissue damage in a reasonable scenario might just be inherently defective. Their argument boils down to this:
Everyone knows coffee is hot, that's why you buy coffee. (I doubt people know that coffee served at these temperatures is capable of causing third degree burns.)
The coffee was served at an "industry standard" temperature, so McDonalds was doing nothing unusual. (You'll pardon me if I view an industry standard that needlessly produces a product that can maim as not being legitimate.)
The NCA supports these industry standards. (Duh. They are the industry trade group. It's sort of their job.)
Other cases similar to this were ruled for the defendant. (Stare decisis is important, but it's not the end all be all.)
McDonalds took precautions, and considered lowering the temperature but decided against it. (And Iacocca evaluated putting self sealing liners in the Pinto's gas tank. We know how that ended. )
The only reason she won was because the jury was swayed by emotion. (Yes, because there is no way a jury would have found for her otherwise. Besides, emotion is a feature, not a bug.)
There's also a willful disregard for the basic laws of physics.
Hey, you know how ice melts as it cools down, as the temperature of the ice and the temperature of the liquid attempt to reach an equilibrium?
Well, hot coffee will cool down as it heats things up. So even though 140 coffee could theoretically lead to burns after 6 seconds, it wouldn't stay at 140 degrees for that long.
Why is it so hard to explain?
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F. Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter. And volume and contact surface(lol sweat pants) matter as much to that assertion as temp does.
All coffee served at restaurant temps will burn you when spilled into your lap.
The reasonable expectation is that it will do this. Its a hot fluid that is produces at 190F+, serving it closely to its time of brewing is a widely accepted standard(is desirable even) and the time since its brewing(more importantly the corresponding decay in its temp) is an indeterminable quality to you the user.
That 185F coffee may burn you more severely than cooler coffee is meaningless, because that's a statement that's true of all coffee down to a temperature where no one would desire coffee.
A 180 FPS pellet gun will takes someones eye out.
So will a 170/160/150/140 FPS pellet gun. A 50 fps pellet gun won't, but is worthless as a pellet gun.
The manufacture of the 180 FPS pellet gun isn't liable if you shoot your eye out with it, because its not a 140 fps pellet gun, and therefor more dangerous.
Are we still talking about the hot coffee case? I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Regardless of your feelings of how it turned out, it's a pretty bad example of a frivolous lawsuit and is greatly overused by people who are unfamiliar with the actual facts of the case as evidence of a tort system gone mad.
To put it another way:
If this is the best and most-used example of how crazy tort law in the US is, then we're doing pretty damn well.
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless
Actually it is the opposite of meaningless
that thing
when something is really really relevant and important
its that thing that means the opposite of whatever you just said.
Okay, so we've now established that tinwhiskers knows absolutely nothing about thermodynamics or Newton's law of cooling. Hint: everything you said was completely wrong.
Its like there's words attached to the rest of that sentence that you aren't reading. If I take 1000 degree molten lead and dump it on your head, it won't stay 1000 degrees. !!!!! IMPORTANT FACT!!!!
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Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F. Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter. And volume and contact surface(lol sweat pants) matter as much to that assertion as temp does.
We have two choices, here:
A) Pick a line between acceptable and unacceptable, acknowledging that selection of such a line is at least partially arbitrary.
Not pick a line, and assert that serving coffee at any temperature right up to 212 degrees is fine.
You are apparently arguing in favor of B. If not, please give us your suggestion for A.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Let me try this again: tinwhiskers, please stop claiming that coffee does not cool rapidly when spilled. This cooling means that 150 degree coffee will be distinctly less than 150 degrees two seconds later, resulting in a much longer time required for burning. 180 degree coffee, however, even after two seconds of cooling, will still be quite hot, and will at that point result in severe burning and not simply mild blisters and such.
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F. Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter. And volume and contact surface(lol sweat pants) matter as much to that assertion as temp does.
We have two choices, here:
A) Pick a line between acceptable and unacceptable, acknowledging that selection of such a line is at least partially arbitrary.
Not pick a line, and assert that serving coffee at any temperature right up to 212 degrees is fine.
You are apparently arguing in favor of B. If not, please give us your suggestion for A.
212- What are you, some sort of panzy? Can't handle a real cup of hot coffee? Let's get it super-pressurized, and heat it up until it turns into a plasma that can melt metal! That's how coffee is supposed to be for optimum flavor.
1) Coffee is made with water at a temperature up to 212F(while 212 is not ideal for flavor arguing 212 vs 205 vs 190 for brewing temp is non-consequential as any of them will cause sever injury), but these extreme temperatures are the norm.
2)Serving coffee directly from brewing(or so close that temperature changes are within the range of brewing temps and other variables) is a normally acceptable practice. In fact freshly brewed is a desirable trait for coffee.
3) You as the purchaser of the coffee cannot know how long ago brewing occurred, along with all the other variables associated with the change in the coffees temperature from the brewing temperature(which you are also unaware of).
Therefore: the reasonable expectation for the temperature of the coffee is anywhere up to the brewing temperature.(OMG IT WILL COOL AFTER THEY MAKE IT !!!11!!!!111)
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F. Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter. And volume and contact surface(lol sweat pants) matter as much to that assertion as temp does.
We have two choices, here:
A) Pick a line between acceptable and unacceptable, acknowledging that selection of such a line is at least partially arbitrary.
Not pick a line, and assert that serving coffee at any temperature right up to 212 degrees is fine.
You are apparently arguing in favor of B. If not, please give us your suggestion for A.
212- What are you, some sort of panzy? Can't handle a real cup of hot coffee? Let's get it super-pressurized, and heat it up until it turns into a plasma that can melt metal! That's how coffee is supposed to be for optimum flavor.
Super-heated pressurized water used to brew coffee...you might be on to something here....hell it would even brew faster than normal coffee...we could call it express coffee....sounds kinda lame in English...maybe a foreign sounding name would be better....SchnellKaffe We're gonna be RICH!
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds.
I can throw a baseball at 20 mph.
At that rate, the baseball that I just threw can penetrate 12 inches of solid steel in about 1/30th of a second.
Oh, what's that?
I've just been told that physics doesn't work like that.
That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F.
Two bullets target a piece of plywood. One bullet is fired from a gun, the other bullet is thrown by hand.
By your logic, one bullet isn't significantly more dangerous than the other. Either both bullets will penetrate the plywood, or neither bullet penetrates the plywood. The speed that the bullet is travelling is meaningless, because both both bullets lose speed the moment they hit the plywood.
Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter.
1) Coffee burns people because it transfers its heat energy to the persons skin.
2) Once it transfers its heat energy to the persons skin, it's no longer as hot.
Look dude, you're trying to break the laws of thermodynamics. You're trying to assert that the coffee will transfer 99% of its excess heat energy to the person, while still maintaining 99% of its excess heat energy. That is not how physics works!
Its a hot fluid that is produces at 190F+, serving it closely to its time of brewing is a widely accepted standard
I wasn't aware that McDonalds served their coffee within minutes of them serving it. I suppose you also think that the chicken nuggets are made from scratch every hour?
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F. Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter. And volume and contact surface(lol sweat pants) matter as much to that assertion as temp does.
We have two choices, here:
A) Pick a line between acceptable and unacceptable, acknowledging that selection of such a line is at least partially arbitrary.
Not pick a line, and assert that serving coffee at any temperature right up to 212 degrees is fine.
You are apparently arguing in favor of B. If not, please give us your suggestion for A.
160 degrees. This is the line. If everyone drank their coffee black, you could drop that to 150 degrees. However realistically you probably need to give a five or ten degree grace for holding purposes, as 160 degrees is the minimum. That means 160-170 degrees.
Either way it doesn't matter. All of those temperatures are severe enough to cause at least second degree burns. If a defective product caused you second degree burns, the company that sold it to you would be liable. Whereas if a dangerous but not defective product caused you third degree burns, the company that sold it to you would not be liable, even if you only expected second degree burns in that situation.
