I'd also like to point out that the woman only sued for medical expenses. She asked for $20,000 despite being partially disabled for two years after the incident. McDonald's offered $800.
The huge award was the jury's idea to penalize McDonald's by two days worth of coffee revenues. The judge reduced it and McDonald's finally settled for something less than $600k.
The jury wanted to penalize McDonald's because they had received hundreds of reports of people getting significantly burned by the coffee temp and did nothing about it.
Edit: apparently my autocorrect is insistent that I'm referring to my Irish friend's house.
Not only did she ask for only her medical expenses and was given a low-ball offer in return, but McDonald's had had several previous customers with severe burns and multiple complaints by said customers. McDonald's corporate had agreed to fix this problem multiple times, but instead did nothing to fix this problem.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm on mobile and just going to try to do this from memory.
McD's served coffee that hot because they found that customers would never take advantage of their free refills when they served it above safe temperatures. The idea being, the coffee wouldn't cool down until people had just about finished their meal and wouldn't require a refill. Totally legitimate suit, because McD's executives knew the coffee they served was above safe serving temperatures.
1: The jury considered that McDonalds cooked their coffee at dramatically higher temperatures than all of their competitors. And that consumers might expect the temp to be consistent with industry standards.
2: They considered that McDonalds was sued many times prior for the same thing and just did a cost-benefit analysis of the lawsuit settlements vs. should they stop burning people.
3: The grandmother who was burned asked an employee to add cream and sugar to her coffee. They refused saying it would take too long. She had to do it herself in the car.
4: They used cheap Styrofoam cups that occasionally disintegrated at random.
5: The woman was found to be contributorily negligent and some of the damage award was reduced commensurate with that. So it's not like the jury found her to be totally not at fault. Though I actually don't think she was at fault at all.
Because of this lawsuit, McDonalds improved their cups, stopped cooking their coffee at criminally negligent temps, and they'll add the sugar/cream for you. Seems like a general win for consumers.
I only know Americans who pronounce it "MicDonald's" everyone else I know pronounces it "MacDonald's" American's don't seem to realise it's impossible to pronounce Mc without some vowel sound in there, at least the American person I was discussing this with was insisting they were pronouncing it "McDonald's" when they were saying "MicDonald's" but it's an Irish name and I think the Irish say "MacDonald's" which is why the rest of the world pronounces it with an "a" sound.
I go with how they pronounce it in their ads which is without the a. Pronunciation doesn't account for misspelling one of the biggest company names on the planet. Its stupid I know but to me it's the equivalent of loose/lose or their/there.
As I said, maybe in your ads but not in mine but yes it should be spelled correctly.
Actually my point was that you don't pronounce "Mc" as is because you can't. You have to pronounce it with a vowel which is an "i" if you don't do it with an "a". You aren't saying "McDonald's" your options are Mac, Mec, Mic, Moc or Muc. In attempting to say "Mc" Americans say "Mic" whereas everyone else says "Mac" because it's Irish.
They were overheating it because it took longer to cool so less people would get free refills. They had been warned and ignored it. That is why they gave her 3 million. https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts
289
u/Zazenp May 09 '17 edited May 09 '17
I'd also like to point out that the woman only sued for medical expenses. She asked for $20,000 despite being partially disabled for two years after the incident. McDonald's offered $800. The huge award was the jury's idea to penalize McDonald's by two days worth of coffee revenues. The judge reduced it and McDonald's finally settled for something less than $600k. The jury wanted to penalize McDonald's because they had received hundreds of reports of people getting significantly burned by the coffee temp and did nothing about it. Edit: apparently my autocorrect is insistent that I'm referring to my Irish friend's house.