Lady wants to sue mall for falling into fountain while texting

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by August

Don't act like you actually have something better to do.

Of course I do. It's 0558 and I just got off work but I'm not tired yet. There's all kinds of important stuff I need to be doing like......um....well nothing at the moment, but I'm sure something will come up. And there's always more Allied shipping to be sunk in the North Atlantic. I should probably get that done soon. Lives hang in the balance.

You claimed that MD expects it's customers to wait until they get to their destination before consuming their products. As i pointed out, and you've subsequently admitted, that just isn't true.

What I pointed out is that McDonalds expects its customers to do whatever they want. Customers, on the other hand, expect McDonalds to provide them with desireable products that can be used when and where they please. That does not imply that McDonlads has a responsibility to make sure that it is impossible for people to misuse their products in a manner harmful to themselves, especially when they provide a warning on a product that is already known to be hazardous by its nature.

Well I dunno, because their customers are human beings and human beings make mistakes? Look what banking on inhuman perfection got them. A big fat lawsuit.

That's actually kind of my point. McDonalds is made of human beings as well. They can't just assume responsibility for every possible action that everyone who asks them for a certain product could take. They provide a product for a reasonable price at a standard that will keep customers coming back. It's difficult for them to do much else on a large scale because the nature of their role is to satisfy demand. In other words, they got to be where they are now by satisfying people. It is hardly logical to assume that they should then be responsible for the choices of others, especially when those choices form the foundation of their success.

The same assumption you make has destroyed a lot of well-intentioned and productive businesses that never did anything wrong. Even when they were within total compliance of all regulatory standards, and then sought to make amends when they made mistakes, they were still aniihilated by lawsuits.

You've been fooled by the same tactics that lawyers use to sway juries in cases like this. Sympathies for the "innocent" victims are played upon to achieve settlements; a natural result, considering that both the lawyers and the victims benefit form this, and that the people who make these decisions are people, whereas corporations are assumed to be faceless entities. To be more accurate, corporations are assumed to be faceless entities with no morals and a great deal of money by the general populace.

Why do we have to create a single benchmark for everything? What do cell phones have to do with selling scalding hot liquid to grandmothers in a flimsy styrofoam cup? Talk about silly.

That's actually the basis of our legal system. Every action that anyone could possibly be expected to undertake is codified in our extremely complex and completely incomprehensible laws. Minus, of course, the things that nobody has considered yet. That's why there is an entire wing of the congressional library dedicated to law, and also why no single person could ever understand it.

What we call law is essentially our best attempt at reducing the various actions people might take into a few basic moral categories; right from wrong, just from unjust, beneficial from harmful.

Naturally, there is a lot of controversey over what fits these categories. Sometimes, what is defined as the above is incorrect. Other times, it is defined by manipulation and human nature.

No it wouldn't. What do you have against product safety?

Nothing, and successful companies don't, either. Bad product make for bad business. These problems take care of themselves. I made the case above, but it bears repeating. Companies cannot accept full liability for everything they ever did or did not do. If they did so, they'd be like the feel-good liberals who excel at bankrupting entire states despite their ability to requisition resources on a whim.

Well my wife for one. Our neighbors for another and none are doing it for the few cents they're beginning to charge for plastic bags at the supermarket, but rather because we're tired of you throw away people littering up the environment and don't want to contribute to it even indirectly.

That's two households, but you're still negative 200-something million, and I'm being generous by assuming that 150 million households adopt the same practice. Yours is a relatively wealthy household, and it has the luxury of adopting such a measure. I could afford it if I made a few cuts, but I choose not to because I believe my charitable contributions are suffiicient and I'm not about to pay $5.00 for a re-usable bag that I have to drag back and forth between the house and the store. More relevantly, however, I don't believe that the production of plastic bags or the disposal of them is significantly contributiing to the harm of the environment. You don't buy that junk, either, if I recall. Didn't you once say something about burning leaves or tires or something to celebrate Earth Day? I'm not judging you for that; Actually, I recall saying something similar in the same thread.

Dude. People are not going to give up their morning coffee just because it's served in a cup that costs a few pennies more than it did before.

Actually, they will. Even if they don't forego their coffee entirely, they are more likely to get it from somplace else. Ask yourself this; If you knew that McDonalds cofee was more expensive than that of Burger King or whatever, which one would you choose? You don't care about the quality of their cups or whatever. All you know is that one place has cheaper coffee.

Me either. You're actually trying to say that MD would actually give up selling coffee if they weren't allowed to sell coffee in the cheapest possible container. That is hard to believe...

Why is it hard to believe? Most companies sell drinks of all kinds in the cheapest possible containers. They don't do that just because of the profit margin, they do it because the profit margin is very narrow as it is. This is also why McDonalds is still allowed to sell coffee in the same cups that burned Ms. Liebeck. It's not a matter of consumer safety, it's a matter of the way lawyers can argue the vagaries of civil law.

If McDonalds were required to produce idiot-proof cups, they'd have quit selling the product. It simply isn't viable to sell disposable spill-proof containers for such a product at a price that recoups the investment; or not yet at least. Admittedly, QT has actually made this work to some degree, but only with the largest cups and only with soft drinks, which are much less expensive to prepare than coffee.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Well my wife for one. Our neighbors for another and none are doing it for the few cents they're beginning to charge for plastic bags at the supermarket, but rather because we're tired of you throw away people littering up the environment and don't want to contribute to it even indirectly.

I'm on my way to band practice this afternoon. I'