That's a pretty big point. If a dangerous product is more dangerous than you expected, but in the same manner as it is always dangerous, that product does not become defective; a more powerful chainsaw, a faster snowmobile, a hotter cup of coffee, a sharper knife.
P.S. The reason the knife example is nice is that it is another product which is knowingly dangerous so if you hurt yourself with it, even if it is worse than you thought you could, that is not actionable. It is only actionable if the knife hurt you because it was defective. If the handle broke when reasonable pressure was applied to it causing you to injure yourself. If the coffee cup collapsed in your hand. It merely being sharper and therefore more dangerous than you expected does not meet the standard for defective. It is also a conveneintely similar object, simple, non-mechanical, inherently dangerous.
Tin, we keep explaining why your logic is wrong, citing basic physics and the fact that you are citing guidelines as gospel when they don't actually apply to McDonalds (i.e., "coffee is ideally served hot because that means that it was freshly brewed" does not apply in cases where the coffee is not served freshly brewed.).
Are you going to address these criticisms... ever?
Let me try this again: tinwhiskers, please stop claiming that coffee does not cool rapidly when spilled. This cooling means that 150 degree coffee will be distinctly less than 150 degrees two seconds later, resulting in a much longer time required for burning. 180 degree coffee, however, even after two seconds of cooling, will still be quite hot, and will at that point result in severe burning and not simply mild blisters and such.
Exactly. Both liquids will cool fairly rapidly as they spread out and are exposed to air, cloth, and skin.
One of these liquids, however, will still be upwards of thirty degrees hotter after a couple seconds.
Maybe he doesn't understand integrals, and that what we're talking about is basically an integration of time exposure versus temperature, and that the graph for this in the 180 degree case will start thirty degrees higher? Of course, I'll admit that I'm entirely unsure of what the dropoff in temperature on that graph might look like (linear, exponential, and what the coefficients and powers involved might be). But I'm reasonably certain that tinwhiskers is even less familiar with it, and has not even considered its existence.
Are we still talking about the hot coffee case? I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Regardless of your feelings of how it turned out, it's a pretty bad example of a frivolous lawsuit and is greatly overused by people who are unfamiliar with the actual facts of the case as evidence of a tort system gone mad.
To put it another way:
If this is the best and most-used example of how crazy tort law in the US is, then we're doing pretty damn well.
That's a pretty nice jib. Gotta say I like how it's cut.
"E-Z Serve also presented test evidence presented by its employee, Diane Christen. In three tests, she duplicated the plaintiff's husband's actions of purchasing the coffee and bringing it out to the car. The temperature was measured in the decanter, after it was poured into the cup, and when it arrived outside by the car entrance. In the first test, the first temperature (in the decanter) measured 174.5 degrees. Four minutes later, at the car entrance, the temperature measured 161.7 degrees."
Did McDonalds perform a similar demonstration in Liebeck?
Equivalent, yes, in that they presented testimony that the coffee could have been as cold as 160 or 150 and still burned her the way it did.
With a conflicting expert testimony on the other side.
This is largely my opinion, but I don't see an on-site empirical test as equivalent to the conflicting testimonies of two different experts.
Sorry if you misunderstood, I'm not saying that every case here is exactly the same in every way. I don't follow your point if you are just going to show where one case is slightly different from another. I'm saying that collectively they thoroughly address everything in the Liebeck case, unanimously, and contrary to Liebeck. Regardless, this point from Braniff is kinda off the wall, since even the Braniff decision says that anyone should know coffee is dangerously hot.
I am attempting to address your very first post in the thread:
What you cannot debate is that it was the first and only case to ever decide the way it did, and dozens of precedents in the U.S. and U.K. had previously addressed every single issue raised in the McDonald's case, always in favor of the defense.
First off, I'm giving you a charitable reading here that you're not merely arguing that Liebeck broke from precedent, but that it was anomalous in general. (If we really wanted to talk about precedent, we'd be confining our discussion to cases that occurred prior to Liebeck.) If we're going to recognize that Liebeck was anomalous, we also have to recognize that it was not argued comparatively to any other single case. I will admit that I have not read every case you mentioned, but the first 8 or 10 or so all involved far weaker complaints - fewer (or no) expert witnesses, less severe injury (I know you say that's irrelevant; I will address that in a moment), no evidence of prior knowledge of severe risk on the part of the defendant.
Saying that, in aggregate, each of these cases individually addressed every argument in Liebeck doesn't quite compute. Liability can be a relatively complex calculus - saying that factor 1 was present in case X while factor 2 was present in case Y and factor 3 was present in case Z and so forth does not necessarily imply that given all those factors together that the determination would be the same.
You're not quite making an apples-to-apples comparison. I will grant that you are coming very close, but you're not quite there.
I'm also going to speculate for a moment here - many of these cases you've brought up occurred after Liebeck. Had Liebeck not been settled, and had a higher court provided an opinion on the matter, it's entirely possible that the subsequent cases would have been decided differently. But, as I said, that's speculation, and not meant to be a compelling argument.
In any case, nobody here is arguing that coffee shouldn't be hot. Nobody here is even arguing that there should be zero possibility of harm from hot coffee! What we're arguing is that the harm suffered in Liebeck was significantly more severe than the harm a typical coffee drinker might expect from typical hot coffee. The turn of phrase from McCroy that I liked:
a product is "unreasonably dangerous" only if it is "dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who purchases it.(Emphasis mine.)
(Note that in McCroy, they explicitly did not evaluate this test, because of the plaintiff's failure to submit evidence in their favor.)
As I have already shown, virtually all of these cases wholeheartedly disagree with you on this. The case law very much does make the argument you are asking for.
Holowaty v. McDonald's goes on for paragraphs and paragraphs making this point. I'm not even sure which is the best to quote. Here are a few:
...The Court rejected the argument because the type of injury the average consumer would anticipate and the injury that resulted were different in degree, not in kind.
In summary, it's not like people throw caution to the wind because they are thinking 2nd degree burns when really 3rd are possible. People are aware that it can burn and should exercise care.
It appears, though obviously IANAL, that Holowaty is novel in this regard. Except for the BB gun case that Holowaty referenced, I wasn't able to find any other case law directly discussing whether the severity of an injury should be taken into account when deciding if that injury was forseeable. In other words, I couldn't find any other judge saying that a duty to warn only exists for injuries that are unusual in kind rather than in degree.
So I put on my Armchair Intellectual hat, and looked it up... in my undergraduate law textbook. (Yep, I took an undergraduate class in tort law, years ago, and that clearly qualifies me to argue tort law authoritatively on a video game forum on the Internet. That was sarcasm, BTW.) My book references the Restatement (Third) of Torts. Not a binding document, but a reliable treatise. The quoted passage reads: "The magnitude of the risk is the foreeable severity of the harm discounted by the foreseeable probability that it will occur."
The negligence evaluation or equation is often conveniently described as balancing the magnitude of the risk of the seller's conduct against the likelihood of injury should the challenged act be taken, the severity of any such injury should it occur, and the social value or utility of the actor's conduct.
Reasonableness often turns on (1) the degree of foreseeable likelihood that the defendant's actions might result in injury," (2) the range in severity of foreseeable injuries, and (3) the benefits and burdens of available precautions or alternative manners of conduct." Together, the range of likelihood and severity of foreseeable injury constitutes the foreseeable "risk" created by an actor's conducts'
It seems, just on a layperson's reading, that the severity of the injury can affect the foreseeability. This makes me somewhat suspicious of the court opinion in Holowaty that only the kind of injury, and not the degree of injury, is relevant.
Anyway, I think I'm done talking about Liebeck for a while. I'm satisfied with your clarification of your position, though ultimately I think you're giving an overly generous reading to the cases you cite.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
We've debated the merits of a 17-year-old lawsuit (that eventually got settled out of court!) for 13 pages now, as though it's the absolute best example we have of tort law gone wild. Again, regardless of how you feel about the outcome of it, it's difficult to call it "frivolous," given that there were significant damages and at least some argument to be considered that McDonald's was partially responsible. Whether or not she should have been given an award, it's not as though the lawsuit was founded in fraud or greed, as it's popularly portrayed.
