mgcsinc

If it was a small claim, it would've made for a good Judge Judy (or equivalent) episode.

Kwaj boy

FWIW, our Keurig coffee machine at home is set to 192 degrees. The 140 to 150 degrees referenced here seems low.

mgcsinc

192 degrees is the brew temperature, not the holding temperature.

andrewwm

Almost every cheap coffee maker I've ever seen doesn't heat the water to boiling

At best, you get 180 for the brew temperature, and then it goes down from there.

Kwaj boy

Keurig machines don't hold coffee. They brew one cup at a time so the brew temp is what you get.

mgcsinc

First, brew temperature is not what you get. In my free time, I'm an espresso snob. The temperature in the cup is not the brew temperature.

In any case, the point was that McDonalds broke from the contemporaneous practice of holding coffee at a much lower temperature. The brew temperature of a Keurig has nothing to do with the temperature that McDonalds holds cisterns full of coffee at.

HMPS

If she gets to a jury trial, she will win !

UnitedFFinAsia

Reminds me of a flight in December where FA dropped a bottle of Port all over me during desert. Shirt was sent to cleaners in China, UA sent no check for cleaning even with "accident kit." Had KA (Dragon Air) FA spill hot tea on me, certainly hurts for a bit.

mre5765

Nope.

mgcsinc

I'm happy not to play the will-my-toaster-explode lottery because some company decided that gambling on not being held liable in negligence for the occasional wrongful death claim would be cheaper than adding a 5-cent part to each toaster.

astroflyer

What a crazy experience. I just can't imagine the coffee was all that hot by the time it got to the passenger. UA brews their coffee, then it sits on the pot for a while after brewing, then it gets transfered to the cart, sits on the cart a while.

Even if she honestly got a second degree burn, it's really not exactly a big deal. Ask someone who works in a restaurant how often they get second degree burns. Do you think they sue every time it happens?

planemechanic

Do you know what a second degree burn is? And depending on the location (hands, face, feet, genitals) of that second degree burn it may call for immediate medical attention by a Doctor. It's not just a boo-boo.

mgcsinc

+1. One only need to type "second degree burn" into Google Images to be a bit horrified.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Incident happened almost two years ago. What gets me is FA did not spill coffee on pax. I think if a passenger asks for coffee, is handed the cup, it is his/her responsibility and risk managing the cup. I don't have a problem with liability laws, but I do have a problem when all sense of personal responsibility is no longer required.

Soon after the break up the USSR, I opened an office there for a major oil company. We had a copier that needed supplies/maintenance. I went to the local vendor and they supplied a 3-page agreement. I sent it to Houston and received back a 17-page agreement from our fine legal group. It was hilarious trying to explain the cr*p the American Legal system forces us to put in contracts. The most ludicrous was the indemnity absolving us of liability if their worker hurts himself by his own actions. The lady I was negotiating with said this was the stupidest thing she ever heard of - "of course if he hurts himself, it's his own fault!" We've gotten used to lawyers subverting the simplest of common sense ideas, and the reason is the more they can subvert common sense, the more money they make.

Exploding toaster? Yeah, I see a problem. FA gives coffee to a passenger, who spills it because someone in front of her reclines, and she sues United 2 years later? Gimme a break. I'm not drinking room temperature coffee because some lady and her contingency-seeking bottom-dwelling lawyer think they can get money out of UA.

jbsay

Certainly, but it's important not to conflate latent defects with open and obvious defects. No one buys a toaster with knowledge of the risk it might explode on them, but every frequent flyer knows that requesting coffee in UA economy means placing an uncovered cup of very hot liquid on a flimsy tray table attached to a movable seat.

My point isn't that UA should necessarily prevail in this suit; it may well be sensible for courts to hold UA liable for failing to offer lids to pax who order coffee. Every major fast-food establishment that serves coffee also offers lids with it, AFAIK, so why shouldn't UA (whose customers are on a plane) do the same?

Assume UA can buy coffee lids in bulk for 1 cent per lid (which from a cursory Internet search appears roughly accurate), and assume UA serves one cup of coffee per 1000 passenger-miles. This means offering coffee lids fleet-wide would cost UA just shy of $1,000,000 per year. Would it be efficient for UA to bear this cost to reduce (but not eliminate) the risk of rare severe burns to passengers, along with the risk of occasional coffee spills (and $190 ruined shirts)? I don't think there's an obvious answer to this question; without data, we're shooting in the dark here.