McDonald’s is being sued over a hot coffee spill, again.

This time, a San Francisco location is being accused of serving a “scalding” cup of coffee with an improperly attached lid, which allegedly resulted in the coffee pouring out on plaintiff Mable Childress’ body and causing “severe burns” after she tried drinking it.

The lawsuit, filed last week, alleged that the elderly woman is suffering from “physical pains, emotional distress and other damages.” The restaurant’s negligence was a “substantial factor” for her injuries, it alleged.

Childress also said in the lawsuit that the restaurant employees “refused” to help her, a point that the McDonald’s denied.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Yep, wife used to work for Starbucks. You’re supposed to check/calibrate the thermostat on the machine on a regular basis so you get the coffee hot but not boiling, third degree burns hot. For whatever reason, it has to be done because the thermostats will gradually deviate from their initial settings. If you fail to check your thermostats, eventually someone’s going to burn the fuck out of themselves with a hot drink. Water, which is the main ingredient in any coffee product, has an enormous heat capacity, and will absolutely fuck your shit up before you have a chance to do anything about it.

    IIRC, McDonald’s was either deliberately tampering with their thermostats or just failing to check them when that famous case went down, which was how they were found to be negligent.

    • JDubbleu@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      They determined that the average customer stayed in a given McDonald’s after ordering for x minutes, so they made the coffee so hot it couldn’t be consumed within x minutes in an attempt to get people not to utilize their free refills on coffee. The coffee was so hot it was dangerous. All to save a customer from getting 2 more cents worth of coffee.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Shareholders don’t ruin someone’s life in exchange for an extra 0.0001% return this quarter challenge (impossible)

      • Omega@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I thought it was so the coffee would still be hot by the time you got to wherever you were driving to. Your explanation makes a lot more sense though.

        • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It makes a lot more sense if you presume malice. I put incompetence up top, followed by another explanation on this thread that the idea was to keep your coffee hot until you get to your destination.