Badmovies.org Forum

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1196990



First let me say its awful if this little boy was actually burned but... its the parents responsibility to make sure they arent giving their child something that is so hot it will burn them. duh. Second, I find it hard to believe that it was lukewarm on the outside but hot enough to leave a blister on the inside. 

In case like this, supposing a jury awards them a bunch of money, I believe the business should be allowed to get their money back if in a couple years it shows the injury isn't so 'permanent'.

o/`...Greed growing..o/`
I have to agree that it sounds like someone is just out for cash. Sort of like when people plant stuff in their food and claim they found it. Remember back when people found body parts in chili? That sort of thing but without finding someone's finger in the hashbrown this time. Thing is when the economy gets bad, there seems to be an increase in frivolous lawsuits. And as far as I know, no fast food place has ever served a skin damaging hot hashbrown. In order to cause permenant skin damage, the hashbrown would had to of caused at least a severe second degree burn. No responsible parent is going to give their kid anything that might even cause a mild first degree burn let along anything hot enough to cause severe blisters with deep tissue damage. If anything the kid needs to be removed from the home to keep it safe because if mom is giving the kid "dangerously hot" food items from resturants then she is subject to feed him rat poison and broken glass.

Man I love doughnuts

They serve those things hot?  Getouttahere

figures, this is from my neck of the woods.

it burned his neck, but didn't burn his mouth??

welcome to modern society, it is always someone ELSE's fault now.  I agree, the parents are responsible, not the store.

Not that I ever drink McDonald's coffee, but I like the fact that after that silly "burned by coffee" lawsuit some years back, McDonald's didn't respond by serving lukewarm coffee. And neither did anybody else. Instead, you just got those silly signs warning you that a cup of hot coffee is hot.

So I guess we'll probably see warnings on hash browns too.

That McDonalds coffee issue is a bit different than most people understand. There are regulations that say how hot coffee and such can be when served, mainly because it really is dangerous when it's excessively hot. McDonalds, as a franchise, was warned about the temperature of their coffee over 220,000 times in writing, based on incidents, in the previous 10 years and did little to nothing about it. What some did was buy a coffee maker that would let the employee know when the temperature was low enough to safely serve, then largely ignored it and served it too hot anyways. They knew that a drive-up situation presents an opportunity for that same coffee to be spilled ON someone also, and in a situation where it would be hard to tell which party was at fault, which looked like a "even if it does happen, we just say it's the customer's fault" situation. That woman got second degree burns on her labia and other areas of her naughty parts, that had to completely suck, not only for her, but her husband was going without for a couple weeks while she healed. Much of the money she got was PUNATIVE damages, meaning they were fines to the company meant to punish them for their violations. I think we all can agree that if you order a cup of coffee, you can expect it to be hot, but there's no reason for it to be hot enough to give a person 2nd degree burns.

I'm not one for lawsuits, but in this case, I agree with the outcome. McDonalds ignored the warnings, presented a dangerous situation, and someone got hurt in just about the most painful way possible. The money she got was the amount they were being punished, which is consistent with the size of the McDonalds franchise, how much money it takes to constitute realistic punishment, and the number of opportunities they had to fix the problem before someone someone got hurt.

That woman got second degree burns on her labia and other areas of her naughty parts, that had to completely suck, not only for her, but her husband was going without for a couple weeks while she healed.

do we always have to talk about labia??

um....yeah, scalding coffee on labia=not happy  :hatred:

Well, I don't have any labia but...

One time early in my driving career I bought a cup of hot coffee from a diner while on a road trip. Got back in the car with it. Propped the coffee between my legs. Started driving 60 mph while trying to peel back part of the lid with one hand to make a place to sip from (this was before cup holders in cars were a common accessory).

Instead the lid came off and the piping hot coffee spilled right in my own naught bits. I screamed out loud, stood up in the seat and damned near wiped out as I pulled the car off to the side of the road.

