PaulChristenson said:
According to Andrea Gerlin逞ｴ excellent Wall Street Journal article, 驗* Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided that a Coffee Spill is Worth $2.9 Million, Sept. 1, 1994, p. A1, members of the jury learned at the trial that 180-degree coffee like McDonald逞ｴ served may produce third-degree burns in about 12 to 15 seconds. Lowering the temperature by 20 degrees (to 160 degrees Fahrenheit) would increase the time for the coffee to produce such a burn to 20 seconds. Those extra 5 to 7 seconds in many cases could provide adequate time to remove the coffee from exposed skin, thereby preventing such burns. Ms. Gerlin also reported that McDonald's reason for serving such hot coffee in its drive-through windows was that, because those who purchased the coffee typically wanted to drive a distance with the coffee, the high initial temperature would keep the coffee hot during the trip.
Agree with whoever said this isn't a physics issue. I'm not sure why this is so hard for some people. Its hot coffee. Hot coffee will burn the dickens out of you.
But they key phrase you seem to be overlooking in that statement is:" members of the jury learned". They were given a factoid that they did not have the brains or opportunity to process in a rational manner. An astute attorney knew he could use such an ignorant factoid to make his case. Fifteen seconds!!!! Are you kidding me? That's a long time. No one on the jury seems to have thought of that. Gee, imagine that.
And their reason for having it that hot makes PERFECT sense. People who drink coffee don't want it luke warm. They want it hot, all the way to work. And in my mind anything less that a rolling boil would be perfectly reasonable for coffee.
And I'm going to step out on a limb here and maybe contradict something I've already said. This lady really probably wasn't stupid or an idiot. She just got careless. We all do it. And I'll bet you lots of people spill hot coffee on themselves and get burned. Probably thousands a day. So the issue isn't her intelligence....after all, she made a quick 2.9 million right? The issue is her sense of entitlement, her sense of greed and her lack of sense of personal responsibility. So while I don't think she was necessarily stupid, I still find her utterly repulsive as a human being.
But let's face facts man. There is a reason this case comes up when anyone talks about tort abuse. This case is the poster child for the obscenity of the tort process. It is uniformly viewed with disgust or humor. It has been the butt of many sitcom episodes. It is what it is.
I wonder why she didn't sue her car company for not having better cup holders. Or the cup lid manufacturer. I suspect there are lots of little physics factoids there like better contact pressure of the lid on the cup rim would allow 13.4356 more psi and cause a distribution of 2.4758 less milliliters of fluid to spill over the course of the 15 seconds she sat there in boiling coffee!
I'm sorry you feel you are above your civic duty to serve on a jury...
Don't be sorry. I don't apologize for it nor am I ashamed of it. I believe in doing your duty as a juror just as much as I believe in the right of a government to tax its citizens. They are both fundemental concepts. But both can be abused to the point of absurdity. And that is the current state of affairs. And in the same way, if I'm not required by law to participate in (pay) a tax, I don't. And if I am not required, for whatever reason, to serve on a jury, I will not.
And if I'm ever tried in this country I will not be tried by a jury of my peers. I have no peers who swing from trees and throw poop at tourists. The concept that 'peer' mean anyone who can draw breath is a severely broken one.
