Is this a "frivious" lawsuit injury?

[sangha]

How silly. So basically, hot coffee is too dangerous to serve. I hope everyone likes iced coffee. Bottoms up.

How about this jewel:

Wynard was cleaning out a deep fryer when she allegedly slipped and fell on a slippery floor, which caused her hand to be thrust into a fryer of hot oil and sustain burns. In her Illinois personal injury lawsuit, Wynard alleges that McDonald’s failed to develop adequate rules for cleaning their deep fryers, housed unreasonably dangerous fryers, designed unreasonably slippery floors, and failed to warn her of such hazards. She also alleges that Frymaster carelessly designed the fryer in question and did not warn of the dangers of contacting heated grease.

Seriously?? She needed to be warned that the grease was hot? derp.

A straw man and a Red herring. A twofer

 

[Crosscheck]

I accept your surrender

LOL. Yes, the coach will be along soon hand out gold coated plastic trophies to you and all your team mates. You are all winners even with a losing record.

 

[Crosscheck]

How silly. So basically, hot coffee is too dangerous to serve. I hope everyone likes iced coffee. Bottoms up.

How about this jewel:

Wynard was cleaning out a deep fryer when she allegedly slipped and fell on a slippery floor, which caused her hand to be thrust into a fryer of hot oil and sustain burns. In her Illinois personal injury lawsuit, Wynard alleges that McDonald’s failed to develop adequate rules for cleaning their deep fryers, housed unreasonably dangerous fryers, designed unreasonably slippery floors, and failed to warn her of such hazards. She also alleges that Frymaster carelessly designed the fryer in question and did not warn of the dangers of contacting heated grease.

Seriously?? She needed to be warned that the grease was hot? derp.

Yes, we are the society that has the following warning on a Rowenta Iron "Warning: Never iron clothes on the body." No , they aren't morons, just dimwits.

 

[Alyssa]

A straw man and a Red herring. A twofer

Do you know what a straw man argument is? Or a red herring for that matter-

 

[sangha]

LOL. Yes, the coach will be along soon hand out gold coated plastic trophies to you and all your team mates. You are all winners even with a losing record.

I didn't win anything, but if you give up, you've definitely lost.

 

[teamosil]

It's one of those things where the tag line- woman sues mcdonalds over spilled coffee- sounds silly, but when you actually learn a little bit about it you realize it isn't silly at all. This wasn't like normal hot coffee hot, it was absurdly hot. Way, way, way hotter than any coffee you normally get in a restaurant. And this wasn't just one isolated incident. They had already lost over 1,000 lawsuits for exactly the same thing, but they made a calculation that it was better to just keep paying out the settlements than to make a change because apparently people at the drive through wanted their coffee to stay hot for a long time, so they made more profit keeping it dangerously hot. So the initial jury wanted to make the award big enough that McDonalds would take note ($2.8 million), but the trial judge actually only awarded her $640,000. Also, McDonalds refused to even pay her medical bills. They turned down settlement offers well below even the $640,000. So, that all seems about right to me.

The whole hype about how ridiculous the case supposedly was was funded by the tort reform organizations. Those organizations were created by the tobacco industry as part of their PR efforts around the big tobacco settlement that was going on at the same time.

 

[Alyssa]

It's one of those things where the tag line- woman sues mcdonalds over spilled coffee- sounds silly, but when you actually learn a little bit about it you realize it isn't silly at all. This wasn't like normal hot coffee hot, it was absurdly hot. Way, way, way hotter than any coffee you normally get in a restaurant. And this wasn't just one isolated incident. They had already lost over 1,000 lawsuits for exactly the same thing, but they made a calculation that it was better to just keep paying out the settlements than to make a change because apparently people at the drive through wanted their coffee to stay hot for a long time, so they made more profit keeping it dangerously hot. So the initial jury wanted to make the award big enough that McDonalds would take note ($2.8 million), but the trial judge actually only awarded her $640,000. Also, McDonalds refused to even pay her medical bills. They turned down settlement offers well below even the $640,000. So, that all seems about right to me.

The whole hype about how ridiculous the case supposedly was was funded by the tort reform organizations. Those organizations were created by the tobacco industry as part of their PR efforts around the big tobacco settlement that was going on at the same time.

I can see your point. I would concede that McDonalds should have paid her medical bills. My problem is with the punitive damages. If someone is careless and get injured as a result, they shouldn't become a millionaire over night because of it. But in the end, the judge did lower the settlement. I found a very informative article on this law suit and others like it:

Putting things in perspective: McDonald's and the $2.9-million cup of coffee; juries may have good reason for making large award - Entrepreneur.com

The hot pickle law suit is utterly ridiculous. But the question no one was been able to answer: how hot should the coffee be?

 

[teamosil]

If someone is careless and get injured as a result, they shouldn't become a millionaire over night because of it.

I tend to think about the incentives a lawsuit creates for the defendant more than how good it is for the plaintiff. If McDonalds was just going to keep the coffee so hot that like 1,000 more people each year were going to keep getting severely burned, that's a problem, so the right amount of punitive damages to me would be the amount that would make them stop doing that. If that is $100, I'm cool with that, but if it is $100 million, I'm cool with that too.

Some legal theorists have proposed an idea that I think makes a lot of sense where all punitive damages go to the state, not the plaintiff. The idea is that sometimes it takes a bigger penalty to correct the behavior of the defendant, but you don't want to create a huge incentive to go out and get burned either. So, the optimal solution might be to have punitives, but not to let them go to the victim. I think I would agree with that approach.

As a side note though, I don't know about her being careless. She pulled over and stopped to take a drink of her coffee because she was afraid she might spill it. I think she was just old and shakey, not careless.