The Gaming Den

Bigode wrote:As for normally hot coffee, I'm fairly sure that if I poured it inside my underwear, there wouldn't be much damage (well, let's say lots of pain, but not anything lasting).

Planning on getting a Darwin award?

And now the president is in on it.

Dayton Daily News excerpt wrote: President Bush has asked the Justice Department to help determine whether about 200,000 new Ohio voters must use provisional ballots on Election Day.

Bush did so by referring to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey a letter from House Minority Leader John Boehner. In the letter, Boehner outlined concerns that information on the voters' registration forms doesn't match other government records.

Boehner wants Mukasey to compel top election authorities, including Democratic Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, to comply with the Help America Vote Act by providing county boards of election information about such mismatched information.

Jamie Hais, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, said the department is reviewing the matter.

It's the latest chapter in a brawl between Ohio Republicans and Democrats over the integrity of 200,000 new voter registrations in the state. Ohio Republicans say that federal law requires Brunner to provide local boards of election with information about new voters whose registration forms don't match their drivers' licenses or Social Security records. Brunner said such information exists, but not in the form Republicans want, and has defended the current process.

Remember that whole thing about how an Obama supporter attacked a McCain supporter with a knife?

Yeah, it's completely fake.

Wanna play "Let's all hold our breath until the Republican blogs apologize?" I'm betting that we pass out.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Planning on getting a Darwin award?

Fortunately, Frank's last post just helped me answer this: "I'd have to train a lot harder before surpassing Republicans."

clikml wrote:RC, if she had drunk the damned coffee, i.e. used it as intended, she would have likely scalded her throat. Is that a better outcome than 3rd degree burns on 6% of her body?

Yeah, well I mean if she drank it and she got burned, I'd be much more likely to be on her side.

I mean I guess it's not so much that I believe McDonald's is without blame. I just think that if someone is going to get money, it shouldn't be the dumbass who put a cup of coffee between her legs and took off the lid. There's just something about that which doesn't sit right.

FrankTrollman wrote:Remember that whole thing about how an Obama supporter attacked a McCain supporter with a knife?

Yeah, it's completely fake.

Wanna play "Let's all hold our breath until the Republican blogs apologize?" I'm betting that we pass out.

-Username17

Have conservative blogs ever apologized for anything?

At least this time pretty much only Drudge and FOX and the RNC ran with it. Even Michelle Malkin wasn't fooled.

Of course, she has no empathy whatsoever, so...

-Crissa

Absentminded_Wizard wrote: Have conservative blogs ever apologized for anything?

Nope their only strategy is to just never have it mentioned and hope people forget about it.

I don't think I've ever heard the Republican's admit they were wrong about anything.

RC wrote:I mean I guess it's not so much that I believe McDonald's is without blame. I just think that if someone is going to get money, it shouldn't be the dumbass who put a cup of coffee between her legs and took off the lid. There's just something about that which doesn't sit right.

RC: I'm with you. If you're getting a drink like coffee, especially in a flimsy little cup, you don't put it between your legs. Especially when you're in a stopped car and there's someone else in the vehicle who can help you out.

It seems like she could have sued the car company for not having cup holders or seats that tilted backwards, making it difficult to get out. Or the clothing company for being absorbent and keeping the coffee close to her skin. Or the cup company for not being spill proof.

If the coffee were cooler, she still would have suffered burns - they just wouldn't have been as bad. If she hadn't put the coffee between her legs, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The only person who could have prevented the whole scenario was the person who put the coffee between her legs.

You shouldn't suffer burns from something that is sold as 'ready to consume'.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:You shouldn't suffer burns from something that is sold as 'ready to consume'.

If you didn't spill it on yourself, you wouldn't get burned, either.

Liquids scald when they're hot enough to start killing cells. That's usually around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Companies would lose a lot of money if they sold supposedly hot drinks at 120 degrees and under. For many people, myself included, 120 degrees is too damned cold.

And that means that automatically, if I'm ordering something hot, I'm putting myself at risk for injury because it's both hot enough for me to consume and hot enough to burn me.

On the coffee thang...

She should have been able to sue them for wrongfully endangering her without even having spilled a drop. That she spilled it was just the catalyst for the discovery process that showed McDonald's to be so far in the wrong that pretty much any opponent of theirs on this issue would wind up being in the right.

Maj, whether or not she was to blame for the spill doesn't even matter. She was served a dangerous beverage that was designed to burn anyone who touched it... as a matter of willful and informed store policy.