Irrelevant, because McDonalds doesn't do this. They store their coffee in heated vessels for long periods of time, which the NCA strictly recommends against doing.
3) You as the purchaser of the coffee cannot know how long ago brewing occurred
Irrelevant, because McDonalds doesn't leave the coffee out and allow the coffee to cool on it's own, they keep the coffee in heated vessels to maintain temperature.
Super-heated pressurized water used to brew coffee...you might be on to something here....hell it would even brew faster than normal coffee...we could call it express coffee....sounds kinda lame in English...maybe a foreign sounding name would be better....SchnellKaffe We're gonna be RICH!
I wasn't aware of the fact that people were literally ordering a cup of steam, since obviously, the brewing temperature and the serving temperature is interchangeable.
Tin, we keep explaining why your logic is wrong, citing basic physics and the fact that you are citing guidelines as gospel when they don't actually apply to McDonalds (i.e., "coffee is ideally served hot because that means that it was freshly brewed" does not apply in cases where the coffee is not served freshly brewed.).
Are you going to address these criticisms... ever?
Of course it applies. If I can generally assume my coffee will arrive at 180 degrees because it is freshly brewed, I must take appropriate caution with all cups of coffee I buy. Unless I suppose she had asked, found out it was not freshly, and acted less cautiously as a result.
We've debated the merits of a 17-year-old lawsuit (that eventually got settled out of court!) for 13 pages now, as though it's the absolute best example we have of tort law gone wild. Again, regardless of how you feel about the outcome of it, it's difficult to call it "frivolous," given that there were significant damages and at least some argument to be considered that McDonald's was partially responsible. Whether or not she should have been given an award, it's not as though the lawsuit was founded in fraud or greed, as it's popularly portrayed.
Just giving some perspective, is all.
The fact that Liebeck managed to win the case means that it was, pretty much by definition, not a frivolous lawsuit. At least not by any reasonable definition of "frivolous lawsuit," nor the legal definition.
Everyone knows coffee is hot, that's why you buy coffee. (I doubt people know that coffee served at these temperatures is capable of causing third degree burns.)
The coffee was served at an "industry standard" temperature, so McDonalds was doing nothing unusual. (You'll pardon me if I view an industry standard that needlessly produces a product that can maim as not being legitimate.)
The NCA supports these industry standards. (Duh. They are the industry trade group. It's sort of their job.)
Other cases similar to this were ruled for the defendant. (Stare decisis is important, but it's not the end all be all.)
McDonalds took precautions, and considered lowering the temperature but decided against it. (And Iacocca evaluated putting self sealing liners in the Pinto's gas tank. We know how that ended. )
The only reason she won was because the jury was swayed by emotion. (Yes, because there is no way a jury would have found for her otherwise. Besides, emotion is a feature, not a bug.)
Yeah, pretty much. This is all I'm saying. The Pinto thing isn't comparable, but otherwise the reasons given above are consistenly affirmed and are why cases never go the way Liebeck did. The only thing we have documented on Liebeck are juror interviews, where they said that initially they were on McD's side as far as facts and law are concerned, but then got mad at them for acting like they didn't even care about this woman's pain.
I don't really see how you can even argue this point. Cooler coffee = less injuries. Are you objecting to this point?
I'm objecting to it's utter lack of basic reason or usefulness to anything. McDonald's coffee was cooler. It was cooler than, say, the sun. It was cooler than boiling. It was cooler than a lot of things. You saying "cooler" isn't saying anything. Cooler than what, and how much cooler? If zero harm isn't the goal, then how much harm is ok?
You really don't see that your suggestion is empty? Sure, cooler means less harm. But they still get sued and deemed negligent. Because it could have been cooler. So they make it cooler, and less people are injured, but some still are and they still sue. And win, because, according to you, it could have been cooler, and then less people would have been hurt. Your suggestion here is useless. You have no point at all until a) you can say just how cool it has to be, or just how many people hurt is acceptable, and/or b) state a specific, actionable thing McD's should have done the wouldn't have been negligent. "Cooler" doesn't cut it, because 0.0000001 degrees less is cooler, and accomplishes nothing, or c) acknowledge that you are in fact saying that the risk must be zero, they must ensure zero incidents of any harm. Because if there is even one incident of any harm, then your argument applies, it could have been cooler, and less people would have been harmed.
Well, hot coffee will cool down as it heats things up. So even though 140 coffee could theoretically lead to burns after 6 seconds, it wouldn't stay at 140 degrees for that long.
Why is it so hard to explain?
It's an incomplete argument. It presumes that the 5 second number doesn't already factor in thermodynamics. It presumes that just saying "physics" somehow answer anything. It doesn't. Fine, you don't believe the red cross and expert testimony because your physcis is superior. You still haven't answered any point or argument with that. You're just grasping at distracting nitpicks. Really, it would be, say, 7 seconds before 140 degree coffee spilled into a bucket seat and sweatpants would actually cause 3rd degree burns. because of physics. Cool. This changes nothing. This woman wasn't able to do much anyway. She was old, and basically sat there in pain.
A) Pick a line between acceptable and unacceptable, acknowledging that selection of such a line is at least partially arbitrary.
Not pick a line, and assert that serving coffee at any temperature right up to 212 degrees is fine.
You are apparently arguing in favor of B. If not, please give us your suggestion for A.
I already gave you the line. It was easy. I think I said 190? And tin and I aren't the one's claiming that someone crossed a line, so I really don't see how the burden is on us to say where it is.
More to the point - the line is when the coffee you serve is hotter than normal and hotter than recommended. There's never been a case that met these standard, but if there were it would actually need to be somewhere around 205 probably. And as tin and I are also pointing out, this still probably wouldn't win you the case unless you could show that the harm was specifically because the coffee was 205, and wouldn't have happened at 190 or 185.
Either way it doesn't matter. All of those temperatures are severe enough to cause at least second degree burns. If a defective product caused you second degree burns, the company that sold it to you would be liable. Whereas if a dangerous but not defective product caused you third degree burns, the company that sold it to you would not be liable, even if you only expected second degree burns in that situation.
That's a pretty big point. If a dangerous product is more dangerous than you expected, but in the same manner as it is always dangerous, that product does not become defective; a more powerful chainsaw, a faster snowmobile, a hotter cup of coffee, a sharper knife.
P.S. The reason the knife example is nice is that it is another product which is knowingly dangerous so if you hurt yourself with it, even if it is worse than you thought you could, that is not actionable. It is only actionable if the knife hurt you because it was defective. If the handle broke when reasonable pressure was applied to it causing you to injure yourself. If the coffee cup collapsed in your hand. It merely being sharper and therefore more dangerous than you expected does not meet the standard for defective. It is also a conveneintely similar object, simple, non-mechanical, inherently dangerous.
Feral, your citations that talk about degree of injury are talking about how you assess the risk being posed. Defense is not disputing that they were aware of the risk of 3rd degree burns. This does say something about just how negligent they are, if they are being negligent. Being negligent on stubbed toes is meaningfully different that being negligent on losing limbs. However, this is not a standard you can us in determining IF they are negligent or liable. Saying that people know coffee can burn you, but not how badly, does not make a case of negligence. If negligence were proven through some legitimate means, then you might be able to use the forseeable degree of injury as an argument on just how awful their negligence was.
So, anyway, this thread is called "hot coffee." It's not like we're on a tangent with this.
It seems, just on a layperson's reading, that the severity of the injury can affect the foreseeability. This makes me somewhat suspicious of the court opinion in Holowaty that only the kind of injury, and not the degree of injury, is relevant.
This might apply, but I don't think it does here. The severity of the issue would be relevent if say, a butterknife ended up being razor sharp and instead of causing an abbrasion cut to the bone. Going from a negligable hurt to a major injury. I don't think that would apply however to the difference between second degree or third degree burns. Going from a serious injury to a more serious injury.
