Negligence is defined as: Failure to exercise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances, resulting in an unintended injury to another party. If you think she was negligent, fine, but there was a percentage assigned to how much fault she had - McDonalds did not have to pay that part. I agree that the emphasis should be on the user, but that doesn't take away from McDonald's nation-wide negligence to the consumer.
Cost-benefit analysis. What temperature provides the best product with the least risk for injury. They aren't law. They are just a reference for the courts to look at. No need to make laws on it. This case was about negligence.
but you are defining negligence in terms of "industry standards" i dont agree with the idea of taking into account whatever they think are industry standards relative to coffee temperature when deciding in government courts. it shouldnt matter if the rest of the coffee industry decides to sell coffee at room termperature. mcdonalds likes to sell hot coffee, people should be ready to deal with it.
It was her fault period. Without her careless actions, she would have incurred no harm from the cup of coffee, as hundreds of people did who bought coffee from that location that same morning.
I know what negligence is. Brewing and serving hot coffee is not negligence. If the McDonalds employee had spilled the coffee on the customer, that might be negligence. If the cup split apart and the customer got burned, that might be negligence. I don't care how hot the coffee was or how many people had been burned. The coffee is hot. It's obviously hot. Prudent persons take care not to spill it on themselves whether it's 140 degrees or 350 degrees. Just because the court found McD partially at fault, doesn't mean they were negligent.
heh, i i get the impression cparso had/has kind of a goofy professor who was making a semi-valid point about analysing sort of urban-legendized tales of courts run amok and the prof took it a little too far with his anti-corporate politics and tricked cparso. you gotta check the industry standards. or just not touch it.
I certainly agree with that. But surely statistical analysis can provide an ideal temperature range somewhere between tongue-scalding hot and third-degree burns. Undrinkable, perhaps, but not dangerously so. When that cup company goes on NASDAQ, let me know, will you? :grin:
Who said anything about making laws? What is important is that when Macdonalds was accused of having dangerously unsafe coffee temperatures, the industry average was used against them in court. A law didn't come out of this. But industry awareness about coffee temperature sure as hell did. Fewer people get burned and less badly. And 99 percent of us can find coffee that is plenty hot enough just about anywhere.
