"IT'S ADAM AND EVE, NOT FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE!"
Wisdom from cartoons: [Labels not make you happy...You must love you.] [Bittersweet and strange, finding you can change, learning you were wrong.] [If I want to change the reflection I see in the mirror each morn; You mean that it's just my election, to vote for a chance to be reborn!]
Fun fact: anytime you hear a story that boils down to “and then some ABSOLUTE FOOL sued this totally innocent megacorporation for assloads of money AND WON! Can you believe it? Ridiculous. Some people, right?” 99 times out of 100, the corporation super fucked up, the plaintiff 100% deserved that money,.and you’ve just been fed corporate propaganda.
“Hot Coffee Lady” had to get skin grafts and was at least the 11th customer to be hospitalized. The coffee served to her was in violation of a court order requiring McDonald’s to sell their coffee at a safe temperature.
The “warning: contents hot” label is a passive-aggressive move by McDonalds because they implemented it at the same time that they finally complied with legal requirements to serve safe beverages.
Every time you see “warning contents hot” and roll your eyes because of course it’s hot, you’re assuming that you and McDonald’s agree on the definition of “hot.”
What’s more, you assume you’ve always agreed, which is the baseline for assuming that the lady who sued had unrealistic expectations.
Yeah. I don’t remember the corporate policy for McDonalds coffee temperature at the time, but i do remember that it was *near boiling.*
Your Starbucks? Not near boiling. Not likely to make you need massive reconstructive surgery on your hoo hah if you spill it in your lap.
I make my coffee with boiling water too, so who exactly am I supposed to sue when I spill it on myself at home?
The coffee served to her was 190F. A temperature which can produce third degree burns in less than 3 seconds.
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.
They knew that this practice was dangerous. They had hurt HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE already. Then, this woman had to go to the hospital for SKIN GRAFTS on her fucking GENITALS and all she wanted was for McDonalds to pay her god damn hospital bills.
why do you americans expect everyone to know how much 190F is?
And this doesn’t answer my question at all.
If you do something dangerous and you get hurt, then you have responsibility for that.
If a super mega-corporation has hurt hundreds of people through repeated negligence and seriously injures you, then THEY have responsibility for that.
“Why is it MURDER if someone stabs me but not murder if I stab myself?”
u ever been so riled up u forgot how to google
working at starbucks i once spilled black coffee on my hand trying to put a lid on it. i screamed ‘fuck’ turned and put my hand under cold water right away. like mid customer. that shit was still so hot that my vision went black all of a sudden, from the shock of it all (i guess that’s what happened anyway, i got sent in the back with oj and chocolate and kindly asked not to yell fuck in the store again, i never went to doctor or anything), even if it didn’t leave a mark after an hour or so. i can’t imagine how hot that coffee was for that poor woman.
I got a Second degree burn once as a teenager working in a movie theater. We were having a rush, and the popcorn was about to burn, and in my haste to save the popcorn, I slammed my forearm against the side of the popper kettle- filled with boiling oil. None got on me, and it was just for a moment, but it was, ya know, very hot.
I must have had some adrenaline going because didn’t realize how badly I had hurt myself until a minute or so later when all of a sudden I went very woozy. I just thought I had banged my arm right up until my body started going into shock. Once the people around me realized what had happened , I was spirited off the the managers office. Water, gaze, ice, everything. (I think they were scared I would sue) I couldnt drive home, I couldnt think straight. My mom had to come get me.
It took weeks and weeks to heal. Easily the worst injury I’ve ever had so far in my life. I still have a scar on my arm from that.
Her burns were worse. So so much worse, and I can’t imagine it.
When other countries laugh at how often Americans sue businesses, what they don’t understand is that the laws and regulations protecting us from careless, evil and dangerous business practices are MUCH WEAKER than theirs, and even in cases where they’re basically the same, our corporations are just plain greedier and more heartless. Americans end up having to sue corporations more often because American corporations leave people with permanent injuries, sickness or death more often.
A british restaurant is gonna be like “oh my gosh, we’re so sorry our milk went a little sour, we’re so ashamed.” An American restaurant is gonna be like “oh you’re shitting blood? What do you expect when you eat here, dumbass. Feel free to beg us for 1/1000th our CEO’s holiday bonus if you can even afford a lawyer lol”
Yeah it has at least 190°F. People get angry here if it doesn’t have at least 194°F.
Water boils at 100°C. 90°C if you’re in an altitude of 3000 metres. Coffee is made with boiling water. A lot of times the water even is pressurised to reach higher temperatures.
So yeah if I get a coffee I treat it as a cup of (nearly) boiling water. If I shower myself with that cup of boiling water, i hurts myself. It hurts badly. The cup was fine, if she would have placed it on an even surface nothing would have happened. It’s the equivalent of suing a car manufacturer because I crashed into a tree while overspeeding because the car didn’t stop me from overspeeding.
Yes, it hurt. yes she had massive costs because of the treatment. But it isn’t exactly McDonald’s fault that this happened.
But Instead of supporting this poor woman to sue a company because it is “big” and boiling water hurts, you might want to support to change your healthcare system.
Don’t get me wrong, if a company does something that is actually wrong like VW cheating their way through environment checks, I’m all for dragging them to court, but this example of “boiling water can severely hurt (and damage) you” is not something you should pull up and still falls under the category of “no shit”.
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. They knew that this practice was dangerous. They had hurt HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE already. Then, this woman had to go to the hospital for SKIN GRAFTS on her fucking GENITALS and all she wanted was for McDonalds to pay her god damn hospital bills.
We should not need to assume that McDonald’s food has the potential to MAIM US. It was repeated and deliberate negligence.
“They” didn’t hurt anyone. People not being careful with boiling water is not the responsibility of the shop serving boiling water. No matter how many people don’t treat it as boiling water.
Yes boiling water destroys skin. My father once opened a pressure cooker because he thought it was cooled down and just stuck and had to be treated with skin crafts because the steam boiled his face. This was still my father’s fault though.
It doesn’t matter if it was her genitals or her foot. It still was her fault for not treating it as what is was: a cup of boiling water. No capslock will change that.
So shall we now put stickers on the straws and Plastik forks because eating them can cause bad digestive problems to severe internal bleeding or can we assume that people should know that eating plastic is a bad thing?
I’m not sure why the idea that companies shouldn’t just, like, serve you food that can maim you is a controversial opinion. We shouldn’t need to assume that companies will just occasionally provide you with products that will require skin grafts.
Coffee is not normally sold at those temperatures. This is not a normal and assumed risk inherent to coffee.
It was intentional and repeated negligence that hurt hundreds of people.
And for your “dont eat plastic” analogy, if McDonald’s is storing forks in a way to save money that has caused hundreds of forks to shred themselves into people’s food and sent them to the hospital if they ate it one accidentally because of this- that would be a problem too. Because thats analogous to what happened. They cut corners for money, turning a regularly not dangerous product into one that had hurt hundreds of people and seriously maimed a woman.
Negligence. Repeated negligence. And at some point, you need to understand that screaming “personal responsibility” doesn’t actually excuse corporations from THEIR responsibility in endangering people.
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here’s an update as of August 4th:
thank you so much to everyone sharing and donating, please continue to share and donate if you can. last night i had an incredible chance to attend my first concert but it was incredibly difficult to do so and i actually ended up falling twice so i really need an accessible vehicle!
as of august 7th:
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as of august 27th:
we’ve passed 3k! thank you all so much, I can’t tell you how grateful i am, honestly. This absolutely means the world to me. I know some people struggle to find the link, I’m sorry about that. Here is the link: https://www.gofundme.com/vyqfze-help-me-get-an-accessible-van
