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What's With These Holographic UL stickers?

  • Thread starter Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover
  • Start date
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Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
The hell she did. She bought hot coffee, and should know not to
stick the damned thing in between her legs.

She didn't deserve a goddamned dime.

The coffee was at a temperature unusually high for coffee (most coffee
does not cause the burns that occurred), the lid was notably unusually
difficult to dislodge from the cup without spilling said unusually hot
coffee (McD's got a good 600 complaints about these issues), and the
plaintiff's first move was to request only reimbursement of her medical
bills.

Those who want to complain about lawsuits and trial lawyers should
easily find cases where the plaintiffs and/or their lawyers were a lot
more undeserving. See my other post in this thread!

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
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Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
snip
It was initially $90M, and that got reduced, and I believe the
reduced figure got reduced.

In other words... she all but lost on appeal.

No, the original award was about 2.something or close to 3 million,
reduced to closer to 2 million by the jury because the jury determined
that the problem was 20% her fault. Reduced on appeal and settled out of
court.

Those who want to complain about lawsuits and trial lawyers should have
an easy time finding other cases to support an anti-trial-lawyer cause
that I can easily agree with. See my other post!

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
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Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
Were that true, which it is not, it would have been Bunn Corporation
paying as it is they that set the temperature of their coffee
machines.

No, McD's had the temperature set unusually hot on the advice of a
consultant (or more than one). As for reason - I keep hearing two
competing ones: A) Coffee is unusually hot so it remains hot after many
miles on the road B) Unusually hot coffee emits aroma that stimulates
coffee sales.
It was a frivolous suit pretty much.

The burns were real and the fact that the coffee was unusually hot for
coffee was real. The fact that the coffeecup lid was more difficult to
open without spillage than was available was real.
The fact that it is easy to find many lawsuits much more frivolous than
this one is real. Those who want to bash trial lawyers (something I often
agree with) should use as examples those really frivolous ones rather than
a high profile one that conservatives latch onto but which is not one of
the really frivolous lawsuits if you know all the facts!

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
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Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
They had previously been sued for exactly the same thing and so knew what
they were doing - *that's* why they got hit so big!

Actually, they were notified with about 600 complaints of burns caused
by their coffee being substantially hotter than usual for coffee. Also
about their coffeecup lids being unusually tight and lacking cutaways for
sipping, so that people often ended up dislodging the whole lid with a
jolt that often led to a spill.
The plaintiff in that famous lawsuit at first asked for only
reimbursement of her medical bills, but McD's refused. Despite the fact
that it was obvious that she would not have incurred such medical bills if
the coffe was not at an unusual temperature for coffee.

-----------------------------------------------------------

As for those who want to complain about trial lawyers? I say there are
more obvious targets!

1. Wyeth-Aherst (I hope I got this right) marketed the "Phen-Phen" (I
hope I spelled this right) weight loss drug combination. This resulted in
some cases of heart damage and a class action lawsuit that claimed
specific numbers/ranges of various degrees of heart damage. And the
defendant did indeed get caught with politically incorrect memos about the
plaintiffs as well as being caught understating or misstating the risks.
But the class action costs them billions, probably mostly from innocent
peoples' IRAs and 401K plans. But it does not stop there. Mostly from a
few small regions (sometimes just a small cluster of counties, at most a
moderately low population U.S. state or maybe a couple neighboring ones)
individual actions from plaintiffs that separated from the class action
arose, counting on jurors in those counties being culturally being very
generous with other peoples' money. Those individual actions had more
claimed cases of the most severe form of heart damage than predicted by
the plaintiffs' lawyers in the class action!
Not that I have any sympathy to money-grubbing US pharmaceutical
companies, but I think those lawyers are costing common USA residents more
than anyone else!

2. As reported in the Philadelphioa Inquirer (a newspaper drawing
complaints about being part of the "liberal press"!) a month or two ago,
a small law firm moved into the Philadelphia area from Florida and has
apparently been on a mission to find petty little violations of the
Americans with Disability Act by local small businesses. The businesses
get no complaints prior to notice that they are being sued. The law firm
offers to settle for a couple kilobucks or something like that to avoid a
trial that requires more than that in a defense.
This law firm sued even upon such basis as a toilet being 1 inch
displaced outside the required position range in a stall that a golf cart
can drive into (Would the defendant spend $5K or 10K to say in court that
moving a wall 1 inch is not a "reasonable accomodation"), and no
handicapped parking being provided by a business that did not even have a
parking lot.
The article mentioned that a Congressman from Florida (Foley if I
remember correctly) wants to introduce legislation that requires that ADA
lawsuits can only be filed after the prospective defendant has been
notified of violations (I hope in specifics!) and has been given 90 days
to correct them (and I hope suits are based on the specific violations
which the defendant was on notice of for at least 90 days). But I
fear this takes a back seat to flashier issues of partisan politics...

