Chip Rowe's essays
Today, while researching zines for the book I'm writing about the DIY movement, I came across the website of an old pal, Chip Rowe. (In the late 80s and early 90s I swapped a subscription to bOING bOING for a subscription to his zine, Chip's Closet Cleaner).
Chip's website has a lot of his old essays, which are great fun to read. One, called "Don't Blame Me!" has examples of dumb lawsuits. Excerpt:
Chip Rowe's essaysThese days people look for warning labels on everything. When one guy failed to negotiate a milkshake and his steering wheel and crashed his car, he sued McDonald's. Where was the label on the shake, he asked, warning him not to slurp and drive? A student who fell from a window while mooning passersby sued the university because it hadn't posted a caution sign. (Here's my suggestion: "NO ASSES BEYOND THIS POINT.") A bowler who slipped on popcorn sued the alley for $50,000 for not having "watch-for- kernals-on-the-floor" warnings — which could have been placed besides the "don't-drop-the-ball-on-your-foot" sign.
I kid you not: One guy who munched into a Peanut M&M that didn't have a peanut sued the candymaker because he bit his lip. A party guest who tripped over a dog in a kitchen sued the dog's owner for failing to inform him that he would be walking in the house "at his own risk." An elderly woman who injured her hands while trying to turn on the lights demanded the maker of the Clapper give her $50,000. I applaud her ingenuity.
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Mark, I'm flipping out over the cover thumbnail you posted. Is there an image archive of old covers? I am dying to see it writ large!
I couldn't find a larger image. This was the biggest that Google Image Search had to offer.
a million lawyers.... a million.
A customer once came into my shop and told me that there should be some kind of warning on the sidewalk, because she almost fell on her face tripping over the unusually high curbs.
I didn't really know what to say to that, but imagined that if I had tripped on a curb of ANY height, my response would have been to glance around to see if anyone was watching, and think to myself what a clumsy oaf I am. I would NOT look for someone else to blame. I think there might be a fundamental divide between people who blame others and those who blame themselves for unfortunate accidents.
I think most of those "warning label" lawsuits with actual injury are acts of desperation as a result of little to no health insurance.
Either that, or are a symptom of the widening class divide. You have billions? Great. I stubbed my toe, give me some. I'm going to be having DINNER tonight!
I'd agree with you there Ghede. In New Zealand everyone in the country (even visiting foreigners) are covered for medical expenses as a result of injury. The trade-off is that people are not allowed to sue following an accident. Also, we have free public healthcare which I would expect greatly reduces the desire/need to sue in the first place.
I could be wrong, but doesn't Britain make the loser of a suit responsible for the legal bills of the winner?
Possibly if the bill were required to be divided among client and lawyer in the same proportion any winnings would have been...
Scratch an allegedly frivolous lawsuit, find an interesting case: the infamous McDonald's coffee suit is regularly trotted out when it's time to bash the legal system or the people who abuse it, but the details are rather interesting.
Wait until the facts are in before jumping on this pseudo-populist bandwagon, folks.
For each case of a ridiculous lawsuit, and there are plenty, there is an equal case of a badly behaving corporation, or someone seriously injured under weird circumstances.
GHEDE: Some, possibly, but I personally know people who look for someone to sue... with a contingency lawyer, it costs them nothing, and they just look on it as free money... but it's also because they "deserve to be compensated".
I really don't understand the mindset, but I have seen it, a lot more often than I would have believed.
Well, there goes another nugget of hope for humanity. I have about 206 nuggets left before I flip out.
" #8 posted by iopha:
Scratch an allegedly frivolous lawsuit, find an interesting case: the infamous McDonald's coffee suit is regularly trotted out when it's time to bash the legal system or the people who abuse it, but the details are rather interesting. "
Yeah--the last time this came up, someone pointed out that McDonalds was ACTUALLY SELLING COFFEE AS HOT AS IT COMES OUT OF A COFFEE POT!! Apparently, that's some sort of a crime, in some people's mind.
Or did you have some other particular factoid in mind?
