On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:44:39 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm,
Joseph Gwinn quickly quoth:

In article ,
F. George McDuffee wrote:

snip
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.
snip
That's not 700 injuries, that's 700 claims, i.e. the people were
p****d off enough and injured enough to sue, and who the lawyers,
who were most likely working on a contingency basis, thought had
a "slam dunk" case. The actual number of injuries is much
[although how much is unknown] higher.

Even if it's a factor of ten higher (the usual rule of thumb), it's
still one per million cups.

Consider the rate of accidents in the USA: 106,000 -deaths- in 2002.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/uni...verview_UI.htm

I think coffee is damned bit safer, guys. Don't you?


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