My thoughts "God, that was a stupid thing to do."

Lesson learned: "Don't put cups of hot coffee there."

Thought that didn't occur to me, then or since: "I think I'll sue the diner because I can convince a jury it's their fault the coffee was hot enough to burn me when I put it there."

Sorry, I'm pretty liberal on a lot of issues. I'm really sorry the woman got burned.  But I still don't agree with the lawsuit. As I understand it, the temperature we're talking about is 180 degrees, which I think is just about where I like my coffee. I've checked with thermometers.

Maybe I'm wrong and people did start lowering the temperature of their hot water after this incident. Because at work when I make tea from the hot water dispenser, I have to microwave the water to make it drinkable.

You don't drink 180 degree coffee.

http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_graph.html (http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_graph.html)

180 degree water takes about 1/20 of a second to cause 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

It was Wednsday, Wednsday is 'labia day'. We talk about boobies on all the other days, so yes, we do.

Yes I do. I checked. With a thermometer.

The thing is, your skin adapts. The skin of my hands (and I guess my mouth to a certain extent) is more tolerant of this temperature than, say, my thighs. I wouldn't want to sit in 180 degree water. But I certainly can stick my finger in 180 degree water for a lot longer than 1/20 of a second (up to 1/4 second perhaps) without getting a 2nd degree burn. Or even a 1st degree burn. I will occasionally do this on water near boiling.

For the purpose of science, I'll be happy to actually stick my finger momentarily in a pot of boiling water to demonstrate. Maybe I can manage to film it with my cell phone and youtube it.

Like I said, you're NOT drinking 180 degree coffee, if your thermometer says you are, it's lying to you. At basic training I saw a guy get 170 degree water poured across his arm and the effects were dramatic. I know this because that was the temperature of the rinse water. There is no getting used to physics. You can't will the tissues in your body to not react to destructive forces. I just checked our coffee at work, and it's 150 degrees and too hot to drink. The difference between 150 and 140 was quite dramatic, I'd expect the difference between 150 and 180 to be, well, three times as dramatic. Do a quick google search for the words scalding, water, and temperature, it's all over the place.

"a scholar in thermodynamics as applied to human skin burns, testified that liquids, at 180 degrees, will cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds."

There's no getting around that.

But either way, McDonald's approach to the issue was why they got railed, and deserved it. They were serving coffee that was well above what was legal, and well above the temperature at which other places were serving it. They were doing this at drive-throughs, where it was quite easy for THEIR EMPLOYEES to spill it on customers, and blatantly said they had no plans to change their procedures. In other words, they said they had no intention top obey the law. That deserves a b***hslapping as far as I'm concerned.

do the people who have labia and boobs have to talk about them?

That's not exactly the situation, but it's essentially correct.  A few additions: first, the lady in question was an elderly woman (so there wasn't really a serious loss of consortium issue).  The fact that her skin was old meant that the burns she suffered were particularly nasty.

Alsa, it wasn't that McDonald's didn't do anything about the many scaldings people suffered from hot coffee; the fact is, they routinely settled with them and paid for their medical care and pain and suffering.  It was just a cost of doing business to them, and really a quite sensible tactic, since most people loved the hot coffee and only a tiny percentage were hurt by it.  McDonald's thought that if they got a ruling in their favor in a test case, they could stop paying any settlements.  So, they rolled the dice with this old woman who had suffered horrible 2nd degree burns, knowing that if they won against this highly sympathetic plaintiff, they could probably win against anyone.  They lost.

The punitive damages were calculated by the jury to equal one day of McDonald's coffee profits.     

It's ironic that this case has become everyone's favorite example of a frivolous lawsuit, because it's actually not that bad.  There are many worse ones out there.  The baseless silicone breast implant lawsuits were a good example of one.

[quote  The baseless silicone breast implant lawsuits were a good example of one.
[/quote]

yes, i have saleen myself