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
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Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
Drinl it at 180F? Not likely. It's not likely "she" was burned
by 180F coffee either. It cools rather quickly though 160F
wouldn't be unusual. At 120F, keep it.

A good friend had a DD franchise when this nonsense went down.
Their specification was 180F (give or take three). If they
didn't *maintain* that specification they were fined by
corporate. Coffee is brewed hot and isn't worth squat cold.
Sorry.

150 F I have to sip it slowly. When I want coffee the usual reason is
that I want caffeine. Especially should I buy it from McD's, whose coffee
is $#!+ at any temperature.
Whe I buy coffee I want it to be not so hot that I burn my tongue if I
drink more than 2 grams of it at a time!

Any takeout coffee temperature directives for higher temperature have to
be for one of these reasons:

1. Make it too hot to taste how bad it is
2. Make it hot enough to be hot after a commute
3. Make it hot enough to emit an aroma that stimulates coffee sales
(I want whatever good flavor that their coffee has to remain in my
coffee!)

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
T

**THE-RFI-EMI-GUY**

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have always found McD's coffee impossible to drink without adding ice
or water. I can't begin to count the times I have asked the clerk to add
a little ice or water and have gotten that "blank" stare. The woman
deserved every dime she asked for.
 
D

Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
There is, of course, a website:

http://www.overlawyered.com/

I took a glance, no news to me yet!

I propose a few things that I have proposed on Usenet before. These
should be enough to get trial lawyers lobbying for job retraining
programs!

1. Non-economic damages, such as pain-and-suffering, can only be awarded
if the plaintiff can show a preponderance of evidence of being blameless.
That means no pain-and-suffering to jaywalkers and non-seatbelt-wearers.
No pain-and-suffering to some who uses a lawnmower as a hedge trimmer,
even if the injury would not have occurred if the hedge trimmer was not
defective (pay medical bills and reasonable portion of lawyer fees only).

2. Punitive damages get awarded not to the plaintiff but (after deducting
for lawyer fees) to some branch/level of government. I propose
distribute, proportionately to population as of most-recent US Census,
to the general funds of the 49 states other than the one that the trial
was conducted in.

3. (Requires state constitutional amendment in some states) Some states
have insufficient ability to reduce excessive jury awards. Pensylvania
seems an example to me.
This touches on a debate of high medical malpractice insurance. Doctors
want the $250K cap that California enacted in the 1970's, while lawyers
want no cap at all. One of Philadelphia's two major newspapers proposes a
cap of 250K increased by inflation since CA got theirs (approx. 900K), but
the two sides appear too polarized to consider this.
Another consideration is that at least in Pennsylvania, careful doctors
pay the same premiums as careless ones that have already been successfully
sued multiple times. Although the data appears to me to show that about
half of these suits happen to any doctor no matter how careful they are,
it is also apparent that doctors appear to stick together and protect the
bad ones.
Further complicating this issue is that generosity of jurors varies so
much from county-to-county that plaintiff's lawyers try (often
successfully) to move a case into a county where the alleged offense did
not occur in. County-by-county variations are so extreme that a case with
obvious malpractice outright gets found in favor of the defendant only 3
counties away from one (in the same state) with a big national reputation
of being generous to plaintiffs!
Pennsylvania recently addressed this, but cases filed before this are
still in progress.

Back to Point 3: Besides the issue of caps, in some states
(including Pennsylvania) judges do not have an easy time reducing
obviously excessive jury awards.

4. Enact Foley's (Congressman from Florida) proposed modification of the
ADA to have lawsuits only result from violations that go uncorrected after
90 days notice to the prospective defendant.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
D

DarkMatter

Jan 1, 1970
0
No, McD's had the temperature set unusually hot on the advice of a
consultant (or more than one). As for reason - I keep hearing two
competing ones: A) Coffee is unusually hot so it remains hot after many
miles on the road B) Unusually hot coffee emits aroma that stimulates
coffee sales.

Unusually hot coffee kept hot from a single element below burns
within ten minutes of hitting the pot, and tastes for shit. The aroma
would be likewise burnt smelling, old, evaporated coffee.

Their coffee and their machines are the same as it ever was.
 
