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That's why, for example, judges and jurors are sought to be impartial.

There you are! Justifying Trump's dismissing a judge as "biased" because he was of Mexican descent...Racist, racist, racist!

Of course, attacking a judge because of his ancestry is indeed, racist, and Trump's admissionsa actually showed his own realization of the bias and animus he had been demonstrating.

That is what Trump chose to do. He picked a deliberate course of racial antagonism to attack a judge in a lawsuit where it was immaterial. In the media. Nothing more. Remember, Trump University? It didn't get filed as a request for recusal in court, it was merely engaging in political aggrandizement. You don't get a judge to act in a case just because you go on CNN and pout like a crybaby.

You do know this, right? Trump was whining about a judge. He chose to do it with an included racist spin, so it only reflects on Trump. Not the judge. In the realm of public opinion. At least, until it becomes relevant to a legal matter. Now personally, I blame Trump's political advisers, who should have at least made Trump temper his remarks, but he still has a problem with running his mouth. Or twitter fingers, as the case may be. But he's not the only one with a problem with that in his administration. That sort of thing can reflect on you.

Which was why when somebody takes your statements, applies them to you, in a legal case, and submits them to court, well, then you have a judge rule on it.

Now if you want to see a judge who got in trouble because of their own actions, let's try one. That's one where a

"deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change."

You lie.

This language is designed to be vague so that anyone who "denies" climate change can be prosecuted. This is not private lawsuits; these are prosecutor-initiated government lawsuits. That is a criminal prosecution, since we are talking about corporations and not individuals.

Also of note:

http://www.overlawyered.com/20...

http://mediatrackers.org/wisco...
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...
http://www.campusreform.org/?I...
http://www.mediaite.com/online...
http://taxprof.typepad.com/tax...
http://www.climatedepot.com/20...
http://freebeacon.com/issues/s...
http://overlawyered.com/2015/0...
http://legalinsurrection.com/2...
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03...

For those who have forgotten , or never knew in the first place, a New Mexico state senator

once proposed a law to deal with this, which would probably have been the greatest single reform of the legal system in US History, and still makes me grin. It passed the state senate with a unanimous vote! The timid morons in the state House, however, (probably aided by "campaign contributions" from professionals in the affected fields) killed it. The proposed law said:

"When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. Additionally, a psychologist or psychiatrist shall be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length, and shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand. Whenever a psychologist or psychiatrist provides expert testimony regarding a defendant’s competency, the bailiff shall contemporaneously dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes to a Chinese gong."

Just imagine all the pseudo-scientific clap-trap that this would have destroyed in numerous legal cases where "experts" pretend to know what somebody is thinking, has thought, or will or won't do in the future.

1) The FBI found just cause to suspect a crime; what the subject was doing appeared to be money laundering, which - as it should - triggers an investigation.

Absolutely not. He is not accused of money laundering, there is no evidence at all that he is laundering money .

He is accused of structuring, which is making many small transactions instead of one big transaction to avoid filling out the paperwork that goes along with one big transaction.

Structuring is one of the bogus laws often used to prosecute innocent people. For example, a store might have a clause in their insurance policy that says they won't store more than $10k in cash on the premises (or if they do, it's not covered for theft). So to avoid that the store owner makes regular bank deposits when the cash on hand grows to $5k.

Are they structuring? Well, there have been cases exactly like that. The govt seizes the funds and you are SOL: http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

A longer explanation:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

3) They found no crime, and thus did not prosecute for it. However, in the process, the subject deliberately interfered with the investigation and made false statements to the police, which is a crime.

Which is why you should never talk to the police. Ever.

Martha Stewart did the same thing - she was investigated for insider trading, and there was no evidence to support that. Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators while being investigated for insider trading.

Victory! Social Security Suspends Stale-Debt Collection Program
http://overlawyered.com/2014/0...

Whenever anyone starts freaking out about email snooping, I find it is a good time to point out that an email message that is not encrypted is roughly as secure in transit as a postcard.

