As government gets ever bigger in various parts of the world, one sign of this is how many signs there are. In the USA, as I discovered over the past two weeks, it is now increasingly common to see signs telling you all about how to prevent death by choking.
That’s right. Apparently, I understand that it is now a bylaw in many states to require owners of restaurants and bars to put up signs showing folk how to avoid death by choking on food, and how to assist someone who may be in trouble. The notices seem to be very detailed. What on earth is going on? Have there been a large number of folk keeling over after choking on a pretzel, as nearly happened to President Bush about a year ago?
That our political and health-conscious masters want to help us to avoid death – so they say – is hardly new. It is also pretty difficult to get indignant about putting up a poster giving handy hints on how to avoid death. It caused me a certain amount of wry amusement, although other state infractions of property rights, such as bans on smoking in privately owned bars, are far less amusing.
(Bars in New York are not quite the smelly places of old, but seemed to be less full than the last time I was in town).
Back here in Britain, though, it seems the country has a bad case of “sign overload”, as Rod Liddle describes here in the Spectator. He argues, rightly, that any place which carries lots of signs telling us not to hit the staff or behave like a thug is precisely the sort of place to avoid. It is now routine for London Underground stations, railway stations and hospital waiting rooms to have signs warning us not to be rude to staff and to refrain from beating them up.
In a healthy civil society where moral standards are ‘internalised’ and tacitly accepted, it is not necessary to state what ought to be blindingly obvious to the average man or woman. Telling folk with signs to behave decently is a reflection of how infantilised our society has become, and tells us everything about the mindset of those who run what are laughably called our “public services”. It is a lame admission that once-widely accepted standards of conduct are no longer part of the common stock of human knowledge, but have to be spelled out as if explaining maths to a five-year-old for the first time.
Of course there are many factors to explain this tendency. That great vehicle of moral hazard, known as the Welfare State, has a lot to do with erosion of behaviours, but it is by no means the only reason. Some may cite the decline in religious belief, although it is by no means clear to this atheist that belief in a Supreme Being is necessary to avoid society collapsing into some sort of Hobbesian chaos.
Is it too much to hope that if we treat our fellows like adults, that they will behave accordingly? Perhaps I am an incurable optimist.
(As a side-observation, I have noted that whenever the announcer on the London Underground tells us to “mind the gap” between the train and the platform, it produces howls of mirth from foreigners. I think they imagine it is some sort of strange national ritual, like tea, Wimbledon fortnight or the Proms).
Another Samizdatista and I were recently on a bus in London, sitting on the top deck, when he pointed out to me the most ridiculous sign I have ever seen: “DANGER! TALL TREE!” It was next to – yep! – a tall tree. If not for the sign, who knows how many people may have walked right into the inconspicuous thing.
Those signs have been up, by law, for about 20 years in the U.S.
Well, you do sell mind the gap t-shirts and such. While they tell us the same here in Norway, we don’t market it.
The issue is not whether belief is necessary but rather whether it is useful to this end.
Perhaps the State needs to remind its subjects not to be rude to the Public Servants because that is becoming a greater and greater temptation.
I had thought the “mind the gap” bit was odd when I vacationed in London, but the New York City subway seems to be introducing something along those lines on certain train lines.
Eventually our annoyance with computerized voices telling us not to trip or fall under the wheels of the train(which, honestly, was my orginal plan) will become a deep seated resentment of Great Britian for starting this mess.
That was profound lewis. The spookiest ,most surreal sign I’ve come across , is, or was on the road into Leigh Woods in Bristol.THIS FOREST CLOSES AT DUSK.Like wow! how? does it cuddle up to itself or what.There’s no road blocks or anything like a park-keeper so, what is it supposed to mean?Dont get trapped inside when the light fades or it’s worse than Transyvania!!? What!! These people are insane.
I remember, around 20 years ago when the little bags of peanuts that US airlines always gave away with drinks began to carry the sign: Warning. Contains nuts.
I also recall seeing a can of Coke that had, on its side, a free helpline number.
I wonder how many of these signs are due to the excessive litigation in our culture. The “tall tree” sign seems a case in point. To prevent this kind of stupidity, the equal stupidity of allowing lawyers to advertise their services should be stopped.