I still have my issues of Chip's zine - right next to my issues of Ben is Dead, Craphound, Mystery Date, Thrift Score and Stayfree! ;-)
Yay for Chip's Closet Cleaner! Such a great 'zine. Of course, Chip also edited the Book Of 'Zines (1997), which included an interview with our own Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, and reprints of two fun pieces from the bOING bOING print 'zine: an interview I did with a text telephone relay agent, and also Bill "Schwa" Barker's terrific "Emergency Personal Broadcast TV."
" #12 posted by M:
Or did you have some other particular factoid in mind? "
Maybe that they were serving it much hotter than anybody else -- 180 - 190 degrees, per corporate policy, when other restaurants typically served it at 150 - 160. A Mr. Coffee home machine holds it around 130 - 140. McDonald's coffee was so hot that under FDA guidelines it was not fit for human consumption. At 185 degrees, coffee will cause third degree burns in under 10 seconds. At 160 degrees, it would take a full minute.
Contrary to what you may have heard, the woman was not driving her car. She was a passenger, and her son stopped the car while she pried off the lid to add sugar and cream.
She suffered third degree burns to her crotch, spent 8 days in the hospital, and had several skin grafts.
Her medical bills were $11,000. She asked McDonald's for $20,000. They offered her $800 -- a fraction of her medical bills. So she sued.
At trial, McDonald's said the hundreds of people who'd been badly burned were statistically trivial, and that they still had no intention of reducing the serving temperature of their coffee.
So the jury awarded $160,000 in compensatory damages, and $2.7 million in punitive damges. Those punitive damages were then reduced by the trial judge to $480,000, or 3x compensatory.
At the time, McDonald's was selling $1.3 million of coffee per day.
People -- and corporations -- must be held accountable. We can do that through criminal law, or we can do it in a civil court. But if a civil court decides to punish McDonald's for callous disregard for customer safety, is $480,000 enough? Would they even feel it? Their market cap was about $15 billion in 1994.
Capping punitive damages is one way our government has been protecting and promoting giant corporations, rather than letting them succeed or fail in the marketplace.
Awesome. I love articles that take court cases out of context so that they sound absolutely ridiculous. I can't wait until we gut all consumer protections that the law has to offer so we can get back to the good old days where kids who eat lead paint should have known better. I mean, it's paint, who doesn't know not to eat paint?
No one likes lawyers, until they need one.
@MXJOHNSON
Please, coffee we make here is served freshly made and boiling hot. I have a hard time believing you would not notice how hot the coffee is when you're holding the cup. If you take that cup along in a moving car, you have only yourself to blame.
@16
Frankly, those parents should be sued for having lead paint in reach of their children. That's just wrong.
Tin can makers should be sued for allowing their products to be filled with both yummy and poisonous contents.
Their school should be sued for not better teaching them not to eat lead paint.
MisterShrubber:
You would also have to assume that anyone ordering coffee at the drive-thru was planning to carry it in a moving vehicle. Fault back to you.
The stupid thing about the McD lawsuit is that McD would have been OK if they put a small notice with 'Caution: Hot' on the side of the cup. This is the solution to the problem that McD have used.
Seriously, does anyone read the side of a cup? Would the woman have seen the message and thought, "Well, since this is in fact hot coffee, I won't open it on my lap"? Does being told that coffee is hot make people behave differently?
Also, who gets coffee at 130-140 degrees F? It comes out the machine just off boiling, and that's the way it's served everywhere I know (including non-McD burger chains). The only way to get it that cold is to make the customer wait 10 minutes, which seems unlikely in a fast-food restaurant. That supposed fact is just plain wrong.
Maybe I should patent a condenser attachment to go on to coffee machines and reduce the temperature of fresh-brewed coffee. I could sell it to lawsuit-fearing resytaurants and make a mint! Oh wait - too late. Does a Boing Boing comment page count as putting my idea in the public domain.
The whole "frivolous lawsuits" thing is propaganda from companies that want to limit their damages from non-frivolous lawsuits, and distract public attention from the damage their own lawyers do.
