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How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

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Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#161

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

spikels wrote: post #116
tzs wrote: post #36

"Tort reform" can seriously screw over people, because the parties that tend to favor tort reform (by which they mean greatly limiting the ability of people to sue and/or the amount they can win if they do sue) also tend to favor limiting government regulation and oversight. That can leave nothing to compensate for the removal of the deterrence factor that the threat of lawsuits provides against bad corporate or prof…

Nice theory but the reality is quite different. Medical care is far from a solved problem. For example if you are a teenager who gets an aortic aneurism (literal your heart is about to explode) in a car accident only 50% will survive even with the best care. How can cardiac surgeons afford to save half of these people if they know they will probably be sued by many of the other half with Texas juries awarding million…

>Remember the Texas lawyers and juries who have pretty much ruined the US patent system.

Come on that's not fair. Companies shop for the most technically mal-adept cohort to decide their cases, because they strategize that they can hire a more persuasive lawyer. The residents of East Texas didn't design the legal system that surrounds patent disputes. This is a weakness in the law.

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#162

Post by akira2501 »

SilasX wrote: post #154
akira2501 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jury made a number of findings in the case, one of which was that the warning on the cup wasn't large enough nor sufficient enough to convey the dangers of the temperature of coffee that they serve. I'm sure they also took into consideration that Stella Liebeck originally asked for $20,000 for damages and had tried to negotiate several times before the case went to trial; she clearly went to some length to avoid…

>The jury made a number of findings in the case, one of which was that the warning on the cup wasn't large enough nor sufficient enough to convey the dangers of the temperature of coffee that they serve. So what warning difference resulted from this case? And would Liebeck really have acted any differently had that been the warning all along?

What warning difference? It's hard to find any definitive answers, but the case happened in 1992. Based upon my own recollections, this was the time where every fast-food chain started putting warnings on everything. McDonald's even added warnings to their hot apple pies and other "served hot" foods.

Would Liebeck have acted differently? That's not the objective of the jury in this case, especially considering that McDonald's conceded that their warnings were likely inadequate. To the extent that it is relevant, the jury did find Stella Liebeck 20% at fault for the accident and so the damage award was adjusted accordingly.

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#163

Post by konstruktor »

robryk wrote: post #119
michaelochurch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm still someone who doesn't get it. Coffee is brewed hot (195 - 205 degrees F), and I personally like it to be freshly brewed as I drink it. Detail often missed: she had a lid on the styrofoam cup, properly placed. It wasn't an open cup. The cup and lid were of low quality and, while they passed at lower temperatures, deformed at the serving temperature, enough that the lid popped off, causing the spill. In…

> Detail often missed: she had a lid on the styrofoam cup, properly placed. It wasn't an open cup. The cup and lid were of low quality and, while they passed at lower temperatures, deformed at the serving temperature, enough that the lid popped off, causing the spill. According to the Wikipedia article[1] the lid didn't pop off accidentally: she tried to remove it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonal…

How else would she add the sugar that was provided separately from the already closed cup? This was "by design".

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#164

Post by mturmon »

saryant wrote: post #98
ensignavenger wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an interesting perspective- any studies that show that Texas doctors are significantly worse than doctors in other states?

Texas has some of the best doctors in the world and an innovative healthcare community: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Medical_Center > The Texas Medical Center is the largest medical center in the world with one of the highest densities of clinical facilities for patient care, basic science, and translational research. Located in Greater Houston, the center contains 54 medicine-related institutions, including 21…

I have to note the stereotypically Texan emphasis on sheer size in the above narrative.

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#165

Post by mason240 »

nemo wrote: post #88
stuki wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any coffee heated to the point where it is still drinkable at the end of a 20 minute commute, will be hot enough to kill if poured straight down your throat in one gulp. It is up to the customer to have some sort of clue. I am pretty sure that when granny makes coffee herself at home, she makes it at least as hot as McDonalds serves it. Whistling kettles and all. In a country of millions of people doing stuff, someti…

Tort reform boils down to "I know better than the Bill of Rights, because sometimes I don't like the way people exercise their rights." It's not much different than the thinking behind the cheerleading for other amendments being eroded. McDonalds was egregiously horrible throughout the trial which is why they were hit with punitive damages. "Granny" wanted $20k for the medical expenses of an eight day hospital stay a…

Tort reform boils down to "Getting hurt shouldn't like winning the lottery."

FTFY

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#166

Post by blisterpeanuts »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #159
mirkules wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I simply cannot fathom why people seem to believ that service providers can be held liable for their own stupid decisions. Putting hot coffee in your lap is a stupid decision. When I was a kid, I got a pretty decent electric shock from a neighbor's improperly mounted doorbell. The doorbell did not work, so I flipped it over (it was dangling on some wires) and tried to fix it on the spot (as if I knew what…

People take risks. No-one is going to eliminate all risk from their life. People modify their behaviour according to the risk involved. Putting hot coffee in your lap is a risk, but the level of risk depends on exactly how hot that coffee is. No-one wants coffee of any temperature soaking their lap, but coffee that causes 3rd-degree burns is a lot different from coffee that hurts a bit. I would personally try to avoi…

Most people don't think and behave that logically.

If this coffee is

Nope. People don't do that. They just do the right thing most of the time, dumb things a small fraction of the time. Some people do more dumb things than they should.

The Liebeck situation is an edge case. McDonald's sells tens of millions of cups of coffee a day (depending on the source, 10 million/day or 300 million/month or 500 million a month). If there are several burn cases a year, or even several hundred, that probably does not constitute a significant trend.

