In article ,
F. George McDuffee wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 16:27:46 -0500, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:
There were a number of postings on the tort suit McDonalds lost because
their coffee was too hot, at 180 degrees F, scalding a woman who tried
to hold the cup between her legs in the car.
We just got a brand new Krups coffeemaker, and I got curious, and
measured the coffee temperature. It's 180 degrees F, just like the
coffee books recommend.
Think someone will sue Krups?
Joe Gwinn
=============
If Krupps implies that the coffee is ready to drink as it comes
out of their machine and people were getting scalded or worse
every day, sure. People are aware that the coffee is too hot to
drink as it comes out of the maker.

Krups implies that coffee comes out, but makes no mention of when to
drink it. One assumes that Krups thinks that the rest is obvious;
coffee has been widely consumed in Europe since the 1600s, although it
was known at least since 1000 AD in the Arabic world.

Actually, if it came out any cooler, the coffemaker wouldn't make very
good coffee, and back it would go. You simply cannot brew coffee at 135
degrees F.

And tea needs to be even hotter, just under boiling, at least 20 degrees
hotter than for coffee. The rule has always been that the water had to
be "boilin mad" before pouring onto the tea leaves.


People are not aware that
the coffee is scalding and too hot to drink, when it is sold to
them in a cup as a ready to go drink. Why did the scalding
problem go away after McD's got their chops busted?

Because they were forced to lower it to 135 degrees F, if I recall.
That's pretty cool, so even the careless are safe.

I would have improved the coffee cups if I did anything.


If you sell
food that is apparently ready to eat/drink, it had better be
ready to eat/drink, especially after you have injured literally
hundreds of people.

It's 700 claims over ten years, or 70 per year [Lawyers]. McDonalds
serves a billion cups of coffee per year, so the incidence is not large:
10^2/10^9= 10^-7, or one every ten million cups of coffee.

For comparison, an average of 82 people per year are killed by lightning
[CDC].

In other words, the adult entire population is being treated like
children because one in ten million is childish.


By the same token, no civilian should be permitted to possess or use
metalworking equipment -- after all, people have been maimed or even
killed by such equipment, and the incidence is orders of magnitude
higher than one in ten million metalworkers.


Joe Gwinn



Refs:

[Lawyers] http://www.vanosteen.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit.htm

[CDC]
http://aepo-xdv-www.epo.cdc.gov/wonder/prevguid/m0052833/m0052833.asp

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/coffee/history.htm