Security isn't the question, it is privacy. Such as the recent case in Minnesota where cops illegally accessed the driver's license picture of a fellow cop because she was attractive:

http://overlawyered.com/2012/11/female-cop-gets-1-million-after-colleagues-trolled-database-peek-her-pic/

She sued and received a million in compensation from the cops' employeres. Of course, none of the perpertrators were fined or fired, let alone prosecuted (because they were cops).

but a quick search showed fo Credit Card companies, strangely, they had a 94% win rate.

[citation needed]

Here's an actual citation about consumer and employee win rates in arbitration:
http://overlawyered.com/2007/12/consumer-and-employee-win-rates-in-arbitration/

186 arbitration claims involving employment disputes in the securities industry. The data showed that employee claimants prevailed 46% of the time in arbitration compared to 34% in federal court. The median monetary award amount was slightly higher in arbitration, and the median time from filing to judgment was 16.5 months in arbitration compared to 25 months in litigation. ...

noted that employees prevailed over employers in 63% of employment arbitration cases filed with the American Arbitration Association between 1993 and 1995. To compare, only 14.9% of employees who brought cases to federal district court in 1994 prevailed in their litigation. The average duration of an arbitrated claim was 8.6 months, compared to 2.5 years in litigation. ...

California data shows that when consumers bring arbitration claims against businesses, the consumers prevail in 65.5% of cases that reach a decision. To compare, buyer plaintiffs litigating contract claims in the 75 largest American counties prevailed 61.5% of the time overall, and 60.9% of the time in cases decided by bench trials. When businesses bring arbitration claims against California consumers, the businesses prevail in 77.7% of cases that reach a decision. To compare, seller plaintiffs litigating contract cases in the largest 75 counties prevail 76.8% of the time overall and 78.9% of the time in cases decided by bench trial.

Real facts are so much more interesting than made up facts... don't you think?

The insurance company CANT be sued (successfully)

We don't know that for sure yet ... courts can do strange things. Like if someone is tresspassing and hurts themselves, they can sue you and win [citation].

Just like if someone steals your car and takes friends for a joy-ride, the passengers can sue you when they get hurt in a crash, or if a couple of drunks get into a fight in your washroom, they can sue you because you didn't stop the fight [citation]

And then there are these [citation]

How is this litigable in a US court?

The same way I can spill coffee on myself, sue someone else, and win.

Welcome to the USA. You might want to read one of the best blogs on the subject.

overlawyered.com has been tracking this kind of patent troll for more than a year...

http://overlawyered.com/tag/patent-marking/

Again, no one "invents" anything, we're given God's Divine Inspiration and only through His Will do we have the power to create anything.

That doesn't sound very Texan to me. Or did they cede Marshall to Louisiana?

No, these policies are made by people finding it increasingly difficult to get rid of shitty employees without getting sued. Now days if an employee does something that clearly isn't acceptable, but isn't in some handbook, you get sued for firing them ... so ... they have to make so many rules to cover all the retarded 'little' things people do that can occasionally cause major problems.

Perhaps you're not familiar with the concept of "at will" employment, which covers many states. You can be fired for any reason whatsoever, or no reason at all, except for a few prohibited criteria.

And as for getting sued, well, that's life in the USA. You can be sued for doing anything (or not doing something). Whether they win (and how much it costs you to defend yourself) is a different question. I suggest you read overlawyered, it's a great blog about the excesses of the legal system.

You've gotten a number of replies already but I'll say two things that I didn't see covered:

1. The Prius physically cannot have a manual transmission. It is a "continuously variable" transmission (for efficiency purposes), so there are no discrete gears to shift between. More details here, including cool interactive animations: http://eahart.com/prius/psd/
2. You can still shift an automatic transmission car into neutral and coast to a stop on the side of the road. It just requires driver awareness and presence of mind in an emergency situation. On a related note, deaths due to "sudden acceleration" seem to disproportionately affect older drivers: http://overlawyered.com/2010/03/toyota-acceleration-why-im-skeptical/

The plaintiff is a serial litigant. He's sued just about everyone and his uncle before. While I agree, there needs to be protection for those with less extreme claims, there also needs to be more teeth to punishing those who abuse the system. A nice place to start is to punish those with outlandish or vindictive claims.