Some are just dumb, though. I recently bought a snack in a supermarket and noticed the instructions for use – “open packet and eat contents”. Previously that sort of thing was confined to comedy such as the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but now it’s part of everyday life. Or on an iron in an American hotel – “Caution – do not use whilst bathing or showering. Do not iron clothes on body”.
EG
Blame the lawyers I say – this sort of bullshit warning sign is a belated respose to frivolous lawsuits. A woman in McDonalds ordered a coffee and when it came she apparently didn’t realise it was going to be hot and drank it down in one go, burned her mouth and successfully sued McD. Now they have to put a ‘coffeee is hot’ or some such warning on the coffee.
As an aside – the London Underground warning of ‘Mind the Gap’ isn’t so silly. Many LU platforms are highly curved and there is a gap between the door and the platform. I’ve seen people step out of the train without looking and shin themselves quite nastily on the edge of the platform.
“Mind the gap” was one of the funniest things I encountered in London. I used to be able to mimic it well, at times surprising the folks in the train by saying it a split second before the official announcement.
In Bombay I didn’t need some silly announcer. My mother was enough!
I’ve been fascinated by signs for a long time, and Jonathan’s observations ring true. Recently I got one of those camera phones and decided to start recording interesting signs.
Near where I live there is a sign next to a grass area that reads, “Ball games restricted to children under 10 years of age.” I wonder what kind of monster would tell little Jonny he couldn’t play with the ball he got for his tenth birthday… You’d think someone, at some stage during the decision making process, or the manufacture, or the actual putting up of the sign would stand up and say, “NO, I will not co-operate with this madness!”
Google Stella Liebeck on the McDonalds case. It isn’t as stupid as it first sounds, and you have the details very wrong.
Regards
Andrew:
The woman in the McDonald’s case put the cup of coffee between her legs before driving off (well, actually the woman who got burned was in the passenger seat). That is stupid.
And the car was actually stopped. And it would seem that coffee is MEANT to be served at 190 – 205 degrees.
It is as rididculous, though certainly unfortunate.
Hmm… Moronic litigation and the associated payouts grow and grow, third party insurance premiums therefore grow and grow. Murder penalties shrink and shrink. Hmm…..
Duncan wrote:
‘And the car was actually stopped. And it would seem that coffee is MEANT to be served at 190 – 205 degrees.
It is as rididculous, though certainly unfortunate.’
Not really.
You say it is ‘ridiculous’, I suspect, because you feel that people buying hot coffee should expect it to be hot, know that hot liquids are dangerous, and treat them with due respect. I agree. But so should the people who are selling it.
The evidence in the Liebeck case showed clearly that McDonalds knew that they were serving a dangerous product, that hundreds of people had been seriously injured by it in the past, and yet they had not significantly changed their ways of serving it. Some evidence showed that they served their coffee far hotter than is either normal or expected (try drinking coffee at 195°F – no, on second thoughts, don’t try that) for reasons having to do with cost. Coffee is not meant to be served or consumed at those temperatures.
Just as Ms Liebeck may be faulted (and was, at trial, and her damages were reduced in proportion) for not treating her hot coffee with the proper care, McDonalds were also at fault for continuing to sell coffee in ways which they knew had hurt people in the past and likely would hurt them again. Treating hot coffee with care goes both ways, you see.
As already said, there’s more nonsense spouted about the Liebeck case, especially outside the US, than you can shake a stick at. I don’t necessarily agree with the scale of the damages that she won (reduced by the judge, nota bene) but the basic principle of the case has merit. McDonalds knew what they were doing had greta potential dangers, and went ahead and did it anyway. It’s not enough to say ‘she should have been more careful’ when past experience shows that that’s not enough. After all, by that thinking, McDonalds could sell foaming cups of battery acid at the drive through window, and merely instruct people to ‘be careful with it’.
llater,
llamas
Lllamas,
Acutally that is an appropriate temprature to serve coffee. Google around a bit to verify this if you’d like.
And how may people successfully have enjoyed McDonalds coffee without incident. Enough to make the number of cases where there were issues, many of which were minor (how many times have you burned your mouth on pizza and not sured the pizza place),
insignificant.
