Girl Sued For Her Boyfriend's Texting-While-Driving Accident

[silver wolf009]

How is that gun analogy more apt? The coffee came in such a way it could cause harm, and she certainly didn't have intention to spill it on herself. it'd be like being given a loaded gun that you weren't told was loaded, and having it go off in your pocket to blow a hole in your foot; she was given something she didn't know could hurt her in such a way as it did, and wasn't armed with the information to protect herself.

The blame should fall on McDonalds, as the law requires that certain behaviors should be foreseen. I remember it once being put as, "Expect the stupidest person is going to use your product, and make sure they can't hurt themselves with it." Not to call Ms. Liebeck stupid, but companies are required to take some measures to keep people from getting hurt by their products. McDonalds didn't in this case, they did the opposite, kept it in a way that it could cause injury despite evidence and demands that it change, went to court after someone got horribly burned by their coffee, and lost two days worth of coffee sales.

If it was possible for you to reason that someone could get hurt from wearing cotton sweatpants so badly as to cause damage to the nerves, surely a multi billion dollar organization like McDonalds should have, and with so much on the line, they should have made sure that a predictable behavior wouldn't result in extreme amounts of harm.

Who gives a fuck about intention? We both agree it was accidental. It's like being given a gun YOU KNEW WAS LOADED, she knew it has near-boiling hot coffee. It wasn't McD's fault she fucked up. They even had a warning on the coffee cup that it could cause harm.

Certain behaviors should be foreseen? Bullshit, that is insanely vague. If I went to a shop, took a look at a knife and cut myself, I wouldn't sue them because I made the mistake. The same applies here, there is a known danger and she messed up while dealing with it.

I was looking at the case, even if the temperature had been lowered from 82 to 65 degrees Celsius she would still have had tissue damage in 2 seconds, if you extrapolate backwards she still would have been harmed by temperatures lower than that due to the nature of the clothing.

They didn't have a warning though. This was the case that "inspired" them to add a warning.

Also, on the topic of that warning, that was a brilliant piece of trickery they pulled, by stating they'd just have to warn people coffee is hot. Made her appear foolish and overly litigious.

So no, technically, she was never warned the coffee was hot. Some would argue that should be common knowledge, but there are always people who simply won't infer that, and that's the reason there needs to be warnings on things.

As for the knife shop idea, you couldn't sue, as it wasn't an accident, it was you cutting yourself. You made a conscious effort to cause harm. You had the intention to do that to yourself, and the courts tend to care about intention.

And yes, it may be hard for you or I to predict the behavior of stupid people, but I'm not a corporate entity, and I'm willing to bet you aren't either. We don't have so much on the line that we spend millions of dollars over time to gather think tanks to find out silly and dangerous ways a product could be used. McDonalds, if their administration was doing what it should have been doing, would have.

And there was a known danger, but we don't know if it was known by her. Again, one would assume, but assuming things isn't the best of ideas. However, we do know that McDonalds knew of the danger, and intentionally kept it the way things were, so their actions led to harm.

 

[LetalisK]

Certain behaviors should be foreseen? Bullshit, that is insanely vague.

"It's reasonable to expect some people are going to fuck up and spill this on themselves" is most definitely something not only that should have been foreseen, but it was something that had been documented by McDonalds hundreds of times, including the increased damage their coffee did.

If I went to a shop, took a look at a knife and cut myself, I wouldn't sue them because I made the mistake. The same applies here, there is a known danger and she messed up while dealing with it.

A known danger created by the unnecessary business practices. They knew their practices unnecessarily increased the risk when people spilled their coffee and they did nothing about it. That is what they were held responsible for, not the fact that some random woman spilled coffee on herself.

 

[elvor0]

Certain behaviors should be foreseen? Bullshit, that is insanely vague.

"It's reasonable to expect some people are going to fuck up and spill this on themselves" is most definitely something not only that should have been foreseen, but it was something that had been documented by McDonalds hundreds of times, including the increased damage their coffee did.