Sure, this case is a rarity, but it points out it can be done:
http://overlawyered.com/2006/09/the-burglar-and-the-skylight-another-debunking-that-isnt/

Actually, in the US, you can sue anybody for just about any reason, including giving a malicious hacker or file-sharer internet access. I would not be surprised to hear the RIAA tracked a hub of free music back to a wireless router and accused the owner.

make lying to a judge a crime.

That single crime would take 50% of all US prison capacity.

Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday a Texas federal jury ...

Texas? You mean the state of Marshall, TX where Microsoft (and everyone else who wants to win) holds all of its prosecuting patent cases? I do believe Microsoft may be getting a taste of its own medicine!

Thanks for your response.

I don't mean to do something contrary to the spirit and ethos of SlashDot--but please allow me to apologize. You're entirely correct--my response to your post was really more of a generalized response to a number of posts I'd read that evinced an attitude of

• We're grad students, so
• We're smarter than you industry dolts, so
• We can't be held accountable for safety

That's not the point that you made, and I was unfair in teeing off on your post.

Australian standards?
But your response reminds me--you have been involved in defining safety standards for your lab. The practical effect of U.S. liability law is that, in essence, we don't care about safety standards: we are entirely focused on making sure nobody gets hurt. We cannot use "but my product met the safety standard" as a defense in court: the literature is full of examples of people who did stupid things with well-designed products and collected big damage awards when (surprise!) somebody got hurt. (Tractor-trailer driver pulls out onto a two-lane road, oncoming car cannot stop in time, driver of the car is decapitated. The family sues...the trailer manufacturer. And wins.)

Can you use "we met the safety standards" as an affirmative defense in Australia?

See Bodine v. Enterprise High School. Although an extreme case, this thief did successfully get ~1M dollars in 1984-present-value dollars out of the school for injuries sustained while stealing a floodlight from the school's roof. This case was a poster child for tort reform movements in the 80s and 90s, but I'm not sure the legal situation is much different these days.

It already is. It holds 70-100% of the genetically modified seed market, and is the largest producer of non-GMO seed, not to mention a major player in Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) and of course pesticides and herbicides.

And if they get their way, soon enough that will be 100% of the crops you eat; produced from GMO seed with the "terminator" gene, fertilized with a synthetic fertilizer, and inundated with synthetic pesticides which destroy soil diversity and in fact make it impossible to grow healthy food.

Bullshit. Go read this. *Many* other places have been sued unsuccessfully for serving coffee at similar temperatures. Hell, the fucking Coffee Association of America recommends brewing coffee between 195-200F, and serving between 180-185F (McD's was between 180-190F). The McD's case was only unique in that the stupid woman actually won.

complaints about temp filed more than once

700 complaints were filed over the course of a decade. Okay fine, but when you serve BILLIONS of cups of coffee within that same timeframe that number dwarfs in comparison. This comes to about 1 complaint in every 24 MILLION cups served. Hell, I bet a coffee drinker with no hands would have better odds of not burning themselves than this idiot woman, Stella Liebeck.

I'm assuming this is trolling, but I want to clarify anyway. She wasn't driving. She was in the passenger seat. AND the car was stopped. Poor lid design and hotter than standard temperatures led to quick third degree burns.

Not completely true.

The vehicle was stopped, she put the coffee between her legs (why not a cupholder?), took off the lid, then spilled the coffee, then (by her own admission) sat in the coffee for 90 seconds.

Get the full story. http://stellaawards.com/stella.html
http://overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebeck-and-the-mcdonalds-coffee-case/

There have been frivolous lawsuits, definitely true. The scalding coffee was not. Other coffee vendors around the city were, at the highest temperature, 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than McDonald's coffee.

Ridiculous. Try another source:
http://overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebeck-and-the-mcdonalds-coffee-case/

The National Coffee Association of the USA recommends serving at 180-190 degrees; another article suggests industry standard is 160 to 185 degrees.

According to a Sep. 1, 1994 Wall Street Journal interview with Reed Morgan, Liebecks attorney, he measured the temperature at 18 restaurants and 20 McDonalds, and McDonalds was responsible for nine of the twelve highest temperature readings. Which means that, even before one accounts for conscious or unconscious bias in the measurements, at least three, and probably more (what about the other eleven McDonalds?), restaurants were serving coffee at a higher temperature. And Starbucks serves at a higher temperature today, and faces lawsuits over third-degree burns as a result (Jan. 2, 2004).

http://overlawyered.com/2003/12/chinese-court-orders-virtual-goods-returned-to-gamer/

not blizzard, and not in the US... but it has happened....