If I pour my drink on me, through poor judgement or poor coordination or simply poor luck, I should be able to do so without incurring permanent harm upon myself. That is not an unreasonable expectation.

If McDonald's hadn't been penalized such a massive amount, then there's no way in hell they would have changed their temperature policy. This wasn't the first, or even the hundredth time someone had been hurt by their over-heated coffee.

During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This history documented McDonalds' knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.

Good goddamn. If she wasn't to be the one who nailed them hard, then would it be better for it to be the next person to get burned? No matter how you look at it, it's a Good Thing® that she won that case and stuck it to McDonald's.

B.S. on the 120 degree coffee being dangerous at all. That might kill a couple cells, but the heat will dissipate so fast that you won't suffer any notable harm. It takes about 30 seconds of exposure to heat at 130 degrees to burn skin. It takes about 10 minutes to be burned from exposure to 120 degree surfaces. Coffee is usually around 140-150 degrees, and that is cool enough to not be in imminent danger of 3rd degree burns from spills.


Bottom line-
If I can't safely dip my wick in a cup of coffee (or whatever) then it shouldn't be served dammit. That's my new standard.

Crissa wrote:You shouldn't suffer burns from something that is sold as 'ready to consume'.

... I can't believe you're defending that idiot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Liebeck

I treat fresh coffee like a large vial of sulfuric acid when I'm driving and ESPECIALLY don't put it between my legs.

Also, McDonalds sucks. Everyone in the world knows this. Buying from them was the first step in her long path of misery.

sigma wrote:... I can't believe you're defending that idiot.

It's a plastic fucking cup. When you open those things, they deform, and there is spillage over the sides. This isn't supposed to really matter, maybe staining your clothes depending upon what you're wearing. However, if the people who flled your cup have filled it with something that is completely fucking dangerous, that they know is dangerous, that can fucking kill people, then yes, it starts being a big deal.

A small piece of overspillage over the sides of a damn cup of coffee is not supposed to be a big deal. Once it starts dissolving flesh however, it starts becoming a big deal. Not the least of which is the fact that it starts causing involuntary spasms - which will doubtless spill the rest of the coffee as well. It's a chain reaction that is never supposed to happen, because edible liquids are not supposed to be served at 180 fucking degrees.

This is an extremely simple event. McDonalds was acting evil and they got punished for slightly in an effort to stop them fom doing it. The fact that people who support evil corporations making money at the expense of human suffering have somehow tricked you into taking the side of the evil corporation is appalling. You should be ashamed of yourself.

-Username17

Maj wrote:

Crissa wrote:You shouldn't suffer burns from something that is sold as 'ready to consume'.

If you didn't spill it on yourself, you wouldn't get burned, either.

Liquids scald when they're hot enough to start killing cells. That's usually around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Companies would lose a lot of money if they sold supposedly hot drinks at 120 degrees and under. For many people, myself included, 120 degrees is too damned cold.

And that means that automatically, if I'm ordering something hot, I'm putting myself at risk for injury because it's both hot enough for me to consume and hot enough to burn me.

Health department standards require the coffee to be at least 140 degrees. However, if the difference between 140 and 180 is the difference between minor burns and burns that require skin grafts, McDonalds bears some degree of responsibility. And the jury did find the woman partially responsible; they didn't declare it to be all McDonald's fault.

AW wrote:Health department standards require the coffee to be at least 140 degrees.

Yeah. The old 40 to 140 rule. Personally, like my drinks hotter than 140, so that would still be unsatisfactorily cold.

AW wrote:However, if the difference between 140 and 180 is the difference between minor burns and burns that require skin grafts, McDonalds bears some degree of responsibility.

I have no idea what difference 20 degrees would have made, but I'm betting she still would have had tremendous problems. The woman sat in the liquid for more than a minute and a half. If it's a choice between modesty and skin grafts, I'm going to be up and out of that car taking my pants off to get that stuff off of my skin.

... which is why the jury held her partially liable and reduced the damages accordingly.

Meanwhile, even if she had acted more appropriately, she would still obviously have been unreasonably injured.

During the trial, incidently, a key piece of evidence was the fact that McDonald's coffee was kept way hotter than industry standards. Other restaurants, aware of how dangerous coffee that hot is, had long ago reduced temperatures or never raised them in the first place. It's not like there's disinterested observers who feel this was a reasonable temperature-- it had already been found unreasonable by most businesses.