There are thousands of people who burn themselves, electrocute themselves, crash their cars, choke on a bone, and do other things that are unfortunate but avoidable with a little common sense.

You can't protect everybody from every contingency, nor would you want to; we would become a nation of prisoners in soft rubber cells, protected from every possible danger. I read a sci-fi story about that once and it was rather unpleasant!

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#167

Post by SilasX »

akira2501 wrote: post #162
SilasX wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The jury made a number of findings in the case, one of which was that the warning on the cup wasn't large enough nor sufficient enough to convey the dangers of the temperature of coffee that they serve. So what warning difference resulted from this case? And would Liebeck really have acted any differently had that been the warning all along?

What warning difference? It's hard to find any definitive answers, but the case happened in 1992. Based upon my own recollections, this was the time where every fast-food chain started putting warnings on everything. McDonald's even added warnings to their hot apple pies and other "served hot" foods. Would Liebeck have acted differently? That's not the objective of the jury in this case, especially considering that M…

I'm just asking the natural follow-up question to the claim that McDonald's is partially at fault for insufficient warning.

If you believe that Liebeck would have done the same thing with or without the improvement to the warning, you can't really blame the substandard warning.

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#168

Post by lifeisstillgood »

dfc wrote: post #139
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong but isn't this the fault of the juries? Who by the way must also be the voters? I mean if you are happily awarding damages to heart surgeons who only save half their patients when the rest of the planet does not better, then the problem is in the jury box? no?

> Who by the way must also be the voters? I am assuming this was a question and not a passive aggressive taunt. The answer is "No, it is not the case that being on a jury is proof that the juror has voted in an election." Many states use voter registration rolls as an input to the jury duty selection process but I can not find any that screen potential jurors based on actually participating in an election. Furthermor…

Not meant to be P-A taunt, though hell this is the Internet so reasonable supposition :-)

No it was really "the public" I meant. Voters, jurors, us in other words. If Texas juries in one county are making patents a laughing stock, it really is upto the rest of us - either in that county, or in juries in other counties and countries, to change that. Or perhaps vote it out of existence. It just seems to me that we read an article and get the "something must be done"'feeling, and are happy when the something does not involve us, hard work, care or a long time. Yet those something's rarely work out.

in short, the current problem with patents is not the fault of various jurors and voters in a small part of Texas. it's our fault.

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#169

Post by Crito »

andrewguenther wrote: post #29
crusso wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dare say that if you spilled even 130F coffee in your lap while driving down the freeway, you could easily cause a fatal accident. As a society, do we expect McDonalds to make that decision for us and just not sell coffee in the drive-thru?

But you're posing a theoretical situation completely different than the one actually involved in the case. McDonalds was grossly negligent in serving their coffee at a temperature well above necessary, hotter than anyone in the industry. Starbucks won't even brew your coffee that hot (if you ask for anything over 180 degrees they may say yes, but won't actually do it). Much of these cases is based on reasonable expec…

If that coffee had been 180F, the outcome would have been the same. Perhaps slightly less tissue damage, but we would still be talking about third degree burns.

It think it is illuminating that so many people believe that Mcdonalds no longer serves their coffee that hot, but in reality, the only changes they have made in response to that lawsuit are changing their packaging, including adding warning labels. If you go to Mcdonalds and buy some coffee today, it could be just as hot as the coffee that that woman bought.

So to address this question:

> "Would you ever expect your coffee to be so hot that it could melt your skin? No."

You really should, because it still is!

Re: How A Lawsuit Over Hot Coffee Helped Erode the 7th Amendment

#170

Post by blisterpeanuts »

What a strange article to feature on Hacker News, front page two days running. Written by a kid just out of college, with little or no life experience, no legal expertise, and quoting biased sources like a liability lawyer to make his rather whimsical case about "eroding the 7th Amendment".

It sparked a tiresomely predictable debate about hot coffee, as happens every time this case comes up; there are always a couple thousand reader comments ranging from "She was stupid" to "McD's coffee is too hot, she deserved more money". I've read a lot of them and it does get repetitive.

As I see it, the Liebeck incident was unfortunate and tragic but does not represent a trend. This hapless woman appears to have been manipulated by an angry family into hiring a lawyer and blowing this up into a big case that took on a life of its own and caused her to be reviled by advocates of tort reform as a classic example of the legal system run amok. Others hailed her as a hero for the little people sticking it to the big bad corporation.

Yet, considering that McDonald's sells 10 million or so cups of coffee a day, 70 reports of coffee scalding a year seems like edge cases. Could it not be simply that there are 70 careless people a year? Much easier to believe than that somehow the coffee is leaping out of its cup and scalding innocent customers about 6 times a month, and they each should get $2.4 million from Mickey D's which after all is a giant corporation so "they can afford it".

Now every damn cup of coffee I buy comes with a little warning "Caution! The drink you are about to enjoy is very hot!" Well, hell yes it better be hot. I asked for hot coffee, and the hotter the better.

Once, in a coffee shop in Harvard Square, Cambridge Mass., a stupid young waitress managed to dump a decanter of very hot coffee onto my lap off the tray she was carrying. I got burned on the thigh very close to my genitals, it hurt, it blistered. I got over it. They didn't charge me for the coffee. Life went on. That's a case where it truly was "their fault". But I didn't sue them or anything.

I think in my case they could have apologized a bit more profusely, but then again, they don't apologize anymore because they figure that's an admission of guilt that you'll use against them in court. That's why Pennsylvania recently passed an apology law for doctors. Yes, they have a law now saying it's OK for docs to apologize without fear of lawsuit. The tort lawyers opposed the law. What a twisted world we live in!

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