And the battery acid comparison is just stupid.
Duncan,
Your post is simply not credible. You mean some people have actually enjoyed McDonalds’ coffee?
I’m disappionted no one’s posted this:
And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine upstanding yound man, I think you’ll do
So I took off my hat and I said imagine that, me working for you
Sign Sign everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign
And the sign said anybody caught trespassing would be shot on sight
So I jumped on the fence and yelled at the house, Hey! what gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in
If God was here, he’d tell you to your face, man you’re some kinda sinner
— Five Man Electrical Band
llamas:
The evidence in the Liebeck case showed clearly that McDonalds knew that they were serving a dangerous product,
I for one refuse to accept the proposition that hot coffee is a “dangerous product.”
Some evidence showed that they served their coffee far hotter than is either normal or expected (try drinking coffee at 195°F – no, on second thoughts, don’t try that) for reasons having to do with cost. Coffee is not meant to be served or consumed at those temperatures.
Coffee is most certainly meant to be brewed at those temperatures, and thus truly fresh coffee will be served at those temperatures. I can tell you from a great deal of experience drinking bad coffee all across the US that it is almost universally served too hot to drink. Whether it is served at 195 or 190, I couldn’t say, but it is a normal practice for gas stations, truck stops, diners, and sundry other purveyors to keep it (very) hot on a hotplate.
The notion that serving very hot coffee to adults is a wrongful or dangerous act strikes me as absurd. The fact that hundreds of people a year manage to burn themselves on hot coffee does not change my view in the slightest. Given the enormous population of coffee drinkers, it is statistically inevitable that some will slop their coffee out of the cup now and then.
Pete_London
I cede to your point.
R.C.Dean & Duncan – to address your various points, in no particular order.
195°F is a good temperature to make coffee. It’s not a good temperature to serve it – like I said, don’t try drinking it at that temperature, you will suffer burns to the mouth and throat. We’ve all seen cappucino made with live steam, as it should be, but I’m sure you’re not suggesting that it should be drunk at that temperature.
Evidence in the Liebeck trial showed that McDonalds served their coffee at temperatures between 30 and 50°F higher than any other seller. McDonalds stipulated to this, as I recall.
You may refuse to accept that hot coffee is a ‘dangerous product’. But I ask you – what defines ‘dangerous’? Is it your idea of what is dangerous? Dangerous is relative to circumstances and the universe of users. Not just the smart ones, or the educated ones, or the cautious ones.
I have to put a lot of warnings and safety devices on the products I design. People often make fun of these things, along the lines of ‘Well, that’s just silly! Anyone knows not to put their hands into moving machinery!’. Well, guess what – not everyone knows that, as past experience shows us. And ignorance should not sentence a person to harm. If past experience shows that something is a danger to its users, then it’s a danger to its users, your opinion about whether it should be seen as such notwithstanding.
Ms Liebeck did not burn her mouth on a slice of hot pizza. She suffered second-and third-degree burns which required hospitalization, reconstruction and skin grafts. Now, if you sell a product which is capable of doing that – and if you know, from hundreds of previous cases (again, see the evidence in the Liebeck case, to which McDonalds stipulated) that the product is not only capable of doing that, but has done that – are you suggesting that you have no duty to your customers to prevent it from happening again?
You may call the ‘foaming battery acid’ example ‘stupid’ – nice, convincing argument, there, by the way – but I notice you cannot refute it. Because it is actually quite a good analogy. Battery acid is quite safe if handled properly, by people who know what they are doing. So is near-boiling-hot coffee. But no responsible person would sell foaming battery acid in cups across a retail counter, and expect every customer who walked in to know and understand exactly what they are buying, how dangerous it is, and how to handle it safely. Same for near-boiling-hot coffee.
llater,
llamas
Llamas, do you support the people who are currently sueing the tobacco firms then? They sold a product which it’s pretty certain they knew to be dangerous without providing customers with any warning about the dangers thereof, until they were forced to add such warnings.
(personally I think they’ve maybe got a good moral & legal case, & I’ve no objection to seeing big tobacco firms collapse; it could make for an interesting time, seeing who comes in to fill the cigarette-making gap; people are hardly going to stop smoking just ‘cos philip morris go bust, are they?)