If I went to a shop, took a look at a knife and cut myself, I wouldn't sue them because I made the mistake. The same applies here, there is a known danger and she messed up while dealing with it.

A known danger created by the unnecessary business practices. They knew their practices unnecessarily increased the risk when people spilled their coffee and they did nothing about it. That is what they were held responsible for, not the fact that some random woman spilled coffee on herself.

My kettle boils water to almost 100 celcius, y'know... because it's boiling, I've accidently spilled hot water on myself a few times, as well as using it to make sure my tea is hot. You don't see me suing the kettle makers because the water from a device to BOIL WATER for tea burned me.

Tea and Coffee are supposed to be hot. They are hot drinks. If you stick one in a paper cup in between your lap, whilst driving and take the lid off, you have to be prepared that you might burn yourself because it's a cup of BOILING HOT LIQUID!

 

[Nuke_em_05]

For a second I thought the driver was trying to pass it on to his girlfriend, which would just make him a douche. Turns out, it is the injured couple's lawyer. The "expert" is the lawyer making the case, and he says:

For his part, Weinstein demurs when asked if he's trying to set an important legal precedent or make law. He's just trying to win a case for his client, he said.

Fuck lawyers.

The only way this would have even a sliver of a chance is if she had texted some sort of incentive for him to specifically keep texing and driving, like "You should text me and drive", or "If you don't respond right now...(bad thing)", or "If you respond right now...(good thing)". Even with those, he could still make the choice not to respond, or to pull over and then respond.

A sender shouldn't have to worry about what the recipient is doing.

 

[Elamdri]

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

Except she had imbibed of McD's coffee on multiple previous occasions. Thus she knew beforehand just how hot it was. Moreover, she decided to open the cup one handed between her knees in the car. It was rather predictable how things turned out.

There was a lot going on in that case that never gets talked about. Exactly how hot that coffee was, the extent of the damages that it caused to her inner thighs and crotch, the fact that had the coffee been just a little cooler then it wouldn't have caused quite as much damage as quickly, the fact that they said that McDonalds should have realized that it was much safer to have the McDonalds staff put the cream and sugar in coffee before handing it to customers than having them try to do it in their cars, the fact that the judge SIGNIFICANTLY reduced her jury award, ect.

 

[Starke]

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

Actually a similar case was thrown out of court in the UK because coffee above 63 degrees celcius will cause deep tissue burns in a couple of seconds.

In the California case, the restaurant had been repeatedly cited for violating food code over the coffee temperature. Additionally the plaintiff did not ask for punitive damages, though the jury attempted to award them anyway.

 

[razer17]

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

If she was so derp then she wouldn't have dropped it.

Oh sorry captain fantastic, didn't realise no reasonable human being has ever dropped anything in their lives...

OT: What a silly, silly lawsuit. The boyfriend should have ignored the text. It's his own damned fault, and I feel sorry for the passenger more than him.

 

[RJ 17]

Actually, as someone pointed out (And I later realised) there might be a case here. A real, honest to goodness "She is guilty of committing a crime" case. Texting no longer means what it means any more to quite a lot of people.

If she was having a conversation with him on some client (Like ebuddy or something) and she knew he was driving then yeah, she is culpable. In the UK she could probably face a criminal conviction (There is precedent there. Will ask my lawyer friend next time I see him. Usually my course of action).

So, whilst this SOUNDS retarded at first, it might not be retarded at all. However, if it is what it sounds like and she just sent him a text (Like, a text, not something on some instant messaging service, but an honest to goodness TEXT) then the entire blame lies with her boyfriend for so much as TOUCHING his phone whilst driving.

Speaking as an ex cyclist and a pedestrian, Drivers on their phones are fucking dangerous. I have reported them before. The only close calls I have ever had have been caused by irresponsible drivers looking at their phones. Oh, and once a bus driven by a psychopath. But that was on a Sunday and all the drivers of sunday buses are Psychopaths.

