Okay, so let's say it's 165F and I spill a cup on someone. There's still going to be an injury. Scalding burns can occur at temperatures down to 125F or so.
Whose fault is it?
Does Starbucks have to lower the temperature of the coffee they're serving to maybe 115F in order to avoid responsibility? If I spill it in someone's eye, that may still cause an injury. Does Starbucks need to serve their hot coffee at 98.6F?
I don't know. It just starts to sound ridiculous on how sellers are supposed to completely protect us from ourselves when we misuse the products we buy.
WalMart sells guns, and those can be horribly misused quite easily.
I think it should be made clear that someone sympathetic to Liebeck's case is not necessarily in favor of treating all coffee spills the same nor in favor of this transparently constructed slippery slope towards nanny-statism you're building. Nor are they under any compulsion to defend it.
The details of the case are there for all to see and in no way do they paint a picture of common coffee incidents, despite the gratuitously oversimplified and cliched versions pandered to us by a generation of comics.
I think it comes down to expectations. There's an expectation when you buy a drink that it will be served at a drinkable temperature. True, there's also an expectation when you buy coffee that it will be served at a temperature hot enough to cause injuries if you spill it on yourself. But the expectation is that those injuries will be first or perhaps second degree burns, certainly not third. Had that been the case, I don't think any jury would have awarded her any money. I also don't think she would have sued.
To continue your Walmart analogy, the expectation would be that the guns are sold empty. But if instead Walmart were selling guns preloaded without warning the customers that there were bullets already in the guns, I would argue that Walmart would be at least some percentage at fault when some percentage of their customers inevitably shot themselves or others, just as it was some percentage McDonald's fault when their customers spilled the dangerously hot coffee on themselves.
> But if instead Walmart were selling guns preloaded without warning the customers that there were bullets already in the guns, I would argue that Walmart would be at least some percentage at fault when some percentage of their customers inevitably shot themselves or others
I see your point, but I think it might be worth clarifying that despite Walmart's probable liability, this would in no way indemnify their customers; the first rule of gun safety is RESPECT EVERY GUN AS LOADED until disassembled into its component parts, no exceptions.
> But the expectation is that those injuries will be first or perhaps second degree burns, certainly not third.
That expectation is unreasonable. If you go to Starbucks today and get a black coffee, that coffee will be hot enough to give you third degree burns. If you buy black coffee from Mcdonalds today, it will likely be just as hot as the coffee was that burned that woman two decades ago.
The industry standard was and continues to be serving coffee that can cause 3rd degree burns. You would do well to expect that.
They would be just as bad if she spilled home made coffee using water from her own kettle. But then there would be no uproar then, would there? Or would she go and sue the maker of the kettle for making water so hot?
She did not get a McDonalds kettle and pour just boiled water onto herself. She asked for a cup of coffee, paid, took the coffee out to the car and got in the passenger seat. They drove for a short while. They stopped the car. She removed the lid and spilled the coffee.
A more fair comparison would be if she had poured her boiled kettle into a mug, carried that through to another room, and spilled it on herself as she sat down.
It's likely that in the latter case the water which would have been cooled by the mug and a metal spoon would have been less hot. That would have given her a few more seconds to remove the scalding clothing, which would have helped to reduce the severity of her injuries.
Part of the problem is that McDonalds was serving coffee hotter than people would have it at home because McDonalds wanted it to stay hot for the duration of the journey.
McDonalds wanted it to stay hot for the duration of the journey
Because McDonalds customers want the coffee to stay hot for the duration of the journey and all customers know that coffee is very hot and they need to be careful with it.
Whose fault is it?
Does Starbucks have to lower the temperature of the coffee they're serving to maybe 115F in order to avoid responsibility? If I spill it in someone's eye, that may still cause an injury. Does Starbucks need to serve their hot coffee at 98.6F?
I don't know. It just starts to sound ridiculous on how sellers are supposed to completely protect us from ourselves when we misuse the products we buy.
WalMart sells guns, and those can be horribly misused quite easily.