This was not a freak accident

I curious what makes you say that?

Yes, McDonald’s did have 700 reports of people receiving burns from their coffee…

The part most people don’t pay attention to is that was nationwide over a 10 year period.

That’s about 1 burn a week, yes some were serious 3rd degree burns, but most were not.

When they were serving literally 10s of millions of cups of coffee a week they we’re getting about 1 report a week.

1 in 10 million meets my definition of a freak accident. There could have been 100x that many reports of coffee burn injuries and I would still call it a freak accident.

I’m not supporting McDonald’s in this case. And I’m definitely not blaming Stella. Her wounds were very very severe.

Part of the reason they were so severe is because the highly absorbent sweatpants she was wearing kept the coffee trapped against her skin for at least 30 seconds. Should we blame the manufacturer of the pants too? I don’t think anyone studied it. But I’m willing to bet that at least 1 in 10 million pairs of sweatpants have contributed to severe burn scalding injuries.

She burned herself by pulling the cup over when she was pulling on a tab to open the lid of the cup, (a cup which BTW did actually have a warning about the coffee being hot printed on it). Should whoever designed the lid be blamed? Cup design has been at the centre of other burn lawsuits.

A younger more able person probably would have been able to remove their pants quickly but Stella was 79 at the time. She wasn’t driving, the car was parked. Most people could have gotten out of the car and gotten their pants off quick, but not in Stella’s case she wasn’t capable of mitigating her injuries. Should we argue that old or mobility limited individuals should only be allowed to drink luke warm beverages?

McDonald’s policy at the time was to hold coffee at 180-190°F. We don’t know the temperature of her cup specifically, but let’s assume it’s in that area. If that’s so dangerous, as her lawyer argued, why isn’t that illegal today? Starbucks holds coffee at that temperature today, they normally serve it a bit cooler, at about 170°F, but you can ask for it extra hot and they’ll serve it at that temperature. Starbucks also serves their tea at 200+°F today. If this wasn’t a freak accident and companies should know better, why is it common practice for franchises today to still serve coffee and tea at these hot temperatures?

The fact is, injuries from overly hot beverages are rare, and severe injuries like the kind Stella had are even more rare. You can’t prevent those sorts of 1 in a million+ accidents. Any precautions you might take to prevent them, tend to create a new extremely unlikely risks of some other injury. Sometimes bad things happen, it doesn’t need to be someone’s fault. If we focus less on who’s fault it is and ensure care for those who suffer from them, regardless of circumstances. You can look at what will actually make a meaningful impact.

Her whole story became national news because Stella needed to sue someone to pay her medical bills. If she didn’t need to do that, no one would even know her name.

If you want to make the argument that McDonald’s should have offered to cover her 20k$ medical bills from the first meeting,instead of making the tiny settlement offer they did make go right ahead. I’m not defending McDonald’s handling of the case.

I’m only arguing that not everything needs to be someone’s fault. This perpetual need to always blame someone when something bad happens makes it more difficult to look at prevention.