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.
How likely are you to spill a high volume of Mac n Cheese on yourself in the kitchen, to the point that it soaks through your clothes, versus spilling an open cup of coffee in a car?
We do encounter dangerous things everyday, and this scenario is more dangerous than what’s acceptable at industrial plants. You would be required to put in several safeguards which each reduced the chance of the event occuring by a factor of 10.
As a process engineer it’s absolutely insane to me how risky this was. I believe something causing permanent injury/disability to a member of the public would actually be our highest or second highest severity category. With how likely this is to happen, if a company had inadequate safeguards in place, they would be heavily fined and I don’t even know what else. This is a flagrant safety violation from a process engineering perspective.
As someone who made coffee that was 88C (I measured it) this morning and every other morning. It’s ridiculous to me that people are shocked that coffee is hot.
Stick a thermometer into a cup of coffee, see what temperature it is. Now work on some insane safeguards for it. Or just do what everyone else on the planet does and accept that it’s hot, so be careful with it.