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The Actual Facts about the Mcdonalds’ Coffee Case: I’ve read this a few times, but it’s worth reading again.  It’s the story of the infamous coffee scalding case that is often held up as a reason for tort reform.  A woman burned herself on hot coffee at a McDonalds drive-through and was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in court.  Outrage ensued.

However, the fact is that McDonalds kept its coffee at 190 degrees – about 40% hotter than anyone else does.  The results for this woman were pretty disastrous.

McDonalds coffee was not only hot, it was scalding — capable of almost instantaneous destruction of skin, flesh and muscle. […]

The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonalds refused.

But, the fact remains that McDonalds didn’t pour the coffee into this woman’s lap.  It spilled.  It was an accident.  But, the argument goes, McDonalds shouldn’t have been distributing a dangerous substance.  In particular, McDonalds was not helped by this:

McDonalds’ quality assurance manager testified that the company actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185 degrees, plus or minus five degrees.  He also testified that a burn hazard exists with any food substance served at 140 degrees or above, and that McDonalds coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat.  The quality assurance manager admitted that burns
would occur, but testified that McDonalds had no intention of reducing the "holding temperature" of its coffee.

So, McDonalds knew that their coffee was unconsumable as served because of the heat, and that a burn hazard existed at temperatures 40-50 degrees less than what they were serving.

The whole article is a really interesting example of how there are two sides to every story, and the media doesn’t always portray them both fairly.