The only trouble with this kind of thinking is, how far can you take it; presumably many of the people who sell coffee are aware that it can make you more tense & presumably raise your blood pressure, but I see no signs warning of this in Starbucks or the coffee aisle at my local Sainsbury’s. Could I sue them for contributory caffeine if I have a heart attack in 20 years’ time?
According to the (American) National Coffee Association, coffee should be brewed at 195 – 205F and served immediately. If not served immediately it should, they say, be stored at 180-185F. So much for 50F over normal.
It seems that in the preceding 10 years, McDonalds customers managed on average to burn themselves on the coffee once per 24 million sold. So much for a dangerous product.
So, even among Americans, there’s only a one in 24 million probability that you will burn yourself on a perfectly normal product served at perfectly normal temperatures. And yet this is worth half a miilion in punitive damages when it happens.
Just how culpably stupid do people have to be before the legal system recognises that it is not always someone else’s fault?
It’s not a dangerous product irresponsibly handled – it’s a seriously f*cked up tort system.
EG
Once again, made, stored and served are three different things.
Drink coffee at 130°F, and it will be uncomfortably hot.
At 140°F, you will burn your tongue and throat – it will hurt.
At 160°F, you will suffer 3° burns to your tongue and throat within 3 seconds.
At 180°F, you will suffer 3° burns to your tongue and throat within 1 second.
Same applies to your skin.
You have to look at the totality of the circumstances. McDonalds sells coffee in insulated containers which keep it hot, as hot as when it was served. They sell it to people who, almost by definition, are going to carry it out to cars and drive away with it. Their past experience showed that hundreds of people had hurt themselves badly enough doing this that they were moved to do something about it.
Questions about how many people get hurt versus how many don’t are side-stepping the issue. The people who got hurt are just as hurt regardless of how many were not. Such comparisons reduce real injuries to the equivalent of matter of chance, as though these injuries were unforeseeable acts of God. The real issue is that McDonalds knew that people were being hurt, sometimes very badly, by their product and did nothing about it. If I stand on a freeway overpass and drop rocks into the travel lanes, and one falls onto a car and kills the driver, it’s no excuse for me to say ‘well, I did it a hundred times already and noone got hurt, so the enormity of me killing the guy should be divided by 100.’
As I said, I don’t agree with the scale of the damages in the Liebeck case, but I do agree with the principle.
I agree that the US tort system has great problems, However, just because that is so, does not mean that every suit in tort is meritless.
llater,
llamas
“Do not use for other than intended purposes” seems to be the CYA boilerplate on American products. If I remember correctly, it was due to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the bereaved parents of an idiot that killed himself huffing starter spray (a flammable chemical spray designed to prime the carbeurators on stubborn older engines – when inhaled, it causes an intense short-term high and repeated use in such a manner quickly leads to permanent brain damage and/or death). Some *spit* trial lawyer *spit* got hold of the case and convinced a jury that, since the manufacturer didn’t specifically warn against inhaling the stuff, they were partially liable for the death of the forementioned idiot.
Llamas,
I would agree that there was partial merit to the McD’s case, and I agree that the level of damages was nuts. OTOH, at least a part of the reason for the high temperature there was market demand. People like hot coffee, especially if the coffee is not particularly good. Coffee served above drinking temperature is great for people who do not intend to gulp it down at the pick-up window. Styrofoam cups notwithstanding, the temperature of coffee tends to drop from the time of serving.
As for the battery acid comparison, again, maybe partial merit, but there is no market demand for cups of acid, while there is some demand for over-heated coffee. Many things sold are “dangerous” if hndled improperly. Simple things like coffee should be able to be regulated by market forces, not tort. There may be some merit in signage for coffee served at burn levels, but McD’s has both put on signs and dropped their coffee temperture to a level that the poor taste becomes terribly evident. Overactive tort tends to make for overcorrection of minor issues. Tort needs major reform in this country.
llamas – You’re usually so cllear headed.
The non-analogy of dropping of rocks on cars from an overpass is silly. The cars didn’t ask for rocks to be dropped on them so they could dodge them. People went to a McDonald’s and, presumably not at gunpoint – although that’s what it would take for me – bought coffee of their own free will.
