[color=blue]Tune back in at 11 and Thaylin will report on more shit from his blog that nobody reads?[/color]

Americas sense of justice is that the majority of people thought the origional ruling was unfounded, and in the end, the correct ruling won out. We are human just as you, and make mistakes, at least we try to fix them at the end of the day.

AdamG

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Kamij $.02

"overweight pig squeezing a cup of hot coffee while driving"

Actually, we don't let pigs (or any other animal for that matter) drive in the United States of America. You must be confusing the USA with your country that, judging by your post, has animals smarter than some of its citizens.

Assholes. It burned off her outer labia. Talk to me when you're willing to have your scrotum fried.

France

dpille: You need to consider that the McDonalds provided the woman with a hot cup of coffee based on her request. She then choose to place it between her legs and spill it on herself. Since the McDonalds did not pour the coffee on her labia they therefore have no resposibility for what the woman choose to do with the coffee once they gave it to her.

Bottom Line: She's an idiot and did it to herself. Justice prevailed and corporations were exonerated from a BS lawsuit from a sleazy lawyer/idiot woman. It is just sad that the first trial showed some of the flaws in the american justice system.

Ancient Cartographer of the Black Dragons

When I used to manage Burger King, after the trial, the corporate office changed our policy and we had to put all cups of hot coffee in a small brown paper bag and hand the bag to our customer. They were not allowed to refuse the bag, however they could hand us the bag back once they took thier coffee out. They also added a warning label to the coffee cups stating that "WARNING : HOT COFFEE IS HOT AND MAY BURN IF SPILT" For more information, see "help axiom one"

AdamG

Kamij $.02

[color=blue]It didn't orginally help mc donald's that the prosecution obtained a corporate memo telling McD managers to make coffee hotter than normmal to cause less peopel to ask for free refills, but minor detail right?

Also, I've had coffee spilled on me, hell I had a kid drop a metal pizza flipper one my leg this summer, neither required a damn skin graph or even gave 3rd degree burns so the cup that lady had had to be exceedingly hot.

I have a pic to describe this thread:[/color]

[img]http://tinypic.com/jqlv5u.jpg[/img]

Americas sense of justice is that the majority of people thought the origional ruling was unfounded, and in the end, the correct ruling won out. We are human just as you, and make mistakes, at least we try to fix them at the end of the day.
So Sue Me.lol.

Permanent Newbie.....LOL

Reprint from th Wall Street Journal - article by Andrea Gerlin

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—When a law firm here found itself defending McDonald's Corp. in a suit last year that claimed the company served dangerously hot coffee, it hired a law student to take temperatures at other local restaurants for comparison.

After dutifully slipping a thermometer into steaming cups and mugs all over the city, Danny Jarrett found that none came closer than about 20 degrees to the temperature at which McDonald's coffee is poured, about 180 degrees.

It should have been a warning.

But McDonald's lawyers went on to dismiss several opportunities to settle out of court, apparently convinced that no jury would punish a company for serving coffee the way customers like it. After all, its coffee's temperature helps explain why McDonald's sells a billion cups a year.

But now - days after a jury here awarded $2.9 million to an 81-year-old woman scalded by McDonald's coffee - some observers say the defense was naïve. "I drink McDonald's coffee because it's hot, the hottest coffee around," says Robert Gregg, a Dallas defense attorney who consumes it during morning drives to the office. "But I've predicted for years that someone's going to win a suit, because I've spilled it on myself. And unlike the coffee I make at home, it's really hot. I mean, man, it hurts."

McDonald's, known for its fastidious control over franchisees, requires that its coffee be prepared at very high temperatures, based on recommendations of coffee consultants and industry groups that say hot temperatures are necessary to fully extract the flavor during brewing.

Before trial, McDonald's gave the opposing lawyer its operations and training manual, which says its coffee must be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste. Since the verdict, McDonald's has declined to offer any comment, as have their attorneys. It is unclear if the company, whose coffee cups warn drinkers that the contents are hot, plans to change its preparation procedures.

Coffee temperature is suddenly a hot topic in the industry. The Specialty Coffee Association of America has put coffee safety on the agenda of its quarterly board meeting this month. And a spokesman for Dunkin' Donuts Inc., which sells about 500 million cups of coffee a year, says the company is looking at the verdict to see if it needs to make any changes to the way it makes coffee.

