Wes Skiles' Widow Looking For 25 Million from Lamartek

[undrwater]

When I make coffee at home, it may be close to 100C (212F).

What temperature, exactly?

 

[Storker]

I don't have exact numbers for the temp of the coffee when it hits my cup. However, when I make coffee, whether it's espresso or French press, the water is 100C when it makes contact with the coffee.

 

[undrwater]

Mine was a bad question.

I get the sense that even though the restaurant owner was aware of complaints that the coffee was too hot, hot enough to create 3rd degree burns on the customer's leg requiring skin grafting, you still find that a lawsuit under these circumstances is frivolous?

Do you see how trying to define such a personal term as "frivolous" can become a challenge? I don't think it's regional...it's quite personal.

 

[Storker]

you still find that a lawsuit under these circumstances is frivolous?

Yes. Coffee is supposed to be hot. It's made with boiling water, ferchrissakes!

 

[undrwater]

Yes. Coffee is supposed to be hot. It's made with boiling water, ferchrissakes!

The problem I see is "hot" is non-defining as mentioned above. I have had coffee spilled on me, I have spilled coffee on myself. I yelp, and get an angry red spot on my skin where the coffee landed. <--- That's my expectation, and it's a reasonable risk for drinking a hot beverage.

If instead, I get 3rd degree burns, have to head to the hospital for skin grafts, perhaps miss some work... <---- That's WAY outside of my expectation, and an unreasonable risk for drinking a hot beverage.

Remember, the restaurant was asking patrons to take on that risk WITHOUT warning.

Still...you see that people can disagree on what constitutes "frivolous"? It's not a useful metric.

 

[Rhone Man]

I don't know about you, but I personally consider whiplash injuries - which are real medical events - a bit more deserving of economic compensation than does failing to understand that hot coffee causes burns if you spill it in your lap, not understanding that a container of glue marked "flammable" and "keep away from heat" can actually blow up if it's too close to a heat source, or failing to release your seatbelt when you drive with a BAC of more than twice the US legal limit for driving. But that may just be my weird ideas, of course.

When I was a NQ lawyer we were acting for an insurance company and were defending a claim against a restaurant where a grandmother hand received a cup of very hot coffee in a paper cup, and in her shock she had dropped it on her infant granddaughter who was in a pram. The granddaughter (through her parents) were suing for the coffee being too hot (which it clearly was).

I made what I thought was the perfectly reasonable suggestion that we should "third party" the grandmother so that she had to pay a proportion of the damages on the basis that it was at least as much her fault for picking up a cup of piping hot coffee directly over a baby only a few months old in a pram. What a moron, and what a predictable result.

Everyone looked at me like I was a monster, but I still maintain I was wright. If a grandparent has to take no responsibility for their own careless actions injuring a baby in their care, what hope is there for society.

 

[undrwater]

@Rhone Man , do you think the term "frivolous" as it relates to lawsuits is a useful one?

 

[Rhone Man]

@Rhone Man , do you think the term "frivolous" as it relates to lawsuits is a useful one?

Sure. Under English law it is a legal term of art. If you bring a lawsuit that is deemed frivolous, bad things are supposed to happen to you.

 

[JohnnyC]

Except, due to the happy circumstances known as the laws of thermodynamics, as soon as your espresso passes through the coffee and into your tiny little cup, it immediately begins to cool, and continues to cool until it ultimately reaches room temperature. That is, unless you continue to maintain some sort of temperature through outside influence. For example, take your drip coffee pot, the base keeps the coffee warm, however it is significantly cooler than the near-boiling temperature required to make it. The issue with McDonald's is that they kept their coffee at an unreasonably high temperature, akin sticking your face underneath your espresso machine and completely foregoing your tiny little cup. People do not equate "hot coffee" with "boiling coffee." It is all context, and in the case of McDonald's, it was entirely unreasonable. Which is why they were found culpable.

 

[oya]

Seriously?

We're seriously going to quibble about coffee?