DescentBB

YAHOO News wrote:Bai is seeking damages totaling $300 million â?? the approximate equivalent of the mission's cost â?? for her "moral sufferings,"...

It'll never go anywhere, there's that much sanity left in the U.S.

CDN_Merlin wrote:

It'll never go anywhere, there's that much sanity left in the U.S.

Then explain to me how that women sued and won against McD's for serving hot coffee when it weas clearly her own stupidity?

Lothar wrote:

CDN_Merlin wrote:

It'll never go anywhere, there's that much sanity left in the U.S.

Then explain to me how that women sued and won against McD's for serving hot coffee when it weas clearly her own stupidity?

Done. (Scroll to the end of the post.)

Pandora wrote:Lothar or anyone, could you you sum up the link? I'm have not applied for the NHB Forum...
Cheers!

Lothar wrote:(OFF TOPIC: merlin, the McDonalds case, IMO, was a case of the media trying to make a legit lawsuit sound frivolous -- McD's keeps their coffee at like 180 degrees or more, while virtually nobody else keeps it at higher than 160. Their coffee isn't just hot, it's absurdly hot -- and while people expect coffee to be hot enough to burn you, they don't expect it to be hot enough to cause the sort of burns the McD's lady got, especially not as quickly as it did. Read up on it -- yeah, I know, that's a law firm's webpage, but still...)
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At the beginning of the trial, jury foreman Jerry Goens says he "wasn't convinced as to why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill."

At that point, Mr. Goens and the other jurors knew only the basic facts: that two years earlier, Stella Liebeck had bought a 49-cent cup of coffee at the drive-in window of an Albuquerque McDonald's, and while removing the lid to add cream and sugar had spilled it, causing third-degree burns of the groin, inner thighs and buttocks. Her suit, filed in state court in Albuquerque, claimed the coffee was "defective" because it was so hot.

What the jury didn't realize initially was the severity of her burns. Told during the trial of Mrs. Liebeck's seven days in the hospital and her skin grafts, and shown gruesome photographs, jurors began taking the matter more seriously. "It made me come home and tell my wife and daughters don't drink coffee in the car, at least not hot," says juror Jack Elliott.

Even more eye-opening was the revelation that McDonald's had seen such injuries many times before. Company documents showed that in the past decade McDonald's had received at least 700 reports of coffee burns ranging from mild to third degree, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.

The testimony of Mr. Appleton, the McDonald's executive, didn't help the company, jurors said later. He testified that McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but hadn't consulted burn experts about it. He also testified that McDonald's had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns, even though most people wouldn't think it possible. Finally, he testified that McDonald's didn't intend to change any of its coffee policies or procedures, saying, "There are more serious dangers in restaurants."

Mr. Elliott, the juror, says he began to realize that the case was about "callous disregard for the safety of the people."

The Leonid Meteor Display
The Leonids are a meteor shower that originates in the constellation of Leo (the lion) and occur regularly. Every year in mid-November, Earth glides through a minefield of dust clouds. The source of the dust is Comet Tempel-Tuttle*, and when Earth runs into a cloud we have a Leonid meteor shower. This year the Leonids are expected to peak on Nov. 19th around 2149 GMT (5:49 p.m. EST). At best, sky watchers will see one meteor per minuteâ??nice, but not like the jaw-dropping displays of recent years, especially 1998 and 2001.
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Pandora wrote:Thanks, Lothar and fliptw! Now that changes my understanding of the McDonalds-Coffee suit completely. If it is true (and I'm rather sure it is), then it *was* a bad case of making a law suit sound frivolous that cleerly isnt, as Lothar said.