: Your friend is going to be disappointed. Most of the "dumb lawsuits" : you read about in the popular press turn out to be not so obviously : dumb when you learn the details (which never get reported in the pop- : ular press). This really shouldn't come as a surprise if you think : about it for a moment. After all, the judges and juries in such cases : are ordinary folk just like you and me. If the suit really were dumb : as the newspaper accounts make it sound, don't you think they'd see : that as clearly as you and I do? If they find for the plaintiff, its : because there's a lot more going on in the story that the press is not : reporting. A case in point is the woman who sued (successfully) McDon- : ald's when she spilled a hot cup of coffee on herself. The press re- : ports made this sound like an obvious waste of the judicial system and : implied that the jury must have been plumb crazy. In point of fact : the woman suffered 2nd degree burns (yes 2nd, not 1st) which means that : coffee was pretty damn hot. McDonald's claimed it was 180 degrees : which is the standard setting for restaurant coffee machines; but in : fact there is no such thing as a coffee machine which can keep the : coffee at 180 degrees REGARDLESS OF THE VOLUME OF THE COFFEE IN THE : POT. If there was very little coffee left in the pot, say just 1 or : 2 cups and if some time had passed (say 15 minutes) since the last : time a cup had been sold from that pot, then the temperature of that : coffee would have been much much greater than 180 degrees. While your premise is good, I think you picked a terrible example. The temperature of the coffee is irrelevant. What's relevant is that McDonalds employees didn't spill the coffee on the woman, she spilled it on *herself*. I once had a Taco Bell burrito supreme rupture, spilling its contents onto the leg of my suit. I didn't ask Taco Bell to pay my cleaning bill. In answer to the request, I offer the following which I pulled from rec.humor a year or so ago. I make no claims as to the truthfulness of this story, but it certainly sounds plausible. -------------------------------------------------------------------- A Norwegian friend of mine told me that a Swedish chainsaw manufacturer began marketing thier product in the US, with an English language manual noticeably larger than the Swedish or Norwegian versions. News commentators explained with great humor in a report that this was because of all the additional warnings, including (they pointed out specifically) "Do not attempt to stop the chainsaw with your hand." This was made even more humorous a couple of years later, when they were saved a pile of money in a lawsuit brought by a US citizen who was injured stopping the chainsaw with his hand. He was unable to collect, since the manual specifically warned against it. Rune surmised that the warnings were legally unnecessary in the Scandinavian manuals, since no Scandinavian would publicly admit to doing anything that stupid. I've always thought the problem could be solved if all products had a label on them stating: WARNING: This product not intended for use by stupid people.
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