From WO’s post at
http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/hot-coffee-documentary-hbo-reviewed/#comments

>I’m pretty sure no groups critical of the Liebeck award ever did a comparable press push; and the McDonald’s company itself, so far as I know, never chose to cooperate with commentators who might be sympathetic to its legal case.
[end of quote]

Though sympathetic to tort reform, I can understand why McDonald’s does not want to revisit this case. The $2.7 million punitive damages to force them to cool their coffee to the temperature of dishwater was out of line. But some of the arguments that it was *all* the plaintiff’s fault remind me of Whitaker Chambers’s notorious paraphrase of Atlas Shrugged, “To a gas chamber — go!”

The extraordinary burns that the plaintiff got made her case an “exception that proves the rule,” distinct from the usual whiners and hustlers seeking big payoffs for minor injuries. For a big company, it is sometimes best to pay to make bad publicity go away.

Although the plaintiff’s attorney standard of 135-140 degrees (or at most 155 degrees) has not been adopted, I believe the current standards for Starbucks and McDonalds are a bit lower than the 193 degrees cited in this case. (ON the other hand, when I make tea at home, I always boil the water.)

It might make sense to serve car customers, subject to extra spill hazards, at a somewhat lower temperature than counter customers.

I understand the cups used to serve car sustomers have been redesigned to make spills less likely.