During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills of coffee. This policy by the fast food chain is the reason the jury awarded $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages in the McDonald’s hot coffee case. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for their inappropriate business practice.
Yeah nobody is disputing the hot water can injure someone. You think I don’t understand what boiling water can do to someone? And it doesn’t matter if other companies serve cold coffee.
How do you even cook food? You understand the danger and are careful about it. It’s commonly understood that coffee is hot and therefore people need to be careful of it. Don’t put yourself in a situation where a whole cup could spill all over your groin. I’ve been boiling water every day at the shockingly high temperature of 100C and somehow I’ve managed to avoid putting it in my groin area. Crazy, I know!
The link is to a personal injury law firm. How do you think their business would be affected if there was proper health care and accidents don’t result in people in a desperate situation where they have to sue someone or go bankrupt? Probably enough of a negative impact that personal injury lawyers are incentivized to promote the idea that McDonald’s was evil for serving coffee slightly hotter than other companies. Because they gotta promote the idea that suing someone that gets injured so they can pay their medical bills is a good and correct way of doing things. Which is why this silly meme persists.
Yeah wow a business wants to show competency in their core product, and educate their customers about how to mitigate their costs with their service.
Even without your stupid healthcare system, companies need to be held accountable for negligence. Until we all pull this stick out of our ass and demand governments provide real effective consumer protections, going after the wallet of idiot business is going to be the way.