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Comment by kolinko | Hacker News Reader

Actually, you also have punitive fines - that's why that lady got $2M or so for the coffee burning her at McDonald's.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13464751 and marked it off-topic.

Actually, no -- if you look into that specific case the jury awarded >$2m which was immediately reduced to $670k by the judge, and then settled out of court for a presumably smaller amount. Nearly all of it went to medical bills for this lady whose skin and genitalia had been burned entirely through by the near-boiling liquid.

The "crazy lady gets insane punitive windfall for being too stupid to know that hot coffee is hot" was a PR effort by McDonald's and other firms in a (successful) attempt to get the laws changed so that such suits would be harder to bring in the future.

It's not just a PR effort.

She asked for $11k for medical bills. They refused.

"""

After four hours of deliberation, the jury found for Liebeck. She was awarded $200,000 for compensatory damages, reduced by 20 percent because Liebeck had contributed to the accident. They also awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages. One juror said, "It was our way of saying, 'Hey, open your eyes. People are getting burned'."

"""

http://academic.udayton.edu/Lawecon/Assignments/Torts/Mc%20D...

Nothing in your post supports the argument that it wasn't just a PR effort.

Sorry, I was talking to the larger context:

GP: you also have punitive fines - that's why that lady got $2M or so for the coffee burning her at McDonald's.

OP: "crazy lady gets insane punitive windfall for being too stupid to know that hot coffee is hot" was a PR effort

Me/article: They also awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages. One juror said, "It was our way of saying, 'Hey, open your eyes. People are getting burned'."

It sounded like the general idea with the "crazy lady gets insane punitive windfall" was "No, it wasn't punitive fines and it was for legitimate medical bills".

That's not the case, the jury specifically wanted to award punitive damages. The money was not for medical bills.

> They also awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages.

Which she didn't receive.

So, the final tally is asked for $11k, jury awarded $200k in compensation and $2.7 million in punitive damages. The trial judge reduced the final verdict to $640,000, and the parties settled for a confidential amount before an appeal was decided.

The basic fact remains that there were, in fact, punitive damages.

I realize we're on a tangent now, but I can't let that stand unchallenged.

Mcdonalds' brewing/holding temperature was the recommended temperature for coffee by the the NCA, a coffee industry group, not to mention any number of enthusiasts. This is between 195F and 205F for brewing, and holding around 170-190F. A quick google search confirms this. ~195ish is also where home drip brewers are set. McDonalds' temperatures were not unreasonable or outside the norm.

Most adults will sustain third degree burns with contact of 150F water for two seconds, a full 45 degrees lower. It is not reasonable to expect coffee to be brewed and held even at that temperature, let alone below it.

Furthermore, Liebeck's burns and their location were sustained entirely because she put a styrofoam container (i.e. something easily crushed) between her legs to add cream&sugar outside the store - and then, sure enough, she crushed it.

Given the absurd volume of coffee that they were selling even back then, which was brewed at identical temperatures, and did not result in any injury (on the orders of multiple millions of cups per day), I chalk this one up to 100% user error, judge be damned.

The severity of her injuries do not even factor into the question of who was at fault. Coffee brewed correctly is extremely hot out of the serving container, and should be treated with appropriate care - including not putting it in a position where you can dump it on yourself.

This case is a study in how emotional manipulation (poor old lady vs multinational corporation) works on the justice system. Mcdonalds would have done well to just pay her medical bills, even though they didn't actually do anything wrong or irresponsible, and be done with it.

NCA's recommendation applies to a wholly different context and ignores relevant considerations of the instant situation. You're trying to apply a single-criterion optimization function to a problem that calls for multi-criterion optimization function. Here, we are not merely talking about brewing coffee. We are talking about a business model based on brewing coffee and then serving it to customers in "easily crushed" containers who are driving in their cars. Whatever the appropriate brewing temperature happens to be in that context, it is not given by NCA's recommendation.

Whatever the appropriate brewing temperature happens to be in that context, it is not given by NCA's recommendation.

The temperature at which the flavors and oils that make up coffee are optimally extracted from ground beans does not change based on the business model of the people selling it.

That's true, but the fact that there is an approximate ideal water temperature for coffee brewing has no bearing on what appropriate storage and serving temperatures might be.

Assume for a minute that they were holding at 170F (chosen because it's a middle ground between 160 and 180, common hot beverage holding temps from [1]).

Even at that lower temperature, Stella would still have sustained third degree burns in under one second [2]. Even if you're generous and take 20 degrees off to account for cooling between the time of pouring and the time of spilling, that's only one extra second's difference to get second/third degree burned. Given that her burns were exacerbated by her clothing trapping the hot liquid next to her skin, that isn't enough to have made a difference in the outcome.

The conclusion is clear. Any reasonable hot holding temperature will result in serious burns if you get the liquid on you soon after purchase.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18226454

2: http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/services/charts/hot_w...

That's presumably why the jury found her partially at fault. However, increasing the temperature above that greatly increases the severity of the burns, which is why McDonald's was also partially at fault because they served the coffee at a higher temperature so her burns were more severe than they would have been if it had been served at a normal temperature.

...did you just miss where I explained that any reasonable hot holding temperature would result in second or third degree burns in one or two seconds? If you've got clothing trapping burning liquid next to your skin, the extra 20 degrees temperature ceases to be a factor - you're getting third degree burns either way.

"Given the absurd volume of coffee that they were selling even back then, which was brewed at identical temperatures, and did not result in any injury (on the orders of multiple millions of cups per day), I chalk this one up to 100% user error, judge be damned."