Many then, with intense stupidity, take it to their cars, which is fair enough, but instead of lodging the carton in the beverage container thoughtfully provided by the auto companies, they choose to carry the boiling coffee between their legs while driving.
Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is chose to take a giant slurp of boiling coffee. This is not the fault of McDonald’s. You may as well require that everyone buying McDonald’s coffee sign a disclaimer.
llamas’ logic is that because Macs knew hundreds of people were injured by spilling their hot coffee, they should have done something about it.
There are a lot of foolish people in the world. I don’t think the law should protect people from the easily forseeable consequences of their (foolish) actions.
Thousands of people inadvertently cut themselves with craft (‘Stanley’) knives each year. I do it a couple of times myself when I break all the rules and cut toward, not away. So what ? Knives cut, hot coffee burns.
But this logic explains why lakes have signs by them saying ‘if you jump inthe water you might drown’.
Verity – clear-headed as ever.
As I said before, you might want to go and adjust your knowledge of the Liebeck case – the circumstances are not quite as you seem to think they are.
Leaving that aside, the rocks-off-the-overpass analogy is actually quite apt. McDonalds continued to do something which they knew – note, knew, not suspected, or surmised, or might-have-to-guess, but KNEW – had caused many serious injuries in the past. They did nothing to mitigate that known risk – nothing at all. Drivers going down the road have some expectation of the unexpected – other drivers doing stupid things, or squirrels ruinning into the road, or whatever – but the idea of a rock falling onto them from an overpass is so unexpected (even though it has happened in the past, and a reasonable person would know that a rock from an overpass is likely to be very dangerous) that it’s hardly reasonable to expect a driver to be on the alert for such a thing. Same with coffee served hot enough to produce instant 3° burns.
If customer demand was for hot coffee, or coffee which would still be hot 30 minutes later – fair enough. You can’t drink coffee at 180°F. McDonalds could have served their coffee at a less-dangerous temperature like 140°F (still too hot to drink) but in a more-heavily-insulated cup, so it would stay hot enough, longer. Or they could have sold it in a cup less-likely to spill itself everywhere. But they did nothing – nothing at all – and evidence at the trial clearly showed that their prime motivation was profit, to the exclusion of any other factor.
Laban Tall wrote:
‘I don’t think the law should protect people from the easily forseeable consequences of their (foolish) actions.’
Neither do I. But you have to be careful with definitions like ‘easily foreseeable’ and ‘foolish’. The one is highly situational and highly subjective. The other allows you to make blanket assumptions about the knowledge and experience of every other person, and to judge them all on the basis of what you know. I’m as much for the application of ‘common sense’ as the next guy, but that word ‘common’ covers everyone, not just those who are smart and knowledgeable as you – and me. No doubt people should be smarter, and more careful – we’d all like world peace and a three-day weekend, too. But you have to deal with the world as it is, not as some hypothetical place where this would not have happened if everyone were just a bit more careful.
I would submit that, in the instant case, the injury to Ms Liebeck was ‘easily foreseeable’ by McDonalds, given the hundreds of previous cases that they knew about. If an individual should not be protected from the dangers from ‘easily foreseeable’ risks – why do you suggest that McDonalds should be?
Pu another way – Chevrolet has sold hundreds of millions of cars in its day. If they built a car which had a known safety defect in it, which had directly caused 700 serious accidents and injuries to customers – would you hold them harmless, along the lines of ‘well, cars crash sometimes, everyone knows that, it’s a foreseeable risk.’?
llater,
llamas
I just don’t accept this “too hot” stuff. I drink more tea than coffee, and frequently don’t use milk so it is extremely hot when it’s ready (made with boiling water in a pre-heated mug). Despite doing this for years, I’ve never managed to burn myself.
It’s just plain old stupidity, compensated for by the fact that there is always someone else to blame – invariably a corporation – and there is always a trial lawyer ready to reap a fat reward.
Llamas notes that numerous warnings and signs are put on the equipment he designs. He may not realise that the reason for this is not to protect people using the product but primarily to defend his employer from precisely this type of petty, vexatious litigation, brought by people who always seek to blame someone else for the consequences of their own actions or inactions.