So, anyway, this thread is called "hot coffee." It's not like we're on a tangent with this.
We are, though. Here was the legal question that was to be considered:
"Should a company that provides a product that's known to be moderately dangerous be held liable if it turns out to be much more dangerous than a reasonable person would believe?"
That's (IMO) a valid question to raise with a lawsuit, even if it's found that the company isn't liable.
Disagreeing with the ruling is significantly different than citing the case as a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit, as commonly happens. Again, she had suffered damages and there was an argument to be made (whether or not you think it should hold up in court) that McDonald's was partially at fault. This is what tort was made for, even if in this specific case (for the sake of argument), the jury got it wrong.
We've debated the merits of a 17-year-old lawsuit (that eventually got settled out of court!) for 13 pages now, as though it's the absolute best example we have of tort law gone wild. Again, regardless of how you feel about the outcome of it, it's difficult to call it "frivolous," given that there were significant damages and at least some argument to be considered that McDonald's was partially responsible. Whether or not she should have been given an award, it's not as though the lawsuit was founded in fraud or greed, as it's popularly portrayed.
Just giving some perspective, is all.
The fact that Liebeck managed to win the case means that it was, pretty much by definition, not a frivolous lawsuit. At least not by any reasonable definition of "frivolous lawsuit," nor the legal definition.
Not necessarily. Given a little luck a frivolous lawsuit can be won. Jury nullification is a thing. I don't know of any reason why it couldn't apply to civil cases as much as criminal ones. If a doctor was not negligent, but was on the stand giggling about his patients' loss of the wrong arm, the guy might just lose anyway. Definitely not saying that's what happened here.
Well, hot coffee will cool down as it heats things up. So even though 140 coffee could theoretically lead to burns after 6 seconds, it wouldn't stay at 140 degrees for that long.
Why is it so hard to explain?
It's an incomplete argument. It presumes that the 5 second number doesn't already factor in thermodynamics.
The five second figure assumes the same temperature, but a much greater quantity of heat energy.
What does more damage to your windshield: A water balloon travelling at 20 mph, or a heavy bolder traveling at 20 mph?
They both have the same speed, but the second object has far more energy. The water balloon will lose almost all of it's energy the moment it hits your windshield. The bolder will lose some energy when it hits your windshield, but it will still have more than enough energy to smash your window.
More to the point - the line is when the coffee you serve is hotter than normal and hotter than recommended. There's never been a case that met these standard, but if there were it would actually need to be somewhere around 205 probably. And as tin and I are also pointing out, this still probably wouldn't win you the case unless you could show that the harm was specifically because the coffee was 205, and wouldn't have happened at 190 or 185.
The recommendations say that you shouldn't leave coffee on a burner for more than 15 minutes.
Does McDonalds leave their coffee on the burner for more than 15 minutes?
Why are they allowed to ignore some rules, but not others?
Again, you cite the recommended temperature. You haven't explained WHY it's the recommended temperature, other than the fact that it signifies something that doesn't even apply in the case of McDonalds.
To put it another way, let's say I make a rule that you shouldn't serve beef that's turned green, because that means that it's been left out too long and has spoiled. Does that make it okay for McDonalds to start selling spoiled meat with toxic red paint, because that way it's no longer green? Or are you simply relying on an abstract rule of thumb while completely ignoring the reason why that rule is in place?
Of course it applies. If I can generally assume my coffee will arrive at 180 degrees because it is freshly brewed
Is McDonalds coffee that hot because they brew their coffee within minutes of serving it?
Or is their coffee that hot because they store it in heated vessels for long periods of time?
You keep citing guidelines that don't apply to McDonalds, because they're not following those guidelines in the first place.
It doesn't matter. If I the customer can generally expect my coffee to arrive at dangerously high temperatures, I must behave accordingly whether or not it arrives that way this particular time. Like I said, unless you are suggesting that the injury in this case was caused because she knew the coffee was not brewed freshly, and therefore did not think she had to take as much caution.
Well, hot coffee will cool down as it heats things up. So even though 140 coffee could theoretically lead to burns after 6 seconds, it wouldn't stay at 140 degrees for that long.
Why is it so hard to explain?
It's an incomplete argument. It presumes that the 5 second number doesn't already factor in thermodynamics.
The five second figure assumes the same temperature, but a much greater quantity of heat energy.
What does more damage to your windshield: A water balloon travelling at 20 mph, or a heavy bolder traveling at 20 mph?
They both have the same speed, but the second object has far more energy. The water balloon will lose almost all of it's energy the moment it hits your windshield. The bolder will lose some energy when it hits your windshield, but it will still have more than enough energy to smash your window.
More to the point - the line is when the coffee you serve is hotter than normal and hotter than recommended. There's never been a case that met these standard, but if there were it would actually need to be somewhere around 205 probably. And as tin and I are also pointing out, this still probably wouldn't win you the case unless you could show that the harm was specifically because the coffee was 205, and wouldn't have happened at 190 or 185.
The recommendations say that you shouldn't leave coffee on a burner for more than 15 minutes.
Does McDonalds leave their coffee on the burner for more than 15 minutes?
Why are they allowed to ignore some rules, but not others?
Again, you cite the recommended temperature. You haven't explained WHY it's the recommended temperature, other than the fact that it signifies something that doesn't even apply in the case of McDonalds.
To put it another way, let's say I make a rule that you shouldn't serve beef that's turned green, because that means that it's been left out too long and has spoiled. Does that make it okay for McDonalds to start selling spoiled meat with toxic red paint, because that way it's no longer green? Or are you simply relying on an abstract rule of thumb while completely ignoring the reason why that rule is in place?
Well now you're just being silly. There is a reason the temperature rule applies. Because it means that the consumer of a purchased cup of coffee can expect it to arrive at a certain temperaure, and therefore have a certain level of risk. If I ever buy a cup of coffee anywhere whether it is Alto Grande from the French Laundry, or burned Folgers from a greasy spoon, I know that it will come out at a temperature that will scald me if I pour it into my lap. At that point it no longer matters why it is at that temperature. I must expect it, therefore I must act accordingly.
If you would like a meat example: a really good hamburger is cooked medium. This puts me at risk of E. Colli. Now, if I am at a restaurant which cooks its burgers to medium, not because they will be more juicy and delicious but because they take less time to cook, I am at the same risk of E. Coli and must be equally aware. The reason the risk exists does not matter anymore. All that matters is that the risk is there, and I am aware of it, or should be.
If you would like a meat example: a really good hamburger is cooked medium. This puts me at risk of E. Colli. Now, if I am at a restaurant which cooks its burgers to medium, not because they will be more juicy and delicious but because they take less time to cook, I am at the same risk of E. Coli and must be equally aware. The reason the risk exists does not matter anymore. All that matters is that the risk is there, and I am aware of it, or should be.
So there's a risk of getting E. coli whenever you eat a burger, right? So if you eat a burger and get E. coli, then suing would be a frivolous action?
Let me try this again: tinwhiskers, please stop claiming that coffee does not cool rapidly when spilled. This cooling means that 150 degree coffee will be distinctly less than 150 degrees two seconds later, resulting in a much longer time required for burning. 180 degree coffee, however, even after two seconds of cooling, will still be quite hot, and will at that point result in severe burning and not simply mild blisters and such.
First remember that temperatures for heat transfer & enthalpy are in Kelvin so 185F(358K) 150F(338K) are more similar than you assume.
there's a couple factors here:
1) the volume of the coffee and the surface area it is spilled over. Twice the amount of coffee will need twice the amount of energy absorbed in order to cool it. Once again going back to the sweatpants, you're not going to get a huge amount of spread of the coffee. Its going to get sucked into a limited area and held there.
2) And this is the big one(and the base data for 150 water needs to account for this as well), the amount of movement. Fluids tend to make a film over what ever they are contacting which kills heat transfer rates.
You basically have a layer of hot liquid riding on a layer of cooler liquid, and all the heat has to be transfered through this film. Same concept as wind chill, you need a flow perpendicular to the contact surface to break up this boundary.
