As a connoisseur of hot-coffee cases, I’m always excited to see a court get one right. The Abnormal Use blog points us to Colbert v. Sonic Restaurants, No. 09-1423, 2010 WL 3769131 (W.D. La. Sept. 21, 2010). The plaintiff made the usual gamut of “design defect” and “failure to warn” claims, but the court wasn’t buying it. Note that the plaintiff claimed to be injured by the coffee at Sonic Restaurants, yet another refutation of the trial-lawyer claim that Stella Liebeck’s McDonald’s coffee was unusually hot.
Posts Tagged ‘eat drink and be merry’
A creative liquormaker speaks out
“I don’t feel bad about being a scofflaw — our distillation laws are preposterous.” [Cooking Issues]
“Not Guilty by Reason of Caffeine”
“Reports today say that a 33-year-old Kentucky man will argue in his murder trial this week that he should be found not guilty of killing his wife because he was under the influence of caffeine at the time.” [Lowering the Bar] Update: Lawyer doesn’t mention caffeine theory on trial’s first day [ABA Journal] From commenter Shtetl G: “I would be more sympathetic if he claimed lack of caffeine caused the murder.”
“Brooklyn Man Suing Yoo-Hoo For False Advertising”
“Timothy Dahl, 35, is suing Yoo-Hoo’s parent company, the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, in federal court because he claims the product’s ‘good for you’ ad slogan is simply not truthful.” The suit is an intended class action. [Gothamist, New York Post, Legal Blog Watch] We’ve covered the many “froot” class action suits alleging that CrunchBerries, Froot Loops, etc. are not particularly healthy things to eat; at least one suit has similarly assailed Cocoa Puffs.
Yes, tea is hot, too. (Redux: Villona Maryash edition)
Brooklyn mother Villona Maryash spills tea on her five-month-old infant, infant burned, sues Starbucks. But the complaint is not that the beverage was too hot, but that Starbucks should’ve served it on a tray and with a sleeve. Of course, protective sleeves are in ready reach of customers at every Starbucks I’ve been in, and it’s likely that Starbucks doesn’t insert the cups in sleeves automatically for environmental reasons. [NY Post; Gothamist commenters are not impressed]
“Another frooty lawsuit”
Something about fruit-flavored snack foods seems to get the class-action lawyers going. A Brooklyn woman is now suing General Mills, saying its Fruit Roll-Ups, popular with kids, are not as healthy as buyers might think from its marketing. [California Civil Justice Blog, Reuters, New York Daily News]
$1 million for study on schools, ads and kids’ food
Want to get a local potato chip company to sponsor the scoreboard at your high school athletic field? Washington may soon be making that decision for you. Adam Cassandra of CNSNews.com quotes me in this piece on the federal government’s deepening involvement in school food issues, and the price it brings in local control.
Yes, tea is hot, too: Zeynep Inanli v. Starbucks
By popular demand, we note the existence of the case of Zeynep Inanli v. Starbucks Corp et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 105767-2010, where Ms. Inanli has alleged second-degree burns from tea that was “unreasonably hot, in containers which were not safe.”
You will recall that part of the trial lawyer defense of the McDonald’s hot coffee case are the factually false claims that (1) only McDonald’s sold beverages hot enough to cause burns and (2) after Stella Liebeck won her suit, hot-beverage vendors everywhere reduced their temperatures to a “safe” level. Of course, the Reuters account fails to indicate sufficient facts to determine whether Ms. Inanli’s scenario reflects injuries from a spill that was her own fault or the fault of Starbucks.
New warnings at McDonald’s
Bruce Nye has a photo of a pointless new warning McDonald’s has posted in California stores to avoid litigation. The warning seems to have a side safety benefit: by the time you finish reading it, your coffee won’t be hot any more.
McDonald’s coffee still hot in Oregon
Aurora Hill alleges that McDonald’s coffee is “extremely hot in the extreme” and caused nervous shock, pain, and scarring when it spilled on her. (Aimee Green, The Oregonian, Feb. 4).
You may recall that part of the trial lawyer fiction about the merits of the infamous Stella Liebeck suit was that it supposedly successfully caused fast food restaurants to lower the temperature of coffee so that no one would ever be burned again.
My faith in humanity is encouraged when I see that the poll of Consumerist blog readers on the topic marks 86% for the option “Hot coffee is hot. Deal with it” on a blog that usually is reflexively pro-trial lawyer. Ironically, I wouldn’t count this suit as entirely meritless: Hill alleges that McDonald’s workers failed to adequately affix the lid to the cup, causing the spill as they handed her the coffee in the drive-through, which, if true, would strike me as actionable.