Jed Clever Wrote:
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> The case did not settle out of court. It went to
> verdict. The jury awarded her around a million
> bucks, half of which went to medical bills.
That's a fabrication. McDonald's appealed and eventually the case was settled out of court. That's been documented.
[
www.lectlaw.com]
> Whether or not you agree with the verdict, the
> facts are that home office warned the store not to
> superheat the coffee due to this very danger.
The "facts" of a warning does not in and of itself mean that the store was liable, surely you must recognize that. By the way, I have no opinion on the case.
> This was a case where they were warned by the entity that sets the rules,
Actually, McDonald's system (or Corporate) doesn't "set the rules" for their owner/ operators at the store level, the owner/ operators do. They don't even have to buy McDonald's products, promotions, or systems--and some don't. But as one might imagine, they have good reason to use the system if they want to profitably leverage a system that has worked for decades in over 100 markets.
By the way, I'm not defending McDonald's or the owner operator responsible for serving the coffee, I'm simply offering a corrective on how that organization operates what it calls a 3-legged stool, of suppliers, systems, and owner operators. McDonald's is a real-estate company that leases a site to an owner operator for 20 years at a time, and the owner operator agrees to pay them so much $ per month for the spot and equipment, and at the end of 20 years McDonald's owns the real estate and the O/O has made millions in profit from partaking in a supplier system where the most expensive food products cost less than 35 cents to produce are sold for as much as ten times that amount. End result, McDonald's owns more real estate than any other organization in the world except the Catholic Chuch.
> the warning was purposefully ignored for the sake
> of profit.
Equally untrue. The coffee was heated to extract flavor, not to create additional volume of coffee. The testimony is clear in this regard (see link above).
By the way, drip coffee is already the highest margin product in the restaurant business, and the cost of "superheating" (as opposed to just "heating") the water would offset any increased margin gained by creating an additional volume of coffee. Heat isn't free.
More importantly, the coffee packages are premeasured to decrease the labor cost or inefficiency of measuring coffee. Additional labor would also further offset any margin increase available from saving an ounce of grinds.
Take a look at a site like coffeegeek.com to see the (flavor) value of brewing coffee at just over 200 degrees F. Ironically, the restaurant could have increased its margins more by selling colder coffee brewed for a longer period of time rather than by serving hotter coffee--but it simply would have tasted worse than McDonald's coffee already tastes.
Should the woman have waited before placing a hot cup of coffee between her legs while the car was in motion?
Probably.
I know that I'd never do what she did, and if I did, I'd only blame myself for spilling the coffee.
Should the coffee have been cooler? Either that or the lid should have been impossible to remove, to idiot-proof the item. Given that you can't idiot-proof the cup, I suppose McDonald's should a) have refused to sell her the coffee (as a bar would refuse to serve a drunk), or b) McDonald's must take responsibility for the actions of careless customers who spill coffee on themselves.