Others call it a tempest in a coffeepot. A spokesman for the National Coffee Association says McDonald's coffee conforms to industry temperature standards. And a spokesman for Mr. Coffee Inc., the coffee-machine maker, says that if customer complaints are any indication, industry settings may be too low - some customers like it hotter. A spokeswoman for Starbucks Coffee Co. adds, "Coffee is traditionally a hot beverage and is served hot and I would hope that this is an isolated incident."

Coffee connoisseur William McAlpin, an importer and wholesaler in Bar Harbor, Maine, who owns a coffee plantation in Costa Rica, says 175 degrees is "probably the optimum temperature, because that's when aromatics are being released. Once the aromas get in your palate, that is a large part of what makes the coffee a pleasure to drink."

Public opinion is squarely on the side of McDonald's. Polls have shown a large majority of Americans - including many who typically support the little guy - to be outraged at the verdict. And radio talk-show hosts around the country have lambasted the plaintiff, her attorneys and the jurors on air. Declining to be interviewed for this story, one juror explained that he already had received angry calls from citizens around the country.

It's a reaction that many of the jurors could have understood - before they heard the evidence. At the beginning of the trial, jury foreman Jerry Goens says he "wasn't convinced as to why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill."

At that point, Mr. Goens and the other jurors knew only the basic facts: that two years earlier, Stella Liebeck had bought a 49-cent cup of coffee at the drive-in window of an Albuquerque McDonald's, and while removing the lid to add cream and sugar had spilled it, causing third-degree burns of the groin, inner thighs and buttocks. Her suit, filed in state court in Albuquerque, claimed the coffee was "defective" because it was so hot.

What the jury didn't realize initially was the severity of her burns. Told during the trial of Mrs. Liebeck's seven days in the hospital and her skin grafts, and shown gruesome photographs, jurors began taking the matter more seriously. "It made me come home and tell my wife and daughters don't drink coffee in the car, at least not hot," says juror Jack Elliott.

Even more eye-opening was the revelation that McDonald's had seen such injuries many times before. Company documents showed that in the past decade McDonald's had received at least 700 reports of coffee burns ranging from mild to third degree, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.

Some observers wonder why McDonald's, after years of settling coffee-burn cases, chose to take this one to trial. After all, the plaintiff was a sympathetic figure - an articulate, 81-year-old former department store clerk who said under oath that she had never filed suit before. In fact, she said, she never would have filed this one if McDonald's hadn't dismissed her requests for compensation for pain and medical bills with an offer of $800.

Then there was the matter of Mrs. Liebeck's attorney. While recuperating from her injuries in the Santa Fe home of her daughter, Mrs. Liebeck happened to meet a pair of Texas transplants familiar with a Houston attorney who had handled a 1986 hot-coffee lawsuit against McDonald's. His name was Reed Morgan, and ever since he had deeply believed that McDonald's coffee is too hot.

For that case, involving a Houston woman with third-degree burns, Mr. Morgan had the temperature of coffee taken at 18 restaurants such as Dairy Queen, Wendy's and Dunkin' Donuts, and at 20 McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's, his investigator found, accounted for nine of the 12 hottest readings. Also for that case, Mr. Morgan deposed Christopher Appleton, a McDonald's quality assurance manager, who said "he was aware of this risk…and had no plans to turn down the heat," according to Mr. Morgan. McDonald's settled that case for $27,500.

Now, plotting Mrs. Liebeck's case, Mr. Morgan planned to introduce photographs of his previous client's injuries and those of a California woman who suffered second- and third-degree burns after a McDonald's employee spilled hot coffee into her vehicle in 1990, a case that was settled out of court for $230,000.

Tracy McGee of Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, the lawyers for McDonald's, strenuously objected. "First-person accounts by sundry women whose nether regions have been scorched by McDonald's coffee might well be worthy of Oprah," she wrote in a motion to state court Judge Robert Scott. "But they have no place in a court of law." Judge Scott did not allow the photographs nor the women's testimony into evidence, but said Mr. Morgan could mention the cases.

As the trial date approached, McDonald's declined to settle. At one point, Mr. Morgan says he offered to drop the case for $300,000, and was willing to accept half that amount.

But McDonald's didn't bite.

Only days before the trial, Judge Scott ordered both sides to attend a mediation session. The mediator, a retired judge, recommended that McDonald's settle for $225,000, saying a jury would be likely to award that amount. The company didn't follow his recommendation.