Maj wrote:
I have no idea what difference 20 degrees would have made, but I'm betting she still would have had tremendous problems. The woman sat in the liquid for more than a minute and a half. If it's a choice between modesty and skin grafts, I'm going to be up and out of that car taking my pants off to get that stuff off of my skin.

I take it you've never had third degree burns or seen someone getting them.

People who suffer mild burns have a quick spasm of essentially random action and then regain control of themselves. People with full thickness burns often don't regain control over their bodies for over a minute. You might as well ask why someone covered in burning napalm just fell on the ground having seizures rather than doing the "right" thing and laboriously scraping all their affected skin off onto the concrete.

Your skin is covered in dead, fairly heat resistant material. When you come into contact with water up to a considerable temperature the affected area isn't even alive. The living tissue under that is, well, alive. When you come into contact with things that are only slightly hotter than the "no meaningful damage" temperature you start suffering major, long lasting burns. But the stuff under that is nerves and muscles along with fat and veins. If you start damaging that you can't even fucking move.

Or to put it another way: your normal temperature in your body is about 99 degrees all the time. If it goes up to 105 degrees, you fucking die. The difference between what is an acceptable temperature and what is not an acceptable temperature is rather knife edge to be honest. Forty degrees is actually a huge temperature shift, and acting like it's no big deal makes you come off as a raging moron.

-Username17

Boolean wrote:During the trial, incidently, a key piece of evidence was the fact that McDonald's coffee was kept way hotter than industry standards.

Except apparently the ideal holding temperature for coffee is 180 degrees - regardless of what the name of your restaurant is.

Boolean wrote:Meanwhile, even if she had acted more appropriately, she would still obviously have been unreasonably injured.

The only person who could have prevented the whole thing was Stella Liebeck... Unless you expect McDonalds to only serve iced coffee to eliminate the dangers of burning. In which case, she would have gotten her coffee someplace else and stuck it between her knees.

She was more than 20% responsible for her condition. She was 100% responsible for her condition. Cooler coffee would have reduced her injury, but not putting it between her legs would have prevented it.

The money was awarded to her because sympathy for her plight - which was horrifying. But that doesn't mean that it was actually McDonald's fault.

Maj wrote:The only person who could have prevented the whole thing was Stella Liebeck... Unless you expect McDonalds to only serve iced coffee to eliminate the dangers of burning. In which case, she would have gotten her coffee someplace else and stuck it between her knees.

Are you fucking retarded? That is not how burns work, bitch.

-Username17

It's true, bigger bold text proves it.

Was the coffee too hot? Maybe.

Here's the thing: People liked McDonald's coffee because it was so hot. That was one of the selling points and it was pretty much common knowledge that McDonald's coffee was hotter than other places. I was like 13 when this happened, am allergic to coffee and never eat at McDonald's and I was aware that this was the case.

Odds are, she chose McDonald's for their coffee for the exact reason she later sued them. And putting a hot beverage between your legs is incredibly stupid. Period.

Can we put that stupid 'beverage between your legs' canard to fucking rest?

'cuz I'm getting getting fucking tired of you dips circumventing the safety issue by going 'hurr hurr hurr groin coffee she so stupid'

This could have just as easily happened if someone knocked over a cup of hot coffee or god forbid spill it on yourself. Don't EVER spill any coffee on yourself, you'll get third degree burns!

Lago PARANOIA wrote: This could have just as easily happened if someone knocked over a cup of hot coffee or god forbid spill it on yourself. Don't EVER spill any coffee on yourself, you'll get third degree burns!

Yeah it could have, but the person who wins the big case against McDonalds isn't someone who spilled it under normal circumstances. It was someone who was stupid enough to put it between her legs and then tried to take the top off.

Frank wrote:Are you fucking retarded? That is not how burns work, bitch.

What does your reply even have to do with what I'm saying?

If you are stupid enough to put your baby in his little bouncy chair on the kitchen counter and turn your back, it is your fault when the kid slides out of it and onto the floor. The fact that the child fractures his skull and suffers brain damage is irrelevant. It sucks, yes, but it's not the bouncy chair maker's fault, nor is it the cabinet maker's fault, or the flooring company's fault. It's yours - for being dumb enough to put the kid on the counter in the first place.

If you are dumb enough to take a cup full of liquid - regardless of how hot it is - and put it between your legs and open it up, it is your fault when the liquid spills all over yourself. And it sucks if the liquid just happened to be hot coffee and you got burned, but it's not the coffee. It's not the cup. It's not the car seat or your pants. It's you.