• OpenPassageways
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      1 year ago

      It’s commonly used as an example of a frivolous lawsuit, because everyone knows coffee is hot right? Of course coffee can burn you.

      The issue is that this particular coffee was negligently hot, so hot that the victim had third-degree burns on her privates. Also, the victim originally only sought coverage for medical expenses, but instead McD went to court and had to pay out a much larger amount.

      Anyone who thinks this lawsuit was frivolous, try to find some of the pictures of her burns.

    • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      The media reporting was that is was frivolous, someone burned themselves on coffee and wanted to blame McDonald’s. That wasn’t the full story.

    • doublejay1999@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      IIRC the narrative and the headline was “duh ! Hot coffee is hot! Idiot! “. ……But it turned out something like, McD coffee was like 99 degrees versus 70 degrees for your average cup and it was decided that makes a difference.

      You’d have to check that, but that’s what I remember .

      IMHO you still handle a hot drink like it could scald you , that’s your responsibility and your taught that from like 5 years old . However, you wouldn’t expect to be handed pretty much boiling water in a plastic cup .

      • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well it was super super hot, like you said. It was handed off to some grandma, the lid popped off, and the super hot coffee spilled all over this very old woman’s inner thighs. There were pictures.

        Old people have notoriously thin skin. Literally. So this hot-ass coffee burns this old woman’s thin skin, and I think the resulting burns needed to be fixed via hospital visits & maybe surgery. So yeah it wasn’t a frivolous lawsuit.