Apologies for the super long blog posts I've been writing. In reward for your diligence in reading through all of that, here is a nice short one for you.
The other day in my Deafness and the Law class we started discussing the lawsuit against McDonald's with the woman who sued for spilling her hot coffee in her lap. Everyone agreed that this was ridiculous, how did she get so much money for being so clumsy!?!
Because that's not what really happened...
This is what happened. (According to my teacher, who is in fact a lawyer and studied this in law school. But feel free to be skeptical of this story. I don't care. I believe it.) McDonald's got new coffee machines. And these coffee machines boiled the water SO hot that if you pushed the temperature any higher, the water would turn into steam. Why the change? Because the hotter water allowed them to use the filter bags for many more cups of coffee. Less filter bags being used = more money. Only there was a problem. McDonald's didn't change the cups so that they could handle this hot hot water. They still used their styrofoam cups. And these cups would start to disintegrate from the boiling hotness of the water. And sometimes these cups disintegrated completely away. And people would get boiling hot hot water all over their hands. and they would burn. And McDonald's had been paying out money to these people for their injuries. But the cost of getting new cups was still higher than the cost of paying out these people, so they continued to do it.
Until one day, when a woman came through the drive-thru. And she bought a cup of coffee, and then she did what most people do when they are getting stuff from a drive-thru window. She stuck it between her legs. And then it disintegrated away. And she got 3rd-degree burns on her thighs and genital area so badly that she had to get skin grafts. (My whole class flinched backwards and exclaimed "oooo!" simultaneously when my teacher announced this.) And so she sued. and she won 20 million dollars.
And why did she get so much money for it? Because part of that money was to ensure her cooperation with whatever story McDonald's gave to the public. She was not allowed to contradict anything they said.
And as my teacher said, "They villified her in the press and she didn't care because she took her 20 million dollars and she bought an island!"
Yes, she did. She bought an island. An island. How sweet is that?!
Dang it, still a long post. I suppose brevity is not my strong point. It's a great story though ain't it?
13 years ago
Cool Story--but what does it have to do with deafness?
ReplyDeletewow that is interesting. I also have to ask why its a part of "deafness and the law" unless its about general unfairness in the law or to illustrate a point which later led to the subject of deafness. I vote the latter, which has been my experience.
ReplyDeleteLOOOOOVVVEEEED your post about hiking. hahaha. I was laughing the whole time.
that is SO you. I can just see you saying this stuff and typing it...
That is a cool story, and not all too surprising...although sadly no great way to verify it thanks to McDonald's media campaign.
ReplyDelete