Nope. From wikipedia, citing the WSJ:

"Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

Mcdonalds claims to sell 2.5M cups of coffee per day - ten years of sales at that rate would be 9.1 billion cups. 700 reports works out to a 0.000007671232876712329 percent chance.

Even with generous fudge factors for daily cups sold, 700 incidents over 9.1 billon servings is nothing. It's a 1 in 13 million chance. To put that into perspective, your lifetime chance of being struck by lightning twice is 1 in 9 million.

So yes, I'm still going with user error. People can be dumb.

> It's a 1 in 13 million chance.

Every time you have a coffee though, right? if you get a couple of cups a day, that is now 1 in 17,800.

Your facts are wrong:

> Your brewer should maintain a water temperature between 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction.

> Always allow your coffee - or any hot beverage - to reach a comfortable temperature before enjoying (specifically below 140 degrees Fahrenheit).*[0]

There's the NCA recommendation. Brew temperature != serving temperature. Additionally, McDonald's coffee at the time was served at 180-190˚F.

[0] - http://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/How-to-Brew-Coffee

That says enjoying, not serving. If you're getting coffee to go, to be enjoyed later, it can't be served at the joy temperature.

The temperature at which it should be drank is not equivalent to the temperature it which it should be held.

From the NCA site:

"Always allow your coffee - or any hot beverage - to reach a comfortable temperature before enjoying (specifically below 140 degrees Fahrenheit)."

Maybe serving temperature isn't the same as brewing temperature? I remember (vaguely) that there was a lot more to the story than was released publicly because as part of the settlement McDs got the plaintiff to shut up. But somebody else who was there (son in law?) wasn't under a gag order and spill the beans, as it were. Apparently McDs had been warned several times about the coffee being too hot, and, IIRC, ignored court orders to turn it down.

Now I've seen people talk about drinking beverages hotter than 175 deg F being implicated in cancer of the esophagus.

Drinking liquids at that temperature is painful. Besides, McDs coffee tasted like shit in those days (IMO).

It IS, however, reasonable to expect McDonald's, knowing the temperatures at which they serve coffee, to do so in a vessel that can withstand the heat.

And actually they had plenty of complaints of injury on their coffee. It just happened that none involved scalding someone's genitals off.

> A quick google search confirms this. ~195ish is also where home drip brewers are set.

And McDonald's cooks their french fries at 375F, it doesn't mean they give them to you while they're that hot.

My understanding is that she was not driving. She had pulled over. Just wanting to clarify...

Her grandson was operating the car, and the car did not have cup holders.

The car was not in motion at the time, her son pulled over so she could add cream and sugar.

McDonalds claimed to serve coffee too hot for human consumption because they thought most of their customers were commuters who weren't going to consume the coffee until they got to their destination.

The jury found Stella 20% at fault.

I think its important to note, back then McDonald's coffee cups were much more fragile then they are now. Specifically, this is the exact cup - http://www.idonotwanttobeyourlawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Now they look like this - https://i0.wp.com/vifreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11... I think that's really one of the biggest safety improvements since the case.

Personally, I really hate it when I get hot coffee, I don't want to burn my tongue off and I don't want to wait 20 minutes.

In a civil suit brought by an individual (like the McDonald's case) the plaintiff might receive compensatory damages (payments to compensate you for your loss), and in rare cases punitive damages (payments to punish the defendant for its conduct/deter similar conduct in the future).

In that sense, all civil fines by the government are punitive (money is paid to the government to punish the defendant, not to individuals to compensate them for their harm). But there is still a general idea that the fines should be proportional to the harm done. There is a Constitutional dimension to this (the Eight Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause, see: http://www.taxlitigator.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/FBAR_...) but mostly it's a matter of practice. Our fines are tied to conduct, and the scope of the wrongful activity, not income.

Other countries, like the U.K., do it differently. They expressly key certain fines on income. (Though, I think for corporations, their fines are based on the scope of the bad conduct, like ours.)

That would be a bad example of a "punitive" fine, not in small part due to the PR efforts of the company being sued and the trigger-happy media.

The final verdict for the case was $600K in punitive damages, which McDonalds appealed, and ultimately settled out of court for an undisclosed (and, obviously, smaller) amount.

Quoting Wikipedia (and its sources), the setup for the case:

Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds reducing her to 83 pounds (38 kg). After the hospital stay, Liebeck needed care for 3 weeks, which was provided by her daughter. Liebeck suffered permanent disfigurement after the incident and was partially disabled for two years.

Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her actual and anticipated expenses. Her past medical expenses were $10,500; her anticipated future medical expenses were approximately $2,500; and her daughter's loss of income was approximately $5,000 for a total of approximately $18,000. Instead, the company offered only $800.

- - - - - - -

So, in the end, "that lady" wanted $20K, which didn't even cover all the expenses - and McDonalds offered $800. That might give you a scale on what she probably ended up getting out of court.

In the end - bold font, <h1> - McDonalds paid no punitive damages. And what they paid was an order of magnitude less than the figure you mentioned.

Here's a short documentary on the case that will paint you a better picture: https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000002507537/scalded-by-...

From your tone (and seeing you're not American), I assume you think that was a frivolous case that shows how bad the American system is. I encourage you to read up a little more on that.

I believe that was a settlement or a civil judgement, not a fine.

Also, I'm not sure I'd be arguing legal issues with rayiner...

> Actually, you also have punitive fines

All fines are punitive. (The case you are thinking of involved punitive damages, which are not fines.)

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