An idiot and his table saw...

Uh, I'd venture that 99.9% of the people who bring this up as a supposed example of a frivolous lawsuit, actually have never heard the real story.

Fact 1: The woman received THIRD DEGREE burns. The coffee was FAR hotter than any reasonable restaurant ever serves it. This was a deliberate ploy to reduce requests for refills, as the stuff couldn't even be sipped for 10-15 minutes.

Fact 2: The woman asked McD's to pay her medical bills, which IIRC were a couple of hundred dollars.

Fact 3: She brought suit only AFTER McD refused to pay the paltry medical bills.

Found myself thinking this topic has been flogged to death. I am interested in the reply you get from Saw Stop, and this isn't cross posted.

Mike M

Bullshit.

Irrrelevant.

Irelevant.

There's even more to that lawsuit. McD's had years of memos showing many, many complaints and burned customers yet they decided the money paid in potential lawsuits would be less than lost revenue from people not buying their coffee if they decided to lower the serving temperature.

The judge in the case decided to make it hurt.... even if just a little.

No, it's not. She required skin grafts in her crotch. This is all easily obtained information. There's a documentary on netflix that spells it all out.

I'd like to see you try to drink 180 degree water.

If you think those issues are irrelevant to the lawsuit, you are grossly misinformed.

Fact 4: She stuck it between her legs in her car. Who in their right mind does that?

Who in their right mind thinks someone THAT stupid should be rewarded for suffering the consequences because THEY ARE THAT STUPID? O_o

TDD

Third degree burns from coffee that was at the maximum...221F?

Really?

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie

On Wed, 5 Dec 2012 14:12:15 -0500, "Existential Angst"

Right! The US is one of the most avarice oriented countries on this planet. Your laws support that concept and many of your citizens follow that concept religiously.

Yet, you want to limit someone from doing exactly what your constitution and personal rights have guaranteed.

You might just as well add a 10% personal tax onto your top 2% wealthiest citizens and curtail that fiscal cliff you're about to topple over.

On Thu, 06 Dec 2012 02:20:18 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"

Probably many, many, more that you know. It's exactly the same thing as people texting while walking or driving. You've heard the old saying ~ Stupid is as stupid does. Nothing new there.

On Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:03:45 -0600, Leon

If I didn't know better, aside form the swearing, I'd say it was Tim Daneliuk using an alias to bitch and complain while never discussing anything woodworking related.

That does not change the fact that she was responsible for her own burns. If she had a car wreck with the coffee between her legs would she have included the expense for that in her suit?

to paraphrase SHE IS THE MASTER OF HER FATE, THE CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL.

Unfortunately, a 100% tax on those two percent would hardly put a dent in the problem the problem. When you spend $3.8 trillion and only take in $2.4 trillion and add the fact that the sum total of all salaries, wages and tips is $4.8 trillion annually, falling over the cliff can't be avoided without very large spending cuts. Currently, SS, Medicare, Medicaid and the new Obamacare can't be supported with current revenue, even if everything else including military, foreign aid, government payrolls, NASA, etc was entirely eliminated.

Here is the full story: .

My home coffeepot brews and serves at 60 C, or 140 F.

Joe Gwinn

I never suggested suing anyone. The thread isn't about suing anyone for anything. It's about a device that can stop a spinning saw to prevent injury. Kind of like seatbelts in cars and airbags, both of which have proven to have significant benefits.

Again, the issue was SawStop, not litigation.

That kind of Darwinian logic means we should remove all safety devices from everything and we'd be better off. Seat belts, air bags, smoke detectors..

Did you watch the video? Even the experienced woodworker didn't realize how close he came to a serious injury while making that video. Yes, there is SOME relationship between personal responsibility and accident rates. But even the most responsible person can still have an accident. I asked you before. The conservatives out there are always talking about personal responsibility. They speak out like you do about it not being right for someone to sue if they pour hot coffee on themselves. So, let's look at them. You think they are immune from accidents? MAYBE they have a somewhat lower accident rate, but I guarantee you plenty of them have had saw accidents. It's a SAFETY issue and ACCIDENTS happen] to everyone. That's why we call them accidents, not "on purposes".

Passing a test would seem to be more in line with your method, ie making people personally responsible. The only way I see a 40 year old who isn't responsible possibly becoming responsible around a saw is via education. Yeah, I know, you'd prefer he visit the hospital to learn and have all of us pay for it, right?

There was no context. But it is interesting that someone would drag Bush and Obama into a discussion about SawStop. Do they have a SawStop or even use a table saw?

What exactly am I stretching? Keith believes in a Darwinian system, where instead of having safety devices we rely on people cutting off their fingers, which according to him teaches them personal responsibility. That is in fact an ideology. Based on that, we should rip out all the GFCIs, seatbelts, smoke detectors, etc. Be careless around the house with a cigarette, you'll learn by dying in a fire, right? Misuse that hairdryer and you'll get shocked or killed. That will teach you.

Fool. I didn't say people should not be personally responsible. Nor did I say people should be sue happy, another red herring Keith is now draggin in here. I said that a feature like SafetyStop has nothing to with personal responsibility because accidents can and do happen to all of us.

You sure are.

Where they got the idiotic term "fiscal cliff", when it's merely expiring tax cuts, I'll never know. And don't blame only the Reps for it. -All- of congress created the default scenario, -all- agreed to it when they couldn't agree last time, and -all- are guilty of neglect at this point. Obama's rape of the Medicare/SS system funds has to be stopped NOW! Gov't fraud and waste have to be stopped NOW! Fiscal sanity has to start NOW!

Neither the gov't nor the people seem to understand that at all, Doug. The gov't is acting like a 16 y/o girl with her first credit card from Dad, complete with ZERO instructions on how to limit herself.

Ask yourself: Am I ready for the coming depression/revolution? Stockpile accordingly.

-- ...in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work. -- John Ruskin

A judge and jury say you're wrong. And having heard the actual evidence, I'd say their opinion is worth a lot more. Here are some of the facts:

"Stella Liebeck, 79-years-old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson=92s car having purchased a cup of McDonald=92s coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her lap. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years.

Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald=92s for $20,000. However, McDonald=92s refused to settle for this small amount and, in fact, never offered more than $800

The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and bio- mechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor in chief of the leading scholarly publication in the specialty, the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation; McDonald=92s admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years =97 the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits, to no avail; From 1982 to 1992, McDonald=92s coffee burned more than 700 people, many receiving severe burns to the genital area, perineum, inner thighs, and buttocks; Not only men and women, but also children and infants, have been burned by McDonald=92s scalding hot coffee, in some instances due to inadvertent spillage by McDonald=92s employees; McDonald=92s admitted at trial that its coffee is =93not fit for consumption=94 when sold because it causes severe scalds if spilled or drunk; McDonald=92s did a survey of other coffee establishments in the area, and found that coffee at other places was between 30-40 degrees cooler."

Sounds to me like the jury did the right thing.

Don't let facts get in the way of a good debate. :-) There's even more to the story...

I'm pretty sure it brews higher than that. 175 is kind of the minimum for extracting all the good oils. You may be using a "cold brewer" though, I don't know. No standard production coffee maker brews under