B

Bias Comms

Jan 1, 1970
0
Don said:
The coffee was at a temperature unusually high for coffee (most coffee
does not cause the burns that occurred), the lid was notably unusually
difficult to dislodge from the cup without spilling said unusually hot
coffee (McD's got a good 600 complaints about these issues), and the
plaintiff's first move was to request only reimbursement of her medical
bills.

Those who want to complain about lawsuits and trial lawyers should
easily find cases where the plaintiffs and/or their lawyers were a lot
more undeserving. See my other post in this thread!

You can't legislate for stupidity, nor should you try to - death and injury
due to stupidity helps cleanse the gene pool. The McD plaintiff simply
didn't have a case. Over here in the UK, she'd be laughed out of court.

I think it's really funny to see an American book of matches with a warning
"Contents may burn"!

Chris
 
B

Bias Comms

Jan 1, 1970
0
Techie said:
No matter what anyones opinion on it.
it was McDonolds Fault for settting the temp too
high. Thats why they had to Pay-out.

I hope the local Police took her to court for dangerous driving. It isn't
possible to control a vehicle properly with a cup of coffee between your
legs.

Chris
 
B

Bias Comms

Jan 1, 1970
0
Don said:
The burns were real and the fact that the coffee was unusually hot for
coffee was real. The fact that the coffeecup lid was more difficult to
open without spillage than was available was real.

The fact that she was driving in a manner that could endanger other road
users (with a cup of coffee between her legs) seems to have been
overlooked. In countries with (mostly) sensible, responsible laws, she
would have been jailed for dangerous driving!

Chris
 
Z

zoldoff

Jan 1, 1970
0
#Hah-hah! Snork! One of the guys at work was out because he got
#scalded by some hot water. Reminded me of that lady who won the
#lawsuit against McDonalds because she got scalded by hot coffee.
#Now every time I see a cup of coffee, I'm reminded of that by the now
#prevelant WARNING on it. In multiple languages!

This may be a little off topic. I just thought that people should
know what really happened.

The scalding hot coffee was meant for customers who bring in their own
thermos cup. In this instance they servered the coffee in a paper
cup, and as a result the woman received scalds.

The lady who was scalded asked for $400 to cover her medical bills.
McDonald's high priced lawyers fought it very aggressively. The jury
was so pissed off at McDonalds for not settling it awarded her $20000.
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
#Hah-hah! Snork! One of the guys at work was out because he got
#scalded by some hot water. Reminded me of that lady who won the
#lawsuit against McDonalds because she got scalded by hot coffee.
#Now every time I see a cup of coffee, I'm reminded of that by the now
#prevelant WARNING on it. In multiple languages!

This may be a little off topic. I just thought that people should
know what really happened.

The scalding hot coffee was meant for customers who bring in their own
thermos cup. In this instance they servered the coffee in a paper
cup, and as a result the woman received scalds.

The lady who was scalded asked for $400 to cover her medical bills.
McDonald's high priced lawyers fought it very aggressively. The jury
was so pissed off at McDonalds for not settling it awarded her $20000.

Some people just make stuff up and type it, don't they?

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
K

Ken Taylor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Spehro Pefhany said:
Some people just make stuff up and type it, don't they?

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

Somewhat different to what happened on Earth, but what the heck, it was fun.

Ken
 
P

Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Jan 1, 1970
0
Spehro said:
Some people just make stuff up and type it, don't they?

The usenet only requires a finite number of monkeys with typewriters to
be self supporting.

;-)
 
D

DarkMatter

Jan 1, 1970
0
#Hah-hah! Snork! One of the guys at work was out because he got
#scalded by some hot water. Reminded me of that lady who won the
#lawsuit against McDonalds because she got scalded by hot coffee.
#Now every time I see a cup of coffee, I'm reminded of that by the now
#prevelant WARNING on it. In multiple languages!

This may be a little off topic. I just thought that people should
know what really happened.

The scalding hot coffee was meant for customers who bring in their own
thermos cup. In this instance they servered the coffee in a paper
cup, and as a result the woman received scalds.

Bullshit. ALL of the pots have the same temperature heaters.
The lady who was scalded asked for $400 to cover her medical bills.
McDonald's high priced lawyers fought it very aggressively. The jury
was so pissed off at McDonalds for not settling it awarded her $20000.

Hell, I don't even think you can get the numbers right, much less
the facts.
 
T

Tom MacIntyre

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bullshit. ALL of the pots have the same temperature heaters.

It's important to remember that heat and temperature are two related
but different things also.

Tom
 
T

Tomato Head

Jan 1, 1970
0
Don't want to correct you Dr Watson, but her law suit was settled out of
court.
After a couple of reversals, the attourneys finally aggeed on how much
money each one would make.

Tomato
 
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