Thread: You've got to be kidding me...seriously

Here's what the talk show pundits and columnists neglected to mention about the McDonalds coffee burn case:

79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn. McDonalds knew it had a problem. There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. McDonalds had settled many claim before but refused Liebeck's request for $20,000 compensation, forcing the case into court. Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees. McDonalds knew its coffee was exceptionally hot but testified that they had never consulted with burn specialist. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. And so the jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million. The judge then reduced the fine to less than half a million. Ms. Liebeck then settled with McDonalds for a sum reported to be much less than a half million dollars. McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.

What the writer of this article is forgetting is that the damage to the woman was absolutely irrelevant. Because it was not McDonalds fault at all that she happened to spill coffee on herself. Edit: I suppose the previous warning does put them in a bad situation. I guess that's why this case doesn't/shouldn't set any precedents for any Myspace suits.

Let me give an example:
I buy a chainsaw. I use it and cut my leg off because I wasn't being careful. I sue Home Depot, where I bought the chainsaw. So, I have no leg now. Does that make Home Depot any more at fault?

It's the exact same concept as the Myspace thing.

You know, I don't remember people suing Yahoo! or GMail or AOL for rapings due to rendezvous set up over email.

When I buy a cup of coffee, I expect it to be hot, but not so hot that spilling a little bit of it can cause 3rd degree burns in less than 2 seconds (clearly that's unreasonably hot, isn't it)? And that was the root cause of the injury (not the fact that it was spilled)?

Anyway, I'm not saying that the parents don't bear some responsibility. And maybe the girl was partly to blame also (poor decisions on her part). But it's also fair to say that there might be a legal basis for holding myspace responsible to some extent.

Funny how this whole conversation started from this:

Originally Posted by Mario F.

And what about Cprog when someone here meets someone else in here and goes about rapping them?

30 million represents 1% of myspace. So if myspace isn't willing to invest 1% in it's value to provide safeguards for children, isn't that in itself negligent?

Also, if you read the article, the 2.7 million award was a punitive damage award, and it represented 2 days of coffee sales for McDonalds. And an appeal judge reduced the settlement to less than .5 million, and the plaintiff later settled with McDonalds for much less than that even. So the 2.7 million wasn't really too much, and it wasn't really paid out. But the process resulted in McDonalds reducing the tempurature of their coffee to safe levels.

The myspace thing could work out in a similar way.

All involved are likely at fault to greater and lesser degrees, i.e. the parents are to blame (the bad parenting argument), the kid was an idiot (should have known better argument), the 19 year old she met up with clearly committed a crime, and myspace should really have had better controls in place.

The thing that is probably really ........ing people off with this is that one guilty party (the parents/the kid) will possibly profit from the mistake of another guilty party (myspace); and the larger guilt probably lies with the parents. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that myspace isn't going to be liable.