Do you think WoTC should be sued?

[Obryn]

To me, it wouldn't make any difference if she spilled in in her house or in their dining room. She spilled it.

If you can show me that some element of the dining room CAUSED it to spill, then that would be different.

That's why there was a reduction in damages due to shared fault; it's a central tenet of the legal system; we deal with it all the time in insurance.

DannyAlcatraz breaks it down pretty well; the courts found that she was 20% responsible for the third-degree burns. Her judgment was reduced as a result.

It's not just "granny sues for spilling coffee on herself accidentally." It's "granny accidentally spills coffee, which causes burns and damage to her body far more severe than other fast-food coffees would have, and far more severe than a reasonable person should expect; and the retailer knew of the excessive danger and did nothing to make it safer."

-O

 

[Aberzanzorax]

It's "granny accidentally spills coffee, which causes burns and damage to her body far more severe than other fast-food coffees would have, and far more severe than a reasonable person should expect; and the retailer knew of the excessive danger and did nothing to make it safer."

-O

/agree

 

[OnyxPharaoh]

Removed by moderator - Rel

 

[shadzar]

Third-degree burns on the genitals, buttocks and perineum, requiring 8 days of hospitalization, skin grafting, a loss of 20% of your body weight and then three weeks of missed work is a hell of lot to go through for $640,000.

OK follow me here...

Do we know the settlement amount all previous such cases received?

Did she ask for a 6-digit figure? I recall she initially asked for what, 20,000?

Does $20,000 pay for all that hospitalization?

I know McDs pushed the trial and risked the larger amount, but scams for amounts in the range of the initial settlement are not unheard of. With how lawsuit happy this country is they are rampant. There really are a lot or them.

It is quite possible a scam was in the works that just went horribly wrong due to poor calculations.

Most of the time the happen in the establishment, these "falls" and such as insurance scams. Why think someone wouldn't try to do so outside the building?

Again, if it didn't happen in a car where it wasn't made for such activity then maybe. But people are stupid and end up in the Darwin Awards so..... if someone uses a product or several products in a manner in which they were not intended to be used, then accident resulting from improper use places 100% accountability on the consumer that is misusing the products.

Yes I know the court found her 20% accountable, but what would that have been should she waited to get somewhere to open the coffee outside of a vehicle.

Hey let's all start suing Mt. Olive/Vlassic/etc for having glass in our hands or slipping and falling from a spill when that pickle lid was so tight people used force to open it.

The fact that her ignorance in part caused her injury I feel she shouldn't have had the right to sue. Period. It is high time Americans started taking responsibility for their own actions rather than looking for someone else to blame and accept accountability for them. Become a responsible consumer, aka don't do stupid .

 

[Maggan]

EDIT: to keep on topic, my view is that it seems preposterous to even consider taking WotC to court over how D&D has changed over the years.

Maybe we should create an rpg event out of it and run it at GenCon? The people vs. WotC, a live action roleplaying event. I'd watch it!

/m

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The fact that her ignorance in part caused her injury I feel she shouldn't have had the right to sue. Period.

Wow.

You might rethink that position after taking some time to read over what a positive force consumer litigation has been to society.

Hell, in automobile manufacture, it was the driving force (no pun intended) behind seatbelts, bumpers, not putting the gas tank outside the frame, and other safety innovations & research...often because someone was doing something a little dangerous.

Why?

Because to sue, there has to be an identifiable harm done.

But to recover, the party being sued has to have some culpability that would contribute to the injury even if the plaintiff wasn't acting a fool.

Do you think lawnmowers would have "dead man" switches if it hadn't been for drunks doing yardwork? We might have had to wait until someone who was a responsible adult had a cardiac event while mowing to get those.

The American system (and British system upon which it was modeled) prefer to err on the side of letting plaintiffs in the door then deciding whether or not they deserve any recovery.

Depending on the liability laws, you recover:

1) in proportion to your liability, be it 0% or 99%
2) only if you are less than 50% liable, and then in proportion
3) if the defendant was at all culpable and operating in a strict-liability industry (such as demolitions)

But your regime...well...it absolves the other party of their culpability completely. Businesses could, for instance, make cars using duct tape instead of welds: cause an accident and get no recovery, despite the fact that such a car would be unreasonably safe for anyone.

 

[Marius Delphus]

I've been resisting posting here, but I think some people are still undervaluing the notion that at 180 degrees, coffee is hot enough to cause third-degree burns. These burns are quite awful and don't really compare to sunburns or your usual sort of scalding burns, which typically, you know, heal without extensive (and expensive) in- and out-patient procedures. A quick Google search should be enough to get the idea.

I agree that a drive-thru coffee customer accepts a reasonable degree of risk when taking into the car a hot cup of coffee. (We accept reasonable degrees of risk to the meatware all the time.) If I spill the stupid thing and get scalded, that's my fault. But as a matter of product liability, the courts have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm inclined to accept the notion that third-degree burns are an unreasonable degree of risk. People do manage to get themselves hurt and killed in all kinds of fun and stupid ways, but opening a cup of coffee and suffering third-degree burns when I blow my DEX check is sort of over the line, you know?

As to the amount, in a vacuum, I'd expect somewhere between 1x and 2x damages as a settlement. Maybe a bit more at trial. (Not nearly enough to convince me to run a scam wherein I incur third-degree burns to my junk, and the resultant weeks of back-and-forthing to the hospital to try to fix my junk.) And I'd have to guess that if the accident had happened in the dining room, the plaintiff wouldn't have been found at all accountable.

----

But it's long past time we got back to the topic of the thread, so suppose McDonald's discontinued serving coffee and instead started serving New Edition Coffee-Like Beverage. Not even the most avid McDonald's coffee drinker would have standing to sue. Shareholders yes, customers no. As a general matter, customers only have standing to sue companies when the companies or their products somehow manage to hurt them, and... oh no, here we go again....

 

[Stoat]

I know McDs pushed the trial and risked the larger amount, but scams for amounts in the range of the initial settlement are not unheard of. With how lawsuit happy this country is they are rampant. There really are a lot or them.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

It is quite possible a scam was in the works that just went horribly wrong due to poor calculations.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Again, if it didn't happen in a car where it wasn't made for such activity then maybe. But people are stupid and end up in the Darwin Awards so..... if someone uses a product or several products in a manner in which they were not intended to be used, then accident resulting from improper use places 100% accountability on the consumer that is misusing the products.

Is it your opinion no one should ever drink coffee in a car?

Do you believe drinking coffee in a car is using a product in a manner in which it is not intended? If so, which product: the coffee or the car?

 

[Stoat]

As to the amount, in a vacuum, I'd expect somewhere between 1x and 2x damages as a settlement. Maybe a bit more at trial. (Not nearly enough to convince me to run a scam wherein I incur third-degree burns to my junk, and the resultant weeks of back-and-forthing to the hospital to try to fix my junk.) And I'd have to guess that if the accident had happened in the dining room, the plaintiff wouldn't have been found at all accountable.

$200,000 to $160,000 in compensatories seems reasonable to me in 2011 dollars. Wikipedia says the plaintiff had $10,500 in medicals and anticipated $2,500 in future medicals, which strikes me as almost comically low for an 8-day hospital stay. Apparently, she also lost $5,000 in wages. Obviously, the jury paid her a heap of pain and suffering. I imagine the lengthly hospital stay, the fact that burns are famously painful and disfiguring injuries and the fact that she was burned on a particularly sensitive part of her body factored into that decision.

Her initial demand was $20,000.

 

[Piratecat]

Guys, we've strayed far off the original (kinda silly, honestly) topic and into off-topic territory. I'm going to swing this gently closed as a result.

Feel free to start a thread in the Off topic forum (http://www.enworld.org/forum/media-lounge-miscellaneous-geek-stuff/) to discuss the McDonald's case further, if you so wish.