Running racism in America thread

I’m going to take a wild-ass guess that you are unfamiliar with the actual underlying facts in the McDonalds case and the evidence that was presented at trial.

 

There are other possibilities, you know.

 

Fair enough. Didn't have time to respond in any detail when I saw your post. To give a more detailed response:

1. The jury's verdict in the McDonald's case was reduced 20 percent due to comparative negligence (the jury found Mrs. Liebeck 20 percent at fault herself for spilling the drink. But she never even saw all of the reduced award; McDonald's appealed. And rather than doing through an appeal when she was, by then, in her 80s and in diminished health after all the medical procedures, she agreed to a confidential settlement that was surely for less than even the reduced judgment). Her own degree of fault in the spill WAS taken into account, regardless of your assertions to the contrary.

2. When people go into Starbucks, they are not buying coffee served at those same temperatures. A simple google search will tell you Starbucks serves their coffee between 150 and170 degrees. At the time, however, McDonald's mandated that franchises maintain a holding temperature of at least 180 degrees (and their styrofoam cups kept it from cooling to a safer temperature during the time frame someone would likely remove the lid to put cream and sugar in, the point of maximum risk of a spill). Even at the time, other fast food establishments had holding temperatures of 10 to 15 degrees less, which -- according to the thermodynamics experts that testified at trial -- was a big enough difference to significantly reduce the burn hazard. A blistered tongue is a LOT different from the injuries the plaintiff suffered in the McDonald's case. What's more, McDonald's own QA people admitted in depo testimony that they were aware of the risk but didn't plan to change their policy. Everyone knows coffee is hot. But we don't expect it to cause third degree burns that literally char a woman's inner thighs, genitals and perineum to a blackened crisp, necessitating skin grafts, debridement and a lengthy hospital stay. McDonald's coffee was an outlier even at the time -- nobody serves it at that temperature today in the wake of the McDonald's case.

In any event, from a pure legal standpoint, this was a strong case for liability based on the evidence presented at trial (McDonald's clearly breached a duty to take reasonable steps to protect customers from foreseeable harm caused by its products). But PR firms working for industry associations suckered lazy reporters into reporting this as a runaway jury case, even reporting factual falsehoods. For example, some reported that the car was in motion at the time or even that she was driving, which was absolutely not true. Her grandson had parked the car so she could put the cream and sugar in before he started moving again, but the lid stuck and when she pried it off, the coffee spilled in her lap (his car had no cupholders -- they weren't standard in 1992. Today, drive-through establishments put the contents in the coffee before serving them). And nobody at the time reported the extent of the injuries or the other evidence I described, which could have made for a compelling news story on its own. Instead they just reported from press releases. The whole episode was shameful.

Finally, while I appreciate the difference between the two cases (and the 30 years' separation between them), I still stand by my point that it's rank hypocrisy to attack the relatively modest Liebeck award while applauding the runaway award in the Oberlin case.

 

Would you be so kind as to point out any instances of such rank hypocrisy on this (or any other) thread? Because this outrage of yours seems to be directed at ... no one participating in this discussion.

 

Choice No. 3: Someone was shouting for the Rockies mascot.

 

What happened? It seems like we still don't really know. It also seems like it shouldn't be that hard to find out.

 

"Shut up," she heard a man's voice say as a body barreled into her, tripping her backward and sending them both crashing through a low glass table.

Poor girl's back and neck musta been all tore up from bits and pieces and shards of glass, right?

 

Of course.

But I was trying to goose a discussion. Personally I figure the possibilities mostly lie along that continuum between the poles 'nothing' and 'something.'

My sense is that something was said - but misunderstood.

 

Same here ... seems the most likely. But everybody's too dug in at this point.

 

Even Little League games are live streamed now. I’m surprised there’s not definitive video evidence one way or the other. It’s not a big ballpark, it’s a gym.