Yeah, I noticed someone mention that you all across the pond actually do have precedent for this case...I'm certainly not a lawyer but I don't know if British precedent would carry over here to the states. It certainly doesn't seem that way by the article, which said "Since there's no precedent, essentially the only thing the judge has to go on are analogies."

That sentence right there kinda scares the crap outta me, actually...while it seems like a silly and crazy lawsuit, as I mentioned in my OP: it has the chance of setting a very dangerous precedent. Examples of this were given in the article: "Where does it stop? A doctor gets a distressing text before he goes into surgery and makes a mistake, is the person who sent the text liable for that?" And such an important precedent is essentially going to be determined by "who can create the most creative scenario that describes the situation"? Yyyyyyeah....as I said, there's plenty of cases of common sense being quite uncommon in American courts.

And like I said: I hate people who use their phones while driving. I haven't been in any rough situations, but I've seen some just stupid shit on the road.

And your bit about Sunday bus drivers got a good laugh outta me.

 

[LetalisK]

As the above user said, kettles boil water at 100 degrees Celsius. Would you sue the makers of a kettle for allowing the water to reach that temperature if you burned yourself, I'd assume you wouldn't.

My kettle boils water to almost 100 celcius, y'know... because it's boiling, I've accidently spilled hot water on myself a few times, as well as using it to make sure my tea is hot. You don't see me suing the kettle makers because the water from a device to BOIL WATER for tea burned me.

Well, yeah. Because YOU boiled the water. Thus YOU are responsible for the consequences of it being too hot. Same thing in this case, though throw in that YOU knew, hundreds of times over, that YOUR particular practice caused additional damage yet you chose to continue to do it anyway.

Tea and Coffee are supposed to be hot. They are hot drinks. If you stick one in a paper cup in between your lap, whilst driving and take the lid off, you have to be prepared that you might burn yourself because it's a cup of BOILING HOT LIQUID!

Tea and coffee are indeed supposed to be hot. It's not supposed to be so unnecessarily hot that there is a very clear and documented danger to those that purchase your particular tea or coffee.

The same applies here, the lady knew the coffee would be extremely hot and she was negligent in its handling.

Irrelevant. Again, that is not why McDonalds lost the case. They lost the case because they failed to address business practices that were demonstrably causing additional damage.

 

[LetalisK]

That's actually pretty similar to the argument McDonalds used in the case. They claimed they kept it so hot because people would go through the drive-thru, grab a cup of coffee, and then drink it once they got it to their office, which is why they needed to keep it so hot(and later on it was revealed they only half-believed this themselves). The court rejected this argument for a few reasons, however. First was the aforementioned several hundred complaints by people who had already been seriously burned by it and had already been bought off, so this wasn't a one time deal, but rather a recurring problem. Second, other establishments weren't having problems with coffee staying hot even though they heated it up to a lower temperature. In the end, public safety trumps any public convenience derived from unconsumably hot coffee as the situation of accidentally spilling it on yourself is neither rare nor unreasonable and McDonalds needed to take that into account so that further damage was not caused by their own business practices.

When you serve coffee to hundreds of thousands of people per day it is statistically likely that any problem will be recurring.

"from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee"

That is a VERY small figure compared to the number of customers, I would estimate it to be less than a percent of a percent. They made over $1,000,000 on coffee per day so it stands to reason that the number of burns was an extremely small minority and not worth acting on.

They also knew that their coffee, because it was so much hotter than reasonable, caused additional damage to those that it did spill on.

 

[Starke]

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

Wow, just completely ignore the actual topic and go after something the OP said in parenthesis, eh? That takes a special kind of jackass. My hat is off to you, good sir.

Captcha agrees: "You're Not Listening."