Instead, McDonald's continued denying any liability for Mrs. Liebeck's burns. The company suggested that she may have contributed to her injuries by holding the cup between her legs and not removing her clothing immediately. And it also argued that "Mrs. Liebeck's age may have caused her injuries to have been worse than they might have been in a younger individual," since older skin is thinner and more vulnerable to injury.

The trial lasted seven sometimes mind-numbing days. Experts dueled over the temperature at which coffee causes burns. A scientist testifying for McDonald's argued that any coffee hotter than 130 degrees could produce third-degree burns, so it didn't matter whether Mc Donald's coffee was hotter. But a doctor testifying on behalf of Mrs. Liebeck argued that lowering the serving temperature to about 160 degrees could make a big difference, because it takes less than three seconds to produce a third-degree burn at 190 degrees, about 12 to 15 seconds at 180 degrees and about 20 seconds at 160 degrees.

The testimony of Mr. Appleton, the McDonald's executive, didn't help the company, jurors said later. He testified that McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but hadn't consulted burn experts about it. He also testified that McDonald's had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns, even though most people wouldn't think it possible. Finally, he testified that McDonald's didn't intend to change any of its coffee policies or procedures, saying, "There are more serious dangers in restaurants."

Mr. Elliott, the juror, says he began to realize that the case was about "callous disregard for the safety of the people."

Next for the defense came P. Robert Knaff, a human-factors engineer who earned $15,000 in fees from the case and who, several jurors said later, didn't help McDonald's either. Dr. Knaff told the jury that hot-coffee burns were statistically insignificant when compared to the billion cups of coffee McDonald's sells annually.

To jurors, Dr. Knaff seemed to be saying that the graphic photos they had seen of Mrs. Liebeck's burns didn't matter because they were rare. "There was a person behind every number and I don't think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that," says juror Betty Farnham.

When the panel reached the jury room, it swiftly arrived at the conclusion that McDonald's was liable. "The facts were so overwhelmingly against the company," says Ms. Farnham. "They were not taking care of their consumers."

Then the six men and six women decided on compensatory damages of $200,000, which they reduced to $160,000 after determining that 20% of the fault belonged with Mrs. Liebeck for spilling the coffee.

The jury then found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct, the basis for punitive damages. Mr. Morgan had suggested penalizing McDonald's the equivalent of one to two days of companywide coffee sales, which he estimated at $1.35 million a day. During the four-hour deliberation, a few jurors unsuccessfully argued for as much as $9.6 million in punitive damages. But in the end, the jury settled on $2.7 million.

McDonald's has since asked the judge for a new trial. Judge Scott has asked both sides to meet with a mediator to discuss settling the case before he rules on McDonald's request. The judge also has the authority to disregard the jury's finding or decrease the amount of damages.

One day after the verdict, a local reporter tested the coffee at the McDonald's that had served Mrs. Liebeck and found it to be a comparatively cool 158 degrees. But industry officials say they doubt that this signals any companywide change. After all, in a series of focus groups last year, customers who buy McDonald's coffee at least weekly say that "morning coffee has minimal taste requirements, but must be hot," to the point of steaming.

One thing you also have to consider is the fact that she used her crotch to hold the cup in place while she added her condiments, rather than her cup holder. Yes, her car had a cup holder, that was how she was going to drive home.. with it in her cup holder. Why this didn't appeal to her, or simply asking the drive through person to do so is negligence on her part.

McDonalds doesn't need to have any sign warning of genital burns, they need signs saying they will not serve anyone stupid enough to risk being burned by something ALWAYS served hot.

Walking the Dark Path Alone

You should recall it wasn't just a hot cup of coffee, it was an exceedingly hot cup of coffee, and hot enough that a jury determined that a reasonable person would have understood that serving coffee that hot posed a forseeable danger. An internal document discussed serving temperatures hotter than could be reasonably consumed. Or do you think that a reasonable person should assume that EVERY cup of coffee ordered must be allowed to cool before ANYONE can drink it? I think it's much more reasonable to assume that coffee is served at a temperature ready to drink. Which would never have burned this woman's labia off.

I don't blame you for eating up media reporting and putting your own spin on it, but your mindset is ignoring reasonable facts.

Would it be okay if, when you ordered some "ice water" from my business, I handed you an uninsulated cup with ice at 1 degree Kelvin that froze your hand off?

If th stirofoam cup could take the coffee without melting then i think it would be tolerable to serve. Its common sense...Coffee is hot.she was just trying to get a check.
Permanent Newbie.....LOL