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83-Year Old Suing Apple After Walking into Glass Doors at Retail Store

Mattie Num Nums said:
Coffee is served between 150F and 175F.

Liquid above 150F causes third degree burns.

I'm sure you're smarter than that.
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Properly brewed coffee doesn't cause skin grafts.

I don't expect you to actually take the time to read this but...

http://ken_ashford.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/the-truth-about-that-mcdonalds-hot-coffee-lawsuit.html

Oh, and McDonald's tried that BS excuse and it failed in court...

"The jury was informed that McDonald's operations and training manual required its coffee to be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste, and that this was 40 to 50 degrees hotter than coffee made at home. A McDonald's expert argued that any coffee hotter than 130 degrees could produce third-degree burns, so it did not matter that McDonald's coffee was hotter. But a plaintiff's expert testified that lowering the serving temperature to about 160 degrees could make a big difference, because it takes less than three seconds to produce a third-degree burn at 190 degrees, about 12 to 15 seconds at 180 degrees, and about 20 seconds at 160 degrees."

-http://www.social.mtu.edu/faculty/speters/WrightsMcDonaldsfacts.htm
 
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Boisv said:
Properly brewed coffee doesn't cause skin grafts.
Click to expand...

Coffee is brewed at over 150F. Water over 150F causes third degree burns. Third degree burns require skin grafts. Are you one of those guys that bought Logic off the App Store in hopes that it would make you smarter?

http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71

Edit: According to the National Coffee Association of America coffee should be brewed between 195F-205F. Much hotter than my Mr Coffee manual states.

http://www.antiscald.com/prevention/general_info/table.php

According to this table a person will receive a second degree burn in 3 seconds of exposure and a third degree burn in 5 seconds of exposure to water in excess of 140F.
 
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I have to say that the anti-senior rhetoric that has been posted on this thread is making me sick. While I have a problem with the purported mechanism of injury in this case, perhaps eyewitnesses or security camera tapes can reveal the truth of the matter. And if, as at least one poster has pointed out, the store's glass panels were not in compliance with local building code with respect to adding markings for visibility, then it certainly has left itself open to litigation.

I wonder if the excessive medical expense claim has got some people's backs up in this case. I cannot conceive of any situation in which such excessive medical costs could be attributed to treatment of a nose fractured by walking into a stationary glass pane. I do find the claim of medical expenses and the request for $1M punitive damages to be excessive, but perhaps we should be blaming the woman's lawyer instead of her, because she is likely just following her lawyer's advice.
 
Mattie Num Nums said:
Do you not have a brain? Coffee is brewed at over 150F. Water over 150F causes third degree burns. Third degree burns require skin grafts. Are you one of those guys that bought Logic off the App Store in hopes that it would make you smarter?

http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71

Edit: According to the National Coffee Association of America coffee should be brewed between 195F-205F. Much hotter than my Mr Coffee manual states.

http://www.antiscald.com/prevention/general_info/table.php

According to this table a person will receive a second degree burn in 3 seconds of exposure and a third degree burn in 5 seconds of exposure to water in excess of 140F.
Click to expand...

See above. You are only listening to the facts that support your argument.

The extreme temperature determines how man seconds it takes for a third degree to take place, and whether or not the person can even reat fast enough. You choose to ignore that.

Sure, 150 degree water may cause the same burn... if your hand's held underwater for more than maybe twenty seconds. That is not what happened.

And if you want to know why I care so much, it's because I once worked with a woman who went through a similar case, and won. It involved water at scolding temperatures, but not coffee. She watched all the skin be stripped from the hands of her four year old son in seconds at a bathroom sink in a Pizza Hut. The bathroom sink was shooting out water at similar temperatures. In the time it took him to instinctively pull his hands away (fractions of a second), nearly all his skin was gone from the wrists down. I've seen the pictures and what happened is not ANYTHING that a hot water faucet in a bathroom should be able to do. Third degree burns are no joke. If the water had even been ten or twenty degrees cooler, he could have pulled his hands away in time. The water still would have been scalding, but not nearly as threatening. Even if the water was barely capable of causing a third degree burn, it wouldn't have happened because he would have pulled his hands away in time. In cases like these, such a seemingly small change in temperature means a lot.

And she went through the same BS name-calling and uneducated babble. Her case was constantly compared to the McDonald's case.

My first job was at a McDonald's, a long time ago but still after 1992. We used to often discuss that coffee case. We'd make fun of it, call that woman a moron. I was convinced that that case represented the worst of our legal system. It wasn't until after I met this friend that I actually reviewed the facts of the case and realized how unaware, judgmental, and callous I had been.

(and my friend sued for medical treatment btw, not a million+ in "punitive damages")
 
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JayLenochiniMac said:
You think the National Coffee Assocation is wrong? They recommend that coffee be brewed at 195-205 and drunk immediately. If not drunk immediately, maintained at a temp of 180-185.
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It doesn't matter what a trade association says. It's not a defense.