Honestly, this specific case tends to be a rather sore point for... Well, nearly anyone who studied law. The actual case itself was the antithesis of a frivolous lawsuit. There was a clear tort, the restaurant had been made well aware that they were violating state food code, the plaintiff wasn't unreasonable, and as I mentioned earlier, they weren't even seeking punative damages, only compensation for actual medical expenses and lost wages.

...but, because it sounds really stupid, it became a posterchild for frivolous lawsuits.

 

[silver wolf009]

They didn't have a warning though. This was the case that "inspired" them to add a warning.

Also, on the topic of that warning, that was a brilliant piece of trickery they pulled, by stating they'd just have to warn people coffee is hot. Made her appear foolish and overly litigious.

So no, technically, she was never warned the coffee was hot. Some would argue that should be common knowledge, but there are always people who simply won't infer that, and that's the reason there needs to be warnings on things.

As for the knife shop idea, you couldn't sue, as it wasn't an accident, it was you cutting yourself. You made a conscious effort to cause harm. You had the intention to do that to yourself, and the courts tend to care about intention.

And yes, it may be hard for you or I to predict the behavior of stupid people, but I'm not a corporate entity, and I'm willing to bet you aren't either. We don't have so much on the line that we spend millions of dollars over time to gather think tanks to find out silly and dangerous ways a product could be used. McDonalds, if their administration was doing what it should have been doing, would have.

And there was a known danger, but we don't know if it was known by her. Again, one would assume, but assuming things isn't the best of ideas. However, we do know that McDonalds knew of the danger, and intentionally kept it the way things were, so their actions led to harm.

Wrong again

"there was a warning on the coffee cup"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

Notice the past tense, it was there when she spilled it. Nice job making unfounded claims, it helps your case. So yes, she was warned.

About the knife scenario, I assumed you would know I meant it was accidental seeing the context in which it was used, well now you know.

Your whole argument is based on twisting words and the assumption of "corporations should be nannies", I say no to that.

Forgive me if I don't trust Wikipedia. And where in the article does it say that?

And I should have implied accidental from this?

"If I went to a shop, took a look at a knife and cut myself, I wouldn't sue them because I made the mistake. The same applies here, there is a known danger and she messed up while dealing with it."

I'm sorry, I can't read, "If I were to take a knife and cut myself..." as, "It was accidental."

Looking at a website I would bet on having more credibility than Wikipedia, I found:

McDonald?s admitted it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not.

Here's the link if you'd like:

http://www.caoc.org/index.cfm?pg=facts

I found it as the last bullet under their listed evidence.

I will concede she was partially at fault for this, but McDonalds was overwhelmingly at fault for this.

EDIT: Actually, as I posted that, I realized I did in fact misread what you said. Apologies.

 

[LetalisK]

As the above user said, kettles boil water at 100 degrees Celsius. Would you sue the makers of a kettle for allowing the water to reach that temperature if you burned yourself, I'd assume you wouldn't.

Well, yeah. Because YOU boiled the water. Thus YOU are responsible for the consequences of it being too hot. Same thing in this case, though throw in that YOU knew, hundreds of times over, that YOUR particular practice caused additional damage yet you chose to continue to do it anyway.

The same applies here, the lady knew the coffee would be extremely hot and she was negligent in its handling.

Irrelevant. Again, that is not why McDonalds lost the case. They lost the case because they failed to address business practices that were demonstrably causing additional damage.

I boil the water and hurt myself. It's my fault.

I buy the boiling water and hurt myself, it's their fault.

Do you not see how amazingly bad your logic is? The point isn't irrelevant, you cannot disregard a point just because it refutes your "logic".

If you were buying boiling water, yes. The customers aren't buying boiling water or boiling coffee. They are buying hot coffee intended for consumption, something that has a clear definition of where it needs to be in order to not only be hot but safe. McDonalds decided to ignore the safe part. They willingly and knowingly distributed a product that was unnecessarily more dangerous than it needed to be. That is the problem.

edit: fixed the quote tag