EG
Euan Gray wrote:
‘Llamas notes that numerous warnings and signs are put on the equipment he designs. He may not realise that the reason for this is not to protect people using the product but primarily to defend his employer from precisely this type of petty, vexatious litigation, brought by people who always seek to blame someone else for the consequences of their own actions or inactions.’
Actually, not. Since what I design does not go into a consumer market, most of the hideous excesses of liability avoidance do not apply. Most of what I have to do in the way of warnings and safety devices are nothing more than common sense. If something is hot, and it’s not self-evident that it’s hot, I have to cover and/or label it. If something can start moving without warning, I have to cover it, or interlock it. And so forth. That is common sense, it seems to me.
I do not deny that there is a dreadful liability culture, especially in the US, and that much of it is indeed vexatious, frivolous or mere opportunism. We see it all, every day. However, what I am saying is that the Liebeck case is a very poor example of the faults of that system and, on the contrary, it’s actually quite a good example of reasonable liability law if you leave the excessive punitive-damage award aside. A person is seriously injured by a hazard which is well-known to the maker but by no means self-evident to the consumer, and which the maker did absolutely nothing to avert. I contend that a significant degree of liability does attach to the maker in those circumstances. And I do not disagree that some degree of liability may attach to the consumer. Neither did the trial court, which assigned responsibility between Ms Liebeck and McDonalds, and reduced her compensatory damages in like proportion.
It’s quite obvious that many posters do not know any of the facts of the Liebeck case, and I suggest that if they did, they might see it differently. It has become an easily-named icon of the tort-reform movement, which is unfortunate because it is a poor example of what’s wrong with that system.
llater,
llamas
Well, Llamas, your Chevrolet analogy was so correct you must have dragged it unwittingly up out of your subconscious. “If [Chevrolet] built a car which had a known safety defect in it, which had directly caused 700 serious accidents and injuries to customers – would you hold them harmless … cars crash sometimes, everyone knows that, it’s a foreseeable risk.’?”
If you recall, Chevrolet did just that. Anyone else remember the Chevette?
“Leaving that aside, the rocks-off-the-overpass analogy is actually quite apt. McDonalds continued to do something which they knew – note, knew, not suspected, or surmised, or might-have-to-guess, but KNEW – had caused many serious injuries in the past. ”
McDonald’s continued to supply a product that they knew – note, knew, not suspected or surmised, or might-have-to-guess, but KNEW – that a tiny fraction of their customers had managed to hurt themselves with in the past.
“They did nothing to mitigate that known risk – nothing at all.”
And why should they do anything at all to mitigate the “known risk” that their customers will foolishly hurt themselves? Simply because you sell someone the means to hurt himself doesn’t make you responsible if he goes and does it, unless he had reasonable grounds to think that his action with your product could not be expected to hurt him.
“If [Chevrolet] built a car which had a known safety defect in it, which had directly caused 700 serious accidents and injuries to customers – would you hold them harmless … cars crash sometimes, everyone knows that, it’s a foreseeable risk.’?””
In that case, customers have reasonable grounds to believe that a minor accident will not cause the car to explode. Thus, Chevrolet was responsible for selling a car which did explode in minor accidents and not disclosing this fact to their customers.
I was not aware of the Chevrolet Chevette issue at the time I wrote that. I picked Chevrolet out of the air, and 700 as the number of cases of hot coffee burns to which McDonalds stipulated during the Liebeck trial.
Funnily enough, after Googling the Chevette case, I don’t think it’s a very good case. Cars do sometimes catch fire after a crash, this is no secret. The question would be whether the design of the Chevette was so unreasonably bad that it amounted to reckless or negligent disregard for the customer. The same is true of other gas-tank issues, like the Pinto or the ‘side-saddle’ pickup design – I believe in both cases that the statistical record showed that neither were nearly so prone to catch fire (compared to comparable products) as the liability lawyers made them out to be.
I was thinking more of a fundamental flaw in basic design which would cause a wreck. It’s much harder to detect a flaw in design in among all the potential and random variables of a wreck, even if wrecks are common. I can’t think of a good example right offhand, excpet perhaps the Buick power-brake fiasco of the 1950’s – see ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’. This was a classic case of a crappy design which made it into production, which Buick knew full-well was an accident waiting to happen, and about which they did – not nearly enough. According to the thinking of some posters here, it would have been perfectly fine for Buick to walk away saying ‘well, you know, brakes do fail sometimes, you should have driven more carefully. You asked for brakes, we sold you brakes, if they contained a hidden flaw which made them quit at random – Too bad, so sad. . . .’
llater,
llamas
Just an addendum to the coffee comments: I have done some part-time work as a barista and our hot water – for tea – is at 160?, and our steamed milk is at 140?, unless the customer asks for “extra hot” in which case we go to 160?. Drinks are served in non-insulated cups and are meant to be drunk pretty much immediately.
Whose side of the argument that supports is something I don’t know. 🙂
llamas–
The woman who sued McDonald’s also agreed in trial that she specifically went to McDonald’s and enjoyed their coffee more because it was hotter than that of other companies’.
Wow. Didn’t realise I’d kicked this off, so thanks to llamas for fighting my corner. The Stella Liebeck case is like a red rag to a bull to me, as I was one of those people sneering about the ridiculous American legal system which can allow people to sue for drinking hot coffee, until I actually read about the case itself. It’s quite interesting to have read Samizdata for so long and to have never really seriously disagreed with the flow of commentary until now.
The basic important principle here to me is that if a libertarian is honest in their beliefs, there at least has to be something in place to ensure that contracts between two parties are adhered to. That thing is the law. For obvious reasons, the law has to be definitive, clear, absolute and specific. Having a concept of ‘easily forseeable consequences’ and ‘(foolish) actions’ just muddies the water. Are we really to suggest that the law should only defend a ‘reasonable’ person, with a designated level of common sense? Clearly people have to be culpable for their own actions, but if one party knowingly causes a person potential, unexpected, harm, they are liable. It is one thing to sell someone a power tool and not expect them to drill into their own skull – it is quite another to sell them a drill which may explode when used.
McDonald’s sold a product which they knew to be dangerous, beyond the level that a ‘reasonable person’ would expect. Yes, if I buy coffee and immediately take a gulp of it, I expect to burn my mouth a litle bit. Fine, no liability. If I spill it on myself, I expect to get scalded – no liability. I don’t expect to get 3rd degree burns over 6% of my body requiring 20,000 dollars worth of medical treatment, and I am a sensible, intelligent person.
McDonalds could have settled immediately for just the cost of the medical treatment. The jury even found Liebeck to be 20% responsible for the incident, and her damages were later reduced from the 2.7m initially awarded.
It’s quite disturbing to see the kind of sneering anti-American comments I’d associate with different parts of the web – ‘So, even among Americans, there’s only a one in 24 million probability’ – yeah, way to stereotype an entire nation there… Even though it is obviously a joke, it is unwarranted and it distracts from the point. If you have a serious case, make it. Otherwise, don’t expect people to read past the offending comment.
Regards
Some other facts re: McDonald’s coffee:
The coffee was spilled while the car was stopped as Mrs. Liebeck was trying to take off the lid to put cream and sugar in it.
At trial, witnesses for McDonald’s were asked to remove the lids from McDonald’s coffee cups without placing them on a table and were unable to do so without spilling the liquid inside.
Hot liquids can burn the inside of a mouth according to burn specialists at temperatures above 160 F, and the same experts testified that coffee should be served between 140 F and 160F.
Mrs. Liebeck was considered disabled for nearly two years due to her injuries.
The inital punitive damage award was equal to two days of McDonald’s gross coffee sales. It was reduced to three times the award for actual damages as the law allows. In this case, the court system worked accurately. It allowed the jury to make a statement, while also holding McDonald’s accountable for their actions.
McDonald’s could have gotten out of this suit for $20,000 initially. Later, they could have accepted the mediator’s recommendation of a settlement for $250,000. They did finally enter into a post verdict agreement to reduce the payment even more in exchange for lowering the temperature at which they serve coffee.
The Albequerque McDonald’s where all of this happened was later shown to have reduced the temperature of their coffee to 158F after the outcome of the suit.