Anyhow, that case is why McDs lowered their serving temps, and they now (usually) ask you if you want cream and sugar added, which they do behind the counter, to discourage you from opening the cup unnecessarily.
 
mariocapo said:
Just wanna make sure you realize that this is a fictional character. He's basically a parody of sleazy personal injury lawyers, from the TV show Breaking Bad. Surprisingly, he's a pretty likable character. lol.
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I actually found out about Saul before I found out about Breaking Bad and I thought he was real at first. There are loads of guys like him about these days.
 
I can say as someone who worked in a building with all glass.. well everything this happens all the time. I was on the second floor of the building and there's a side staircase leading up to a wall of glass and a glass door. Every week I'd hear "POOOOOOONG!" and sure enough someone walked right into the glass. You could count the forehead and nose grease prints.
 
Coffee Discussion

I really don't understand this McDonalds coffee & temperatures thing. Maybe things in the US are different, but here in Britain most people (at home):

1) put the kettle on
2) wait for it to boil (=100 C / 212 F)
3) pour water over teabag / instant coffee powder
4) drink that brew

Don't think many people here have problems with third degree burns.
 
pdjudd said:
That's what goes on in trials - and the court recommended that McDonalds accept the claims. It's not the plaintiffs fault that McDonalds only countered with an offer of $800 dollars:



Cite

The reason that amounts increased was due to stonewalling done by McDonalds - a method that is standard in any case and not so uncommon when the first phases don't go so well.

The court at this point was already convinced that there was a case. If anyone is greedy it was McDonalds who had paid out before in other cases.


Celsius is just as relative as Fahrenheit and yes it is excessive (Kelvin is much more absolute) - McDonalds even addmidtted as much. Experts even testified that such temperatures can cause 3rd degree burns in about 10 seconds.
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Funny enough, as trial approached the claim was raised to 300k, from 20k. Here is where the greed comes in. Why do you suddenly need 15 times the initial claim?

I know temperature scales. I am European and Fahrenheit is just a stupid scale (let's set 100 to the max a human body can heat up to .. and 0 should be the temperature on this one really cold day last winter .. Very reasonable).
I don't argue that hot coffee can hurt you. I argue that is was not excessively hot and thus not defective. I think 82deg Celcius coffee is perfectly fine. Pretty much what comes out of a coffee maker, people should just not spill it over their crotch. In fact if it were much colder it would become really cold when adding milk, which I would find much more problematic.
Cars are dangerous, so are nail guns, so is the freezer section in Walmart if you happen to take nap in one of them .. People will hurt themselves in the most stupid ways .. It doesn't mean the product that they used was dective, it can, but it doesn't have to. Thus blame yourself before sueing others.

T.
 
tatonka said:
Funny enough, as trial approached the claim was raised to 300k, from 20k. Here is where the greed comes in. Why do you suddenly need 15 times the initial claim?
T.
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That's how settlement negotiations work, you go for the max that you think is reasonable since the actual penlites can be worse. McDonalds could have saved some money instead of risking what the judge ruled. They didn't.

We don't know how negotiations went until they reached that figured. They at first were asking for a minimal settlement. When you get to court and start making progress, things change big time.

And for the last time. The judgement that was received was not based on the spill itself. It was based on negligence on behalf of McDonalds!
 
Boisv said:
See above. You are only listening to the facts that support your argument.

The extreme temperature determines how man seconds it takes for a third degree to take place, and whether or not the person can even reat fast enough. You choose to ignore that.

Sure, 150 degree water may cause the same burn... if your hand's held underwater for more than maybe twenty seconds. That is not what happened.

And if you want to know why I care so much, it's because I once worked with a woman who went through a similar case, and won. It involved water at scolding temperatures, but not coffee. She watched all the skin be stripped from the hands of her four year old son in seconds at a bathroom sink in a Pizza Hut. The bathroom sink was shooting out water at similar temperatures. In the time it took him to instinctively pull his hands away (fractions of a second), nearly all his skin was gone from the wrists down. I've seen the pictures and what happened is not ANYTHING that a hot water faucet in a bathroom should be able to do. Third degree burns are no joke. If the water had even been ten or twenty degrees cooler, he could have pulled his hands away in time. The water still would have been scalding, but not nearly as threatening. Even if the water was barely capable of causing a third degree burn, it wouldn't have happened because he would have pulled his hands away in time. In cases like these, such a seemingly small change in temperature means a lot.

And she went through the same BS name-calling and uneducated babble. Her case was constantly compared to the McDonald's case.

My first job was at a McDonald's, a long time ago but still after 1992. We used to often discuss that coffee case. We'd make fun of it, call that woman a moron. I was convinced that that case represented the worst of our legal system. It wasn't until after I met this friend that I actually reviewed the facts of the case and realized how unaware, judgmental, and callous I had been.

(and my friend sued for medical treatment btw, not a million+ in "punitive damages")
Click to expand...

Well one could only hope that you put hot coffee in your lap. Darwinism at its finest. According to the post you made McDonalds coffee at 180F is 40-50 degrees too hot? 100F-120F is the average temperature for bath water or a shower. I don't know anyone who likes Coffee that is the same temp as bath water. Ever heard the statement "... like boiling hot coffee."
 
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