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

[Bat Vader]

I consider both the girlfriend and the boyfriend at fault. The girlfriend should have known not to text her boyfriend while he was driving and the boyfriend should not have tried reading the text while driving.

Apparently we now need designated texters as well.

 

[silver wolf009]

Snip

Apologies, but after posting my last comment I realized I missed a word in your analogy. Consider this an extra heads up, in addition to my edit.

 

[godofallu]

The coffee in lap lawsuit was not frivolous.

This one is, although if I had lost my legs I would also probably be pretty pissed at the chick for knowingly texting the idiot.

 

[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.

Ha, nice one but that failed pretty badly.

Of course people make mistakes but they should also bloody accept when they made the mistake.

No. You said she was derp for dropping it. I'm just saying any normal person could drop it.

And anyway, I don't really disagree with you. It's her own fault for putting the cup between her legs. Not too mention, most of the other cases have failed, and that British courts found that, in a similar case, the hotter temperature is no more likely to burn than other coffee.

 

[sivloc]

Utterly ludicrous case... I am totally not typing this while driving...

Ahhhh, I like this guy!

OT: Seems like such a case would get thrown out, unless there were some mitigating conditions we're unaware of. Is it possible there were multiple texts sent back and forth? I guess that could shift the blame a little towards her...still dangerous precedent though. Does this mean we could sue the passengers for not going "what the hell, stop texting and drive! *Backhead slap*", just seems like a dangerous path.

 

[LetalisK]

#1 Even if the coffee was about 20ºC cooler it still would have burned her within 2 seconds

Actually, you're right. Touche.

 

[LetalisK]

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

You know what I meant, you are being pedantic. Boiling water for the purpose of consuming it after being mixed with coffee beans/powder/granules, are you happy?


I see you point, I still disagree but this is going to go on forever so I'll leave it at this.

#1 I think she is in the wrong, you don't

2# It's good that they improved their packaging and warnings so this could be reduced but I feel statistically that the number of cases was extremely small.

Don't take this as me giving up but we are rotating in circles here. I do agree with you in some ways (packaging, size of warning) but there is no point going on in circles. If you want to keep going then be my guest.

No, you're right. For some reason I thought they brewed their coffee way hotter than what was the standard, but after doing some more digging I found out that it was actually within the industry standard.

Edit: I meant served, not brewed(that wouldn't make any sense). They served their coffee at the industry standard.

 

[Starke]

Haven't read the article but did the boyfriend die in the crash? why aren't they suing him?

They probably are. It's a civil suit, suing everything that moves is par for the course.

 

[silver wolf009]

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.

I assumed you would understand context, clearly you don't. I like how after we have cleared it up you cannot refute my point, it says a lot. You dodge the point rather than meet it head on.

Learn to CTRL+F? The source is the wall street journal which has expired.

Here is a few other sources, use CTRL+F.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/st_warninglabels/
http://josephzasa.hubpages.com/hub/-Behind-The-McDonalds-Coffee-Spill-Incident-The-Unheard-Truth
http://overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebeck-and-the-mcdonalds-coffee-case/

If you criticise Wikipedia (which uses sources) allow me to do the same.

"consumer attorneys of california"

Talk about impartial.

"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."

Nature and extent, that is different from "did not warn" which is what you are saying. This is just word play, it does not deny that they didn't warn people, they are saying the warning should have been greater. Your point has been debunked.

Three seconds into the second article I find sentences about how the entire case was entirely pointless and frivolous. Doesn't seem impartial either. Then it goes into how the left has been twisted into feeling it was a good outcome.

"Amazingly, rather than argue that the tort system shouldn?t be judged by the occasional outlier, the litigation lobby has succeeded in persuading some in the media and on the left that the Liebeck case is actually an aspirational result for the tort system, and, not only that, but that anyone who says otherwise is just a foolish right-winger buying into ?urban legends? (Aug. 14, Aug. 16, and links therein)."

Talk about impartial while the article rags on "The Lefties."

And I don't trust Wikipedia because of its open door policy, not because it uses sources.

Regardless, you honestly think it's a good idea to let business not take care to try and prevent harm to its customers? That just seems counter intuitive. They kept it in a way they knew for a FACT could, and has, caused harm to people. Hundreds of cases of this actually. Even if they warned them, they kept on putting them in unnecessary danger, simply to keep their coffee good for a little longer.

Simply letting them off the hook to pay for the skin grafts and burn treatment because they felt it was in some way her fault just smacks of silliness.

...Which is how my state works. WHOOO!! Go North Carolina!

 

[LetalisK]

snip

The impartiality of his sources notwithstanding, he's actually right. McDonalds served their coffee at a temperature that is actually standard for both businesses and private use. They even continue to do this to this day, as the case that went against McDonalds is actually an anomaly in the precedent.

 

[Starke]

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

You know what I meant, you are being pedantic. Boiling water for the purpose of consuming it after being mixed with coffee beans/powder/granules, are you happy?


I see you point, I still disagree but this is going to go on forever so I'll leave it at this.

#1 I think she is in the wrong, you don't

2# It's good that they improved their packaging and warnings so this could be reduced but I feel statistically that the number of cases was extremely small.

Don't take this as me giving up but we are rotating in circles here. I do agree with you in some ways (packaging, size of warning) but there is no point going on in circles. If you want to keep going then be my guest.

No, you're right. For some reason I thought they brewed their coffee way hotter than what was the standard, but after doing some more digging I found out that it was actually within the industry standard.

Edit: I meant served, not brewed(that wouldn't make any sense). They served their coffee at the industry standard.

I'd have to check to make absolutely sure, but my recollection is it was corporate standard, not industry. McDonald's had a policy theory that people would order the coffee, drive to their destination, then consume it.

 

[silver wolf009]

snip

The impartiality of his sources notwithstanding, he's actually right. McDonalds served their coffee at a temperature that is actually standard for both businesses and private use. They even continue to do this to this day, as the case that went against McDonalds is actually an anomaly in the precedent.

It was their standard as a company, not what it should have been at. I do recall some sort of organization in the government having investigated it, and telling them to take it down by four degrees.

The standing of the organization eludes me now, but what with all the rest tape that dwells within the government, I'm surprised I remembered any action taken by an individual group within it.

 

[silver wolf009]

Snip

We keep pulling up different information from different sources, most of which seems to contradict.

To spare myself any further entrenchment, and to get back to work on a project I have to tend to, I'm going to cut this off now, because we're just going to keep pulling out cards that say different things with no real way of knowing which is right and which is wrong.

In parting, I reaffirm that I feel that companies should be overly cautious, both for their own financial good, and the good of their customers, which McDonalds wasn't here.

Bye now.

EDIT: Also, I didn't add the 36 Degrees to that. I accidentally brain derped and typed four where forty was meant. All well.

 

[Snotnarok]

It's frivolous, how would she know he's driving? It's not in her means to know what he's doing unless he's bloody sending her a live feed. Even then, here's a thought do the responsible thing and don't bloody respond to texts while you drive.