• They conveniently omit that the coffee was stored and served at the temperature recommended by the National Coffee Association and is also the default temperature setting used by the largest manufacturer of commercial coffee making machines (scroll down to the bottom).
• Their suggestion that coffee should be served at 135-140 F contradicts recommendations by coffee connoisseurs and the industry (Bunn recomments 155-175 F at serving).
• Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks served coffee at the same temperature as McDonalds. The lawyers used slick wording to mislead people into thinking the lowest temperature in a survey was the standard coffee serving temperature.
• Contrary to your claims, the cups were safe. There were 700 complaints about hot coffee in a decade, but that was across billions of cups served. It works out to a complaint rate of 1 in 24 million. For comparison, the rate of being hit by lighting in the U.S. is 1 in 600,000. The mortality rate in the U.S. from motor vehicles (PDF warning) was 1 in 6580 in 2002. She was 6500x more likely to die from riding in a car than being burned by the coffee. Are cars an unsafe product?
• If you read the court documents, you'll see the lawyers concentrated on the severity of the woman's burns, not the circumstances that led to those burns. This was an appeal to emotion, not a dissemination of facts. Anyone who's boiled water has handled (presumably safely) a substance capable of much more severe burns.

Read the case as told by the lawyers who brought the suit. Then read an alternate viewpoint. Then decide for yourself which side is more in line with the facts.

As an attorney who practices e-discovery, I can tell you that any company which implements the policy described above better hope to god they never find themselves embroiled in multi-state class action litigation. Sooner or later, they will run into a judge who views the destruction of evidence for the express purpose of avoiding liability as a bad thing and they will lose the case.

Really? That goes directly against the SOX rules. No judge says your company needs to keep every single communication your company has ever sent/received in perpetuity.

Storage may be getting cheaper all the time, but it isn't free.

A reasonable document destruction policy, consistently applied, is perfectly legal.

Example: tax records & receipts need to be kept for a certain period of time set by the IRS. After that, you certainly can keep them, but it is perfectly legal to destroy them.

A policy designed to protect the company from litigious plaintiffs will have the opposite result and create huge awards for the plaintiffs.

That's speculation. On the other hand, there have been many ridiculous product liability cases where a 5-year old email talking about a one in a million chance where a complete idiot does something moronic coming back to bite you in the ass.

Go and read www.overlawyered.com for many concrete examples.

If you work for a large company which has been sued in major litigation, you should probably assume that all of your e-mails will be read by an attorney at some point and write your e-mails accordingly.

Or, if the emails no longer exist...

The suit was not legitimate. If it were, do you think companies today would still be serving coffee at the same scalding temperature? No, they would not.

I have looked into this case a lot and I once shared your view. Check out overlawyered.com if you genuinely want more insight. http://overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebeck-and-the-mcdonalds-coffee-case/ It is alluring to think the common sense answer is wrong but in this case it is not. Keep in mind that trial lawyers have a vested interest in making you think this case was legit.

Thanks for your time.

They were, but at what rate?

The case was hugely exaggerated, as I remember it the coffee was somewhere between 120 and 180 degrees Fahrenheit. The optimal serving temperature for coffee is usually above 150 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes suggested to be above 180.

Please use google to find several references to that fact via coffee carafe dealers throughout the world. Please refer to the link below in the section regarding temperature of coffee brewing and serving.

http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71

For a detailed review of the case and more links disputing your "urban legend" classification of this case:

http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebe.html

Unfortunately, the lawyers won over the ignorant masses in this case, and now we reap the consequences. When the case went to trial, the first question I asked was, "What temp was the coffee?". When I heard 170degrees, I choffed. I had worked at a few coffee shops in the past and knew that coffee is served around this temperature at most places. It allows the coffee to be hot even to stay warm until it is finished, including adding milk, sugar, and possibly some drive time to it's destination.