Not that these aren't frivolous lawsuits, but I'm suspicious of what causes them to be hyped in the first place.
Ha ha ha ha we all love stories about frivolous lawsuits, but the people who push them are usually big business republican types who want their corporate buddies to get away with (shall I say it?) murder. You are correct, #8: Fake populist is what it is.
What everyone backing McDonalds ignores is that McDonalds - including that specific location - had been warned by the health department to turn the temperature down on their coffee makers several times. They had been told specifically that it was a serious injury waiting to happen, and refused to turn it down. When taken to court, they chided the defendant and jury, saying it doesn't matter, people like hot coffee.
If a government agency tasked with protecting the citizens warns a corporation that a given activity is dangerous, that corporation refuses to correct it's activity, and someone is seriously injured, would you support a penalty being levied against that corporation? Because that is exactly what happened in the infamous "McDonalds Coffee" case.
I already knew that this was going to dissolve into a discussion of McD's hot coffee, but reading all these comments about specific temperatures made me realize what I had to do.
I had just now made a fresh cup of hot coffee in my work's drip pot (Black&Decker SmartBrew -- gross, I use a Bialetti Moka at home). The pot, fresh made, had been sitting on the hot plate for under a minute. I ALSO happen to have a temperature probe that plugs into my computer (I make educational science software).
Result? My fresh, hot, black coffee is exactly 147.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now in terms of how proper coffee should be brewed, this is very low I know (drip coffee undercooks coffee), but in terms of how hot it should be served, this is exactly right. My tongue wouldn't want it any hotter. (Well, maybe 5 degrees hotter would be a little better.)
@MrShrubber: Please, coffee we make here is served freshly made and boiling hot.
I doubt that, and if it were true, I wouldn't want to drink at your establishment. No one brews coffee "boiling hot." Even espressos, which are cooked hottest, are cooked at about 190 degrees.
McD's was keeping coffee much too hot in order to keep the coffee hotter longer, so that it wouldn't need to brew fresh pots as often. The temperature was too high for consumption under FDA guidelines. What more needs to be said?
Just examples of people not taking responsibility for their own actions!
"Please, coffee we make here is served freshly made and boiling hot."
BS on both of these claims.
I believe McD had also done studies which demonstrated that people would be more satisfied with low quality coffee if it were served hotter. So yeah, they had extensively documented that they were doing it on purpose to save money; that must have looked bad during the trial. I believe they changed their ways after the judgment, and McD's around here brag about their 100% arabica blend.
Still, if the victim had had guaranteed health care, would she have bothered to sue?
I think there is a sadder side to this that relates to the healthcare debate in this country. People get injured, are uninsured or underinsured and look at foregoing care for their injuries or dealing with large and ongoing bills.
Someone approaches them and says I have a way you can pay for that care. You get you bills paid, I get a little and it is just a drop in the bucket to the corporation. I think that becomes an easy decision for some people.
'#17 posted by AnoniMouse, August 19, 2009 1:58 AM
No one likes lawyers, until they need one. "
and no one needs a lawyer until they have been attacked by someone low enough to hire one.
@ MrShrubber
1. If you're serving coffee beyond 175 degrees, you're ruining the flavor, burning mouths, and putting customers at risk for third degree burns and scarring.
I'm not saying I don't believe you when you claim to serve coffee at near-boiling temperatures. Similarly, some folks manufacture meth in their garages. The fact that more than one person engages in these practices doesn't mean it's safe or reasonable.
2. She wasn't "in a moving car." Did you not read my post? In the future, I'd appreciate it if you read my posts before arguiing with them.
Mark, thanks for the shout-out. It's predictable that the discussion quickly devolved into a debate over the infamous McDonald's coffee case, which my essay doesn't mention. The larger point is that people tend to avoid taking the blame for anything (dude, my bad!), which is reflected in small part in dubious lawsuits, however you want to define them. Many people will also recognize this tendency among their siblings. -- Chip Rowe