Ripsnort,
Yes, coffee is hot. She knew that and did not intentonally spill the coffee on herself.
Coffee should not be so hot that it causes 3rd degree burns after less than 1 second of contact with human skin. It is forseeable that people will accidentally spill coffee onthemselfs. Hell, I know I've accidentally spilled drinks on myself, my dad even had a cup of gas station coffee go from the dashboard to his lap, spilling of course, while driving down the freeway. Now, that gas station had its coffee at a hot tempature, he said it hurt, but not at a dangerous tempature. The issue isn't whether or not coffe should be hot, it is whether or not it should be dangerously hot. The crux of the matter is that McDonald's knew their coffe was too hot. They had received hundereds of complaints about injuries caused by it. The fix for the problem was both easy and cheap, just lower the tempature. It was not something expensive and unreasonable to expect McDonald's to do to make their product a little bit safer for their customers.
Coffee is not intended to be spilled and cars are not intended to be crashed, but it is reasonable to assume that both will happen. We expect auto manufacturers to make their products safer in the event of a crash, why should it be unreasonable for McDonald's to make sure their coffee is not dangerous when spilled? McDonald's frankly has it easy compared to Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, ect, ect, who must spend millions of dollars devloping saftey systems. McDonald's could simply have revised the rules in their book to have coffee heated to 165 degrees instead of 180 degrees.
-lynx-,
Agreeing to disagree seems reasonable to me.