The urban legend is that this case is legitimate. Trial lawyers will love you for helping them obliterate common sense. Read some insights at http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebe.html

You should really check out Overlawyered's take on the case.

http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban-legends-and-stella-liebe.html

The case truly is ridiculous.

Did your source not seem reputable enough to link?

"National Coffee Association" my achin' ass. Anyone claiming no liquid that won't burn your skin is worth putting in your mouth is, by definition, a tit.

another article suggests industry standard is 160 to 185 degrees...in the early 1990's home coffeemakers only brewed up to 130-140 degrees...Stella Liebeck suffered terrible third-degree burns

Whether or not you have teflon lips that allow you to drink liquids at the "expert-recommended" just-shy-of-boiling, only an idiot would suggest McDonald's coffee and proper brew temperature have anything to do with each other.

McDonald's took responsibility when one of its employees spilled coffee on a customer and settled cases of burns from such spills

Either this guy is the clumsiest burger-flipper in world history, or the article's authors have an axe to grind.

Way back when the MS is a Monopoly ruling first came out in late '99 I put together a site called MS-Monopoly.com. It was covered by /. but damned if I can find the story on /. now but here's a Linux Today blurb.

I'd used the well known Monopoly game board as the basis for our site, with a different company that MS had bought for each square. The Community Chest and Chance cards were contributed by users. Satire is meant to be protected by copyright law, at least here in Canada. Anyway, we got slashdotted not once but twice, Yahoo site of the day, we were in Mac Addict, a whole bunch of portals, etc. Basically we were getting tonnes of traffic... then came the letters from Hasbro.

Long story short, I didn't own the domain name and the guy who did got cold feet after we received the fourth letter. I was holding out for a registered letter, but it wasn't my neck. We'd checked with lawyers and while we had a case fighting a case, even one your most likely going to win, gets expensive in a hurry. We reluctantly closed up shop.

Interestingly enough before we got shut down we heard from a fellow who produced his own version of Monopoly. According to him the game itself is in the public domain because it was a popular game long before it became a Hasbro product. He shipped us one of his board games and gave us permission to copy it for our site, but by that time we had moved on to other things.

To the folks making Facebook apps, I wish you luck. Fighting a Hasbro will require deep pockets and in court nothing is 100%. Yes, if you win you can sue for costs... but you can't be sure you'll win.

ms-monopoly.com lives on... as a advert site. Google it though and you'll still find copies of the site (minus a working backend) and references around, I guess people like a good joke.. In the end it had to end, but I guess that's life.

- The Jester, Department of Jest

Not exactly.

1) "Big tobacco" arranged a deal where they donate X billion dollars and promote an anti-smoking campaign, and in exchange they would be protected against future lawsuits.

2 & 3) To my knowledge, a lawsuit has never been won against either fast food or guns. I believe there are now Federal protections in place for gun manufacturers.

Well it's usually nearby Marshall Texas that patent cases are filed in. They have very patent friendly (and expedient) courts there. http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/01/marshall_texas _patent_central.html

An Insightful Guardian columnist has finally come out and said what literate people have known all along. J.K. Rowling's writing is RUBBISH.

... I don't think I'm going out on a limb here. Of course, if she has turned into a first-class writer with her forthcoming Potter book, I will happily, no, joyously, eat my words.

But until then, we have to swallow hers. ...

... Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

(If you find that revelation shocking, just don't ask about Dan Brown, ok?)

Predictably, a chorus of twit commenters felt driven to argue that the Potter Phenomenon's sheer Scale and Success makes it self-evidently Valuable to Society (much like B. Gates must be an Important and Clever Person because he's Really Rich.) Uh-uh. Crappy writing is not good for anyone, just like crappy food (this may also come as a surprise to some), and on this point I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Lezard:

Children exposed to this kind of writing aren't learning anything new about words, or being stretched in any way; as Harold Bloom said, they're not going to be inspired to go off and read the Alice books, or any other enduring classic.

All the Potter franchise does, like 99% of TV and Hollywood output, is entrench the hold of pointless and mediocre culture. The only thing unusual this time, is it's Made in Britain.

You call this "not frivolous"? The coffee wasn't just hot, it was REALLY hot, so people who spill it on themselves are entitled to lots of money?