So sticking a corpse hand(I'm assuming something equivalent for the standards test) in 150 degree water off sufficient volume to be iso-thermic, may not differ substantially from having the coffee spilled on you, because the rate of the coffee cooling through you is already limited by this film, much more the temperature gradient.
For example: take a stainless steel spoon and stick it into a cup of near-boiling water. The spoon conducts heat 20-80x more efficiently than water does. But it still takes substantial time for the end of the spoon to become warm to the touch, let alone untouchable. It doesn't instantly reach thermal equalibirum, and the boundary layer(though much smaller than the spoon) and especially your skin, are much poorer conductors of heat than the spoon is.
Yes heat must leave the water to enter the body, but the rate at which you can draw heat from the coffee into the body isn't infinite. The body isn't a unlimited heat sink that will suck in all the coffees energy in a few seconds and reach equilibrium.
The specific heat of water is 1 BTU/ LB degree F. An ounce of water is ~1 oz in weight, so a 16 oz coffee chilled from 150 degrees to 140 requires ~10 BTUs transferred. Lets say this takes place inside the 2 second window not burning her. That means the cooling rate of 150 degree coffee is 18,000 BTU's an hour.
For comparison purposes, a propane grill is 30,000 BTUs an hour. A home stove around 7000.
By saying the coffee is dropping 10 degrees to avoid her getting burned, you are saying the amount of heat going from the coffee to her crotch, is the equivalent of 2-1/4 gas stove burners running on high. In other words, to cool 16 oz of coffee 10 degrees with your crotch in 2 seconds, is the same as sticking your crotch on a small gas grill for 2 seconds. Do you think that won't give you 3rd degree burns?
Maybe he doesn't understand integrals, and that what we're talking about is basically an integration of time exposure versus temperature, and that the graph for this in the 180 degree case will start thirty degrees higher? Of course, I'll admit that I'm entirely unsure of what the dropoff in temperature on that graph might look like (linear, exponential, and what the coefficients and powers involved might be). But I'm reasonably certain that tinwhiskers is even less familiar with it, and has not even considered its existence.
You don't even need to discuss integrals and curves and what not. Here's a very simple way of phrasing the question:
Does the coffee have enough joules of heat energy to result in third degree burns? Yes or no? If the answer is no, then it is physically impossible for it to result in third degree burns, regardless of the amount of time. This is basic physics. It's really not that complicated.
To phrase it another way, suppose I have a single 2 ounce butane canister. Can the butane canister reach a high enough temperature to cook 10 gallons of Chile? Sure. Even if you use a pressure cooker, the butane canister can produce heat well over the necessary temperature. Does the butane canister have enough energy to cook 10 gallons of Chile? No. Because eventually, the butane will burn out.
The human body is already 98.6 degrees. If 140 degree coffee has the power to heat you up by 100 units of energy, then 185 degree coffee has the power to heat you up by 200 units of energy. This means that 185 degree coffee has the power to do twice as much damage.
However, it doesn't end there. First off, heat is transferred to the air, as well as to the person. However, since air is a poor conductor of heat, it transfers to the air much more slowly. Hence, if we can slow down the transfer of heat to the person, we can increase the amount that dissipates into the air. Newton says that the transfer of heat is proportional to the difference in temperature. So that means that 185 degree coffee will transfer heat much faster than 140 degree coffee, which means a lot less time for heat loss.
Tin's numbers say that if temperature is constant and energy is essentially infinite, 150 degree coffee will burn you in 2 seconds, while 140 degree coffee will burn you in 6 seconds.
If increasing the temperature by only 10 degrees results in being burned 3 times faster, then what happens when you increase the temperature by 45 degrees?
You're just grasping at distracting nitpicks. Really, it would be, say, 7 seconds before 140 degree coffee spilled into a bucket seat and sweatpants would actually cause 3rd degree burns. because of physics.
Yar, is it possible for a car to travel from NY to LA on a single gallon of gas?
After all, if a single gallon of gas allows my car to move even 1 mph, then it's going to reach LA eventually, right?
Total energy in a closed system apparently doesn't matter.
Well now you're just being silly. There is a reason the temperature rule applies. Because it means that the consumer of a purchased cup of coffee can expect it to arrive at a certain temperaure, and therefore have a certain level of risk.
So the reason that the coffee is at that temperature is so that the customer can expect it to be at that temperature?
You realize that you didn't actually answer anything, right?
If you would like a meat example: a really good hamburger is cooked medium.
Yeah, because a hamburger cooked at medium has a different molecular structure, which results in different flavor and texture.
You have failed to demonstrate that this applies to coffee.
If you would like a meat example: a really good hamburger is cooked medium. This puts me at risk of E. Colli. Now, if I am at a restaurant which cooks its burgers to medium, not because they will be more juicy and delicious but because they take less time to cook, I am at the same risk of E. Coli and must be equally aware. The reason the risk exists does not matter anymore. All that matters is that the risk is there, and I am aware of it, or should be.
So there's a risk of getting E. coli whenever you eat a burger, right? So if you eat a burger and get E. coli, then suing would be a frivolous action?
Nope, at that point the analogy has been stretched too thin. Analogies are good for illustrating a point, but almost nothing is exactly the same, so if you push it far enough it will no longer be helpful. While the details in that link are quite slim, I would assume that they managed to proved that the E.Coli was a result of negligence on the part of Jack in the Box. For instance if meat were not stored at proper temperatures, cooked food was allowed to come into contact directly or indirectly with uncooked food, or they were serving ground meat that they were presenting as having been cooked to 165 degrees when it wasn't.
All of that is just conjecture though, and has absolutely no bearing on the Liebeck case. I was merely attempting to give a closer analogy than Schrodinger's spurious one.
Maybe he doesn't understand integrals, and that what we're talking about is basically an integration of time exposure versus temperature, and that the graph for this in the 180 degree case will start thirty degrees higher? Of course, I'll admit that I'm entirely unsure of what the dropoff in temperature on that graph might look like (linear, exponential, and what the coefficients and powers involved might be). But I'm reasonably certain that tinwhiskers is even less familiar with it, and has not even considered its existence.
You don't even need to discuss integrals and curves and what not. Here's a very simple way of phrasing the question:
Does the coffee have enough joules of heat energy to result in third degree burns? Yes or no? If the answer is no, then it is physically impossible for it to result in third degree burns, regardless of the amount of time. This is basic physics. It's really not that complicated.
To phrase it another way, suppose I have a single 2 ounce butane canister. Can the butane canister reach a high enough temperature to cook 10 gallons of Chile? Sure. Even if you use a pressure cooker, the butane canister can produce heat well over the necessary temperature. Does the butane canister have enough energy to cook 10 gallons of Chile? No. Because eventually, the butane will burn out.
The human body is already 98.6 degrees. If 140 degree coffee has the power to heat you up by 100 units of energy, then 185 degree coffee has the power to heat you up by 200 units of energy. This means that 185 degree coffee has the power to do twice as much damage.
However, it doesn't end there. First off, heat is transferred to the air, as well as to the person. However, since air is a poor conductor of heat, it transfers to the air much more slowly. Hence, if we can slow down the transfer of heat to the person, we can increase the amount that dissipates into the air. Newton says that the transfer of heat is proportional to the difference in temperature. So that means that 185 degree coffee will transfer heat much faster than 140 degree coffee, which means a lot less time for heat loss.
Tin's numbers say that if temperature is constant and energy is essentially infinite, 150 degree coffee will burn you in 2 seconds, while 140 degree coffee will burn you in 6 seconds.
If increasing the temperature by only 10 degrees results in being burned 3 times faster, then what happens when you increase the temperature by 45 degrees?
You're just grasping at distracting nitpicks. Really, it would be, say, 7 seconds before 140 degree coffee spilled into a bucket seat and sweatpants would actually cause 3rd degree burns. because of physics.
Yar, is it possible for a car to travel from NY to LA on a single gallon of gas?
After all, if a single gallon of gas allows my car to move even 1 mph, then it's going to reach LA eventually, right?
Total energy in a closed system apparently doesn't matter.
Temperatures for heat transfer are in Kelvin so 98.6(310K) 150F(338K) 185F(358K)are more similar than you are acting like.
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Brewed coffee begins to lose its optimal taste moments after brewing so only brew as much coffee as will be consumed immediately. If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit. It should never be left on an electric burner for longer than 15 minutes because it will begin to develop a burned taste. If the coffee is not to be served immediately after brewing, it should be poured into a warmed, insulated thermos and used within the next 45 minutes.
Do the tanks at McDonalds use electric heat to maintain the temperature for longer than 15 minutes at a time?
Because if they do, then maintaining coffee at high temperature for extended periods of time actually makes the coffee taste worst, not better.
You don't get to hide behind NCA guidelines if you aren't willing to follow them all the way through.
Also, brewed coffee loses optimal taste after a few minutes and should be consumed immediately. I'm pretty sure McDonalds doesn't do that.
I wonder if anyone thought of that, or they assume you're smart enough to sacrifice "optimal taste" for "Not needing a skin graft on your tongue".
Serving coffee below 180-185 degrees is bad, not because anything cooler is too cold for coffee, but because the lower temperature means that you've been letting it sit out for too long.
Of course, since McDonalds is already violating the "serve immediately" rule, as well as the "don't keep on electric burners for more than 15 minutes" rule, the entire guideline is irrelevant.
Right, the problem with the system isn't in the ratio of winning doctors vs losing doctors, it's that it's essentially random. Cases where egregious errors occur get nothing, cases where it's obvious there was no wrongdoing win millions.
You know who serves coffee below 185 degrees?
COMMUNISTS.
No, it really isn't.
(Yes, I just referenced the AEI. Hope the devil has wooly unmentionables.)
There's also a willful disregard for the basic laws of physics.
Hey, you know how ice melts as it cools down, as the temperature of the ice and the temperature of the liquid attempt to reach an equilibrium?
Well, hot coffee will cool down as it heats things up. So even though 140 coffee could theoretically lead to burns after 6 seconds, it wouldn't stay at 140 degrees for that long.
Why is it so hard to explain?
Its not hard to explain, its a pointless observation. 150 degree water is 3rd degree burns in 2 seconds. That it will not stay at 150 degree the entire 2 seconds is meaningless, neither will 185F coffee stay at 185F. Unless you intend to argue 150 coffee will not cause 3rd degree burns, because the total heat available to transfer is insufficient, that after it hits your lap its 149.7 degrees doesn't matter. And volume and contact surface(lol sweat pants) matter as much to that assertion as temp does.
All coffee served at restaurant temps will burn you when spilled into your lap.
The reasonable expectation is that it will do this. Its a hot fluid that is produces at 190F+, serving it closely to its time of brewing is a widely accepted standard(is desirable even) and the time since its brewing(more importantly the corresponding decay in its temp) is an indeterminable quality to you the user.
That 185F coffee may burn you more severely than cooler coffee is meaningless, because that's a statement that's true of all coffee down to a temperature where no one would desire coffee.
A 180 FPS pellet gun will takes someones eye out.
So will a 170/160/150/140 FPS pellet gun. A 50 fps pellet gun won't, but is worthless as a pellet gun.
The manufacture of the 180 FPS pellet gun isn't liable if you shoot your eye out with it, because its not a 140 fps pellet gun, and therefor more dangerous.
Regardless of your feelings of how it turned out, it's a pretty bad example of a frivolous lawsuit and is greatly overused by people who are unfamiliar with the actual facts of the case as evidence of a tort system gone mad.
To put it another way:
If this is the best and most-used example of how crazy tort law in the US is, then we're doing pretty damn well.
Actually it is the opposite of meaningless
that thing
when something is really really relevant and important
its that thing that means the opposite of whatever you just said.
We have two choices, here:
A) Pick a line between acceptable and unacceptable, acknowledging that selection of such a line is at least partially arbitrary.
You are apparently arguing in favor of B. If not, please give us your suggestion for A.
1) Coffee is made with water at a temperature up to 212F(while 212 is not ideal for flavor arguing 212 vs 205 vs 190 for brewing temp is non-consequential as any of them will cause sever injury), but these extreme temperatures are the norm.
2)Serving coffee directly from brewing(or so close that temperature changes are within the range of brewing temps and other variables) is a normally acceptable practice. In fact freshly brewed is a desirable trait for coffee.
3) You as the purchaser of the coffee cannot know how long ago brewing occurred, along with all the other variables associated with the change in the coffees temperature from the brewing temperature(which you are also unaware of).
Therefore: the reasonable expectation for the temperature of the coffee is anywhere up to the brewing temperature.(OMG IT WILL COOL AFTER THEY MAKE IT !!!11!!!!111)
Super-heated pressurized water used to brew coffee...you might be on to something here....hell it would even brew faster than normal coffee...we could call it express coffee....sounds kinda lame in English...maybe a foreign sounding name would be better....SchnellKaffe We're gonna be RICH!
I can throw a baseball at 20 mph.
At that rate, the baseball that I just threw can penetrate 12 inches of solid steel in about 1/30th of a second.
Oh, what's that?
I've just been told that physics doesn't work like that.
Two bullets target a piece of plywood. One bullet is fired from a gun, the other bullet is thrown by hand.
By your logic, one bullet isn't significantly more dangerous than the other. Either both bullets will penetrate the plywood, or neither bullet penetrates the plywood. The speed that the bullet is travelling is meaningless, because both both bullets lose speed the moment they hit the plywood.
1) Coffee burns people because it transfers its heat energy to the persons skin.
2) Once it transfers its heat energy to the persons skin, it's no longer as hot.
Look dude, you're trying to break the laws of thermodynamics. You're trying to assert that the coffee will transfer 99% of its excess heat energy to the person, while still maintaining 99% of its excess heat energy. That is not how physics works!
I wasn't aware that McDonalds served their coffee within minutes of them serving it. I suppose you also think that the chicken nuggets are made from scratch every hour?
160 degrees. This is the line. If everyone drank their coffee black, you could drop that to 150 degrees. However realistically you probably need to give a five or ten degree grace for holding purposes, as 160 degrees is the minimum. That means 160-170 degrees.
Either way it doesn't matter. All of those temperatures are severe enough to cause at least second degree burns. If a defective product caused you second degree burns, the company that sold it to you would be liable. Whereas if a dangerous but not defective product caused you third degree burns, the company that sold it to you would not be liable, even if you only expected second degree burns in that situation.
That's a pretty big point. If a dangerous product is more dangerous than you expected, but in the same manner as it is always dangerous, that product does not become defective; a more powerful chainsaw, a faster snowmobile, a hotter cup of coffee, a sharper knife.
P.S. The reason the knife example is nice is that it is another product which is knowingly dangerous so if you hurt yourself with it, even if it is worse than you thought you could, that is not actionable. It is only actionable if the knife hurt you because it was defective. If the handle broke when reasonable pressure was applied to it causing you to injure yourself. If the coffee cup collapsed in your hand. It merely being sharper and therefore more dangerous than you expected does not meet the standard for defective. It is also a conveneintely similar object, simple, non-mechanical, inherently dangerous.
--LeVar Burton
Are you going to address these criticisms... ever?
Exactly. Both liquids will cool fairly rapidly as they spread out and are exposed to air, cloth, and skin.
One of these liquids, however, will still be upwards of thirty degrees hotter after a couple seconds.
Maybe he doesn't understand integrals, and that what we're talking about is basically an integration of time exposure versus temperature, and that the graph for this in the 180 degree case will start thirty degrees higher? Of course, I'll admit that I'm entirely unsure of what the dropoff in temperature on that graph might look like (linear, exponential, and what the coefficients and powers involved might be). But I'm reasonably certain that tinwhiskers is even less familiar with it, and has not even considered its existence.
That's a pretty nice jib. Gotta say I like how it's cut.
With a conflicting expert testimony on the other side.
This is largely my opinion, but I don't see an on-site empirical test as equivalent to the conflicting testimonies of two different experts.
I am attempting to address your very first post in the thread:
First off, I'm giving you a charitable reading here that you're not merely arguing that Liebeck broke from precedent, but that it was anomalous in general. (If we really wanted to talk about precedent, we'd be confining our discussion to cases that occurred prior to Liebeck.) If we're going to recognize that Liebeck was anomalous, we also have to recognize that it was not argued comparatively to any other single case. I will admit that I have not read every case you mentioned, but the first 8 or 10 or so all involved far weaker complaints - fewer (or no) expert witnesses, less severe injury (I know you say that's irrelevant; I will address that in a moment), no evidence of prior knowledge of severe risk on the part of the defendant.
Saying that, in aggregate, each of these cases individually addressed every argument in Liebeck doesn't quite compute. Liability can be a relatively complex calculus - saying that factor 1 was present in case X while factor 2 was present in case Y and factor 3 was present in case Z and so forth does not necessarily imply that given all those factors together that the determination would be the same.
You're not quite making an apples-to-apples comparison. I will grant that you are coming very close, but you're not quite there.
I'm also going to speculate for a moment here - many of these cases you've brought up occurred after Liebeck. Had Liebeck not been settled, and had a higher court provided an opinion on the matter, it's entirely possible that the subsequent cases would have been decided differently. But, as I said, that's speculation, and not meant to be a compelling argument.
It appears, though obviously IANAL, that Holowaty is novel in this regard. Except for the BB gun case that Holowaty referenced, I wasn't able to find any other case law directly discussing whether the severity of an injury should be taken into account when deciding if that injury was forseeable. In other words, I couldn't find any other judge saying that a duty to warn only exists for injuries that are unusual in kind rather than in degree.
So I put on my Armchair Intellectual hat, and looked it up... in my undergraduate law textbook. (Yep, I took an undergraduate class in tort law, years ago, and that clearly qualifies me to argue tort law authoritatively on a video game forum on the Internet. That was sarcasm, BTW.) My book references the Restatement (Third) of Torts. Not a binding document, but a reliable treatise. The quoted passage reads: "The magnitude of the risk is the foreeable severity of the harm discounted by the foreseeable probability that it will occur."
I found this restated here: http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/study/outlines/html/torts/torts17.htm - again, not case law, but a guideline. (The link doesn't make it obvious, but this is actually an excerpt from this book.)
Another reference found through a simple Google search, from the Boston College Law Review: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2311&context=bclr&sei-redir=1
It seems, just on a layperson's reading, that the severity of the injury can affect the foreseeability. This makes me somewhat suspicious of the court opinion in Holowaty that only the kind of injury, and not the degree of injury, is relevant.
Anyway, I think I'm done talking about Liebeck for a while. I'm satisfied with your clarification of your position, though ultimately I think you're giving an overly generous reading to the cases you cite.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Just giving some perspective, is all.
Irrelevant, because McDonalds doesn't do this. They store their coffee in heated vessels for long periods of time, which the NCA strictly recommends against doing.
Irrelevant, because McDonalds doesn't leave the coffee out and allow the coffee to cool on it's own, they keep the coffee in heated vessels to maintain temperature.
I wasn't aware of the fact that people were literally ordering a cup of steam, since obviously, the brewing temperature and the serving temperature is interchangeable.
Of course it applies. If I can generally assume my coffee will arrive at 180 degrees because it is freshly brewed, I must take appropriate caution with all cups of coffee I buy. Unless I suppose she had asked, found out it was not freshly, and acted less cautiously as a result.
--LeVar Burton
The fact that Liebeck managed to win the case means that it was, pretty much by definition, not a frivolous lawsuit. At least not by any reasonable definition of "frivolous lawsuit," nor the legal definition.
Other cases showed that McDonald's coffee was actually slightly cooler than normal. When you say cooler, though, how much cooler?
Ok, if it's number of people, then how many is ok? 1 in 24 million is too often, so then how often is ok?
I'm objecting to it's utter lack of basic reason or usefulness to anything. McDonald's coffee was cooler. It was cooler than, say, the sun. It was cooler than boiling. It was cooler than a lot of things. You saying "cooler" isn't saying anything. Cooler than what, and how much cooler? If zero harm isn't the goal, then how much harm is ok?
You really don't see that your suggestion is empty? Sure, cooler means less harm. But they still get sued and deemed negligent. Because it could have been cooler. So they make it cooler, and less people are injured, but some still are and they still sue. And win, because, according to you, it could have been cooler, and then less people would have been hurt. Your suggestion here is useless. You have no point at all until a) you can say just how cool it has to be, or just how many people hurt is acceptable, and/or b) state a specific, actionable thing McD's should have done the wouldn't have been negligent. "Cooler" doesn't cut it, because 0.0000001 degrees less is cooler, and accomplishes nothing, or c) acknowledge that you are in fact saying that the risk must be zero, they must ensure zero incidents of any harm. Because if there is even one incident of any harm, then your argument applies, it could have been cooler, and less people would have been harmed.
It's an incomplete argument. It presumes that the 5 second number doesn't already factor in thermodynamics. It presumes that just saying "physics" somehow answer anything. It doesn't. Fine, you don't believe the red cross and expert testimony because your physcis is superior. You still haven't answered any point or argument with that. You're just grasping at distracting nitpicks. Really, it would be, say, 7 seconds before 140 degree coffee spilled into a bucket seat and sweatpants would actually cause 3rd degree burns. because of physics. Cool. This changes nothing. This woman wasn't able to do much anyway. She was old, and basically sat there in pain.
I already gave you the line. It was easy. I think I said 190? And tin and I aren't the one's claiming that someone crossed a line, so I really don't see how the burden is on us to say where it is.
More to the point - the line is when the coffee you serve is hotter than normal and hotter than recommended. There's never been a case that met these standard, but if there were it would actually need to be somewhere around 205 probably. And as tin and I are also pointing out, this still probably wouldn't win you the case unless you could show that the harm was specifically because the coffee was 205, and wouldn't have happened at 190 or 185.
Ok? So what's your alternative temperature?
Feral, your citations that talk about degree of injury are talking about how you assess the risk being posed. Defense is not disputing that they were aware of the risk of 3rd degree burns. This does say something about just how negligent they are, if they are being negligent. Being negligent on stubbed toes is meaningfully different that being negligent on losing limbs. However, this is not a standard you can us in determining IF they are negligent or liable. Saying that people know coffee can burn you, but not how badly, does not make a case of negligence. If negligence were proven through some legitimate means, then you might be able to use the forseeable degree of injury as an argument on just how awful their negligence was.
So, anyway, this thread is called "hot coffee." It's not like we're on a tangent with this.
This might apply, but I don't think it does here. The severity of the issue would be relevent if say, a butterknife ended up being razor sharp and instead of causing an abbrasion cut to the bone. Going from a negligable hurt to a major injury. I don't think that would apply however to the difference between second degree or third degree burns. Going from a serious injury to a more serious injury.
--LeVar Burton
Is McDonalds coffee that hot because they brew their coffee within minutes of serving it?
Or is their coffee that hot because they store it in heated vessels for long periods of time?
You keep citing guidelines that don't apply to McDonalds, because they're not following those guidelines in the first place.
We are, though. Here was the legal question that was to be considered:
"Should a company that provides a product that's known to be moderately dangerous be held liable if it turns out to be much more dangerous than a reasonable person would believe?"
That's (IMO) a valid question to raise with a lawsuit, even if it's found that the company isn't liable.
Disagreeing with the ruling is significantly different than citing the case as a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit, as commonly happens. Again, she had suffered damages and there was an argument to be made (whether or not you think it should hold up in court) that McDonald's was partially at fault. This is what tort was made for, even if in this specific case (for the sake of argument), the jury got it wrong.
Not necessarily. Given a little luck a frivolous lawsuit can be won. Jury nullification is a thing. I don't know of any reason why it couldn't apply to civil cases as much as criminal ones. If a doctor was not negligent, but was on the stand giggling about his patients' loss of the wrong arm, the guy might just lose anyway. Definitely not saying that's what happened here.
--LeVar Burton
The five second figure assumes the same temperature, but a much greater quantity of heat energy.
What does more damage to your windshield: A water balloon travelling at 20 mph, or a heavy bolder traveling at 20 mph?
They both have the same speed, but the second object has far more energy. The water balloon will lose almost all of it's energy the moment it hits your windshield. The bolder will lose some energy when it hits your windshield, but it will still have more than enough energy to smash your window.
The recommendations say that you shouldn't leave coffee on a burner for more than 15 minutes.
Does McDonalds leave their coffee on the burner for more than 15 minutes?
Why are they allowed to ignore some rules, but not others?
Again, you cite the recommended temperature. You haven't explained WHY it's the recommended temperature, other than the fact that it signifies something that doesn't even apply in the case of McDonalds.
To put it another way, let's say I make a rule that you shouldn't serve beef that's turned green, because that means that it's been left out too long and has spoiled. Does that make it okay for McDonalds to start selling spoiled meat with toxic red paint, because that way it's no longer green? Or are you simply relying on an abstract rule of thumb while completely ignoring the reason why that rule is in place?
It doesn't matter. If I the customer can generally expect my coffee to arrive at dangerously high temperatures, I must behave accordingly whether or not it arrives that way this particular time. Like I said, unless you are suggesting that the injury in this case was caused because she knew the coffee was not brewed freshly, and therefore did not think she had to take as much caution.
--LeVar Burton
Well now you're just being silly. There is a reason the temperature rule applies. Because it means that the consumer of a purchased cup of coffee can expect it to arrive at a certain temperaure, and therefore have a certain level of risk. If I ever buy a cup of coffee anywhere whether it is Alto Grande from the French Laundry, or burned Folgers from a greasy spoon, I know that it will come out at a temperature that will scald me if I pour it into my lap. At that point it no longer matters why it is at that temperature. I must expect it, therefore I must act accordingly.
If you would like a meat example: a really good hamburger is cooked medium. This puts me at risk of E. Colli. Now, if I am at a restaurant which cooks its burgers to medium, not because they will be more juicy and delicious but because they take less time to cook, I am at the same risk of E. Coli and must be equally aware. The reason the risk exists does not matter anymore. All that matters is that the risk is there, and I am aware of it, or should be.
--LeVar Burton
So there's a risk of getting E. coli whenever you eat a burger, right? So if you eat a burger and get E. coli, then suing would be a frivolous action?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_in_the_Box#E._coli_disaster
First remember that temperatures for heat transfer & enthalpy are in Kelvin so 185F(358K) 150F(338K) are more similar than you assume.
there's a couple factors here:
1) the volume of the coffee and the surface area it is spilled over. Twice the amount of coffee will need twice the amount of energy absorbed in order to cool it. Once again going back to the sweatpants, you're not going to get a huge amount of spread of the coffee. Its going to get sucked into a limited area and held there.
2) And this is the big one(and the base data for 150 water needs to account for this as well), the amount of movement. Fluids tend to make a film over what ever they are contacting which kills heat transfer rates.
You basically have a layer of hot liquid riding on a layer of cooler liquid, and all the heat has to be transfered through this film. Same concept as wind chill, you need a flow perpendicular to the contact surface to break up this boundary.
So sticking a corpse hand(I'm assuming something equivalent for the standards test) in 150 degree water off sufficient volume to be iso-thermic, may not differ substantially from having the coffee spilled on you, because the rate of the coffee cooling through you is already limited by this film, much more the temperature gradient.
For example: take a stainless steel spoon and stick it into a cup of near-boiling water. The spoon conducts heat 20-80x more efficiently than water does. But it still takes substantial time for the end of the spoon to become warm to the touch, let alone untouchable. It doesn't instantly reach thermal equalibirum, and the boundary layer(though much smaller than the spoon) and especially your skin, are much poorer conductors of heat than the spoon is.
Yes heat must leave the water to enter the body, but the rate at which you can draw heat from the coffee into the body isn't infinite. The body isn't a unlimited heat sink that will suck in all the coffees energy in a few seconds and reach equilibrium.
The specific heat of water is 1 BTU/ LB degree F. An ounce of water is ~1 oz in weight, so a 16 oz coffee chilled from 150 degrees to 140 requires ~10 BTUs transferred. Lets say this takes place inside the 2 second window not burning her. That means the cooling rate of 150 degree coffee is 18,000 BTU's an hour.
For comparison purposes, a propane grill is 30,000 BTUs an hour. A home stove around 7000.
By saying the coffee is dropping 10 degrees to avoid her getting burned, you are saying the amount of heat going from the coffee to her crotch, is the equivalent of 2-1/4 gas stove burners running on high. In other words, to cool 16 oz of coffee 10 degrees with your crotch in 2 seconds, is the same as sticking your crotch on a small gas grill for 2 seconds. Do you think that won't give you 3rd degree burns?
You don't even need to discuss integrals and curves and what not. Here's a very simple way of phrasing the question:
Does the coffee have enough joules of heat energy to result in third degree burns? Yes or no? If the answer is no, then it is physically impossible for it to result in third degree burns, regardless of the amount of time. This is basic physics. It's really not that complicated.
To phrase it another way, suppose I have a single 2 ounce butane canister. Can the butane canister reach a high enough temperature to cook 10 gallons of Chile? Sure. Even if you use a pressure cooker, the butane canister can produce heat well over the necessary temperature. Does the butane canister have enough energy to cook 10 gallons of Chile? No. Because eventually, the butane will burn out.
The human body is already 98.6 degrees. If 140 degree coffee has the power to heat you up by 100 units of energy, then 185 degree coffee has the power to heat you up by 200 units of energy. This means that 185 degree coffee has the power to do twice as much damage.
However, it doesn't end there. First off, heat is transferred to the air, as well as to the person. However, since air is a poor conductor of heat, it transfers to the air much more slowly. Hence, if we can slow down the transfer of heat to the person, we can increase the amount that dissipates into the air. Newton says that the transfer of heat is proportional to the difference in temperature. So that means that 185 degree coffee will transfer heat much faster than 140 degree coffee, which means a lot less time for heat loss.
Tin's numbers say that if temperature is constant and energy is essentially infinite, 150 degree coffee will burn you in 2 seconds, while 140 degree coffee will burn you in 6 seconds.
If increasing the temperature by only 10 degrees results in being burned 3 times faster, then what happens when you increase the temperature by 45 degrees?
Yar, is it possible for a car to travel from NY to LA on a single gallon of gas?
After all, if a single gallon of gas allows my car to move even 1 mph, then it's going to reach LA eventually, right?
Total energy in a closed system apparently doesn't matter.
So the reason that the coffee is at that temperature is so that the customer can expect it to be at that temperature?
You realize that you didn't actually answer anything, right?
Yeah, because a hamburger cooked at medium has a different molecular structure, which results in different flavor and texture.
You have failed to demonstrate that this applies to coffee.
Nope, at that point the analogy has been stretched too thin. Analogies are good for illustrating a point, but almost nothing is exactly the same, so if you push it far enough it will no longer be helpful. While the details in that link are quite slim, I would assume that they managed to proved that the E.Coli was a result of negligence on the part of Jack in the Box. For instance if meat were not stored at proper temperatures, cooked food was allowed to come into contact directly or indirectly with uncooked food, or they were serving ground meat that they were presenting as having been cooked to 165 degrees when it wasn't.
All of that is just conjecture though, and has absolutely no bearing on the Liebeck case. I was merely attempting to give a closer analogy than Schrodinger's spurious one.
--LeVar Burton
Temperatures for heat transfer are in Kelvin so 98.6(310K) 150F(338K) 185F(358K)are more similar than you are acting like.