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If the only claim in the suit was that the customer had spilled
coffee on herself and maybe ruined an expensive outfit, this
would have been a stupid, frivolous lawsuit. However, the
fact that the coffee inside the cup was sufficiently overtemped
as to cause burns requiring skin grafts meant the product
failed the legal test of "implied usability." In other words,
when you purchase a beverage, you expect the beverage *as
delivered* to be safe for consumption. Had the customer not
placed the cup between her knees but merely removed the
lid and taken even the most tentative of sips from the cup,
she would still have suffered a serious burn *somewhere,*
and not just the typical "ouch, that coffee was too hot" kind.
Think about it, when someone puts a cup of steaming coffee
in front of you, how do you determine if it's too hot to gulp
it down? Take a tiny sip? Touch the surface with your
fingertip? You would have suffered a 3rd degree burn to
your lips or fingertip, that's how hot McDonald's coffee was.
The product, *as delivered,* was not safe for its intended use,
and carried no warnings or instructions that it was not safe
for its intended use as delivered and that some waiting period
or temperature test *other than contact with your skin* was
necessary before use to avoid injury. That fact, combined
with the fact that McDonald's admitted in court that they had
still never checked to see what temperatures were dangerous
even after they had received over 700 previous complaints
about burns from their coffee (if they had, they could have
easily learned that they were holding their coffee at 15-20
degrees above the temperature that causes immediate 3rd
degree burns to human skin), was why they lost the suit.
> OK, so I didn't check my facts 100%... I was going
> from memory. See? I'm stupid. And apparently so was
> Liebeck, as "Liebeck placed the cup between her knees
> and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup."
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