When I make coffee at home, I use BOILING water, and if I spilled it on myself, I'd feel like a douche -- because that's what I would be.

For slightly more intelligent link than the one you provided, try http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban_legends_ and_stella_liebe.html

One of the great blights (IMHO) of American society is the decay of personal reponsibility. "It's not my fault, they should have told me the hot coffee was hot!". This slide was led (again IMHO) by the Democratic leaders of the 80s & 90s, who insisted that crime and other problems were the failure of the system, the failure of the society - individuals were not to blame. The outcome of this is an increase in frivolous lawsuits. Another problem seems to be an increase in "syndromes", where people blame hastily invented, acronymic illnesses or syndromes for the problems cause by poor parenting or minor behavioral deviations. "Oh, you'll have to make special allowances for my son. He's got FCLBMS (Food Consumption Leading to Bowel Movement Syndrome)". People do weird things, theres no need to create a disease for every little tick. I do not mean to discount or diminish actual mental health issues like ADHD, but hey folks, life is tough, get over it.
Sony is just showing what happens when this lack of responsibility reaches the boardroom. They're the first, they won't be the last.

There's nothing a good lawsuit can't fix!

Maybe you could find a suit based on a stupider premise,

If I wanted to try, I might start here.

Interesting that you take such exception to my comment. I could run a tally of outrageous fees charged by your profession, but I'll simply refer you to overlawyered.com where they do a great job.

I might also suggest we return to the Roman system where advocates couldn't charge fees but could only receive gifts after the fact. Until Claudius came along and screwed things up. Or a "loser pays" system would certainly free up the courts.

I don't dislike lawyers. Had dinner with a lawyer last week, in fact. I dislike what your profession has become and so should you.

No, it's to satisfy current the quasi-precedent in product liability the lawyers have been able to secure from mouth-breathing juries. It's only "enough" to head off a lawsuit until a lawyer can convince the *next* jury that it isn't enough. Remember, the infamous McDonald's coffee cup had a warning label! But the jury decided it wasn't prominent enough. So now you're open to being sued if someone fails to read a warning because that warning was buried under too many other warnings, as happened in a Vioxx case. But then, it's always possible to second-guess the order of the warnings. So really, there's no reliable way -- as in a banana republic -- to protect yourself from prosecution.

(Did you know that juries only get on Oprah if they find for the plaintiff?)

Oh, and to all of you who started caring about this issue only when Nintendo -- rather than a faceless greedy corporation -- got sued over Wiimotes: fuck you.

What regulation? I'm unaware of any government agency that regulates the temperature at which restaurants can serve coffee. The National Coffee Ass'n of the USA suggests serving coffee at 180-195 degrees.

Exactly how hot do you think this coffee was? You can pour boiling water over your arm and it won't cause 3rd degree burns in well under a second. A person can drink 180 degree coffee 'fairly soon' (within about 5-10 minutes) of being served it, as long as they don't put it into a thermos or anything.

There's an article debunking your view here:

http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban_legends_ and_stella_liebe.html

You've also obviously never burned the roof of your mouth on a pizza.

Despite the case's standing in popular culture, it really didn't go down like that. Though the woman was found partly responsible, the coffee was indeed defective as argued.

This, listed as a reference from the Wikipedia site, suggests that the case is indeed as ridiculous as it sounds at face value.

As an irrelevant aside, when I worked at Wendys in high school, the tap water could get up to around 170 degrees, which isn't much cooler than the allegedly too-hot temperature for coffee.

And Starbucks serves at a higher temperature today, and faces lawsuits over third-degree burns as a result (Jan. 2, 2004)

You my friend are the annnoying one here. She did NOT sue for medical expenses. Check for yourself:

http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban_legends_ and_stella_liebe.html

I was in Albuquerque at the time, actually have eaten at that McDonnalds. Being a know-it-all without checking facts...

What a beautiful coup for a loser-pays system! When it comes to matters of frivolity these video game suits are in the top five, and imagine all the money ambulance chasing lawyers wouldn't make under this kind of legal climate. How perfect that a state is the original losing plaintiff! I hope that this judge has drawn an effective line in the sand for these whiny bastards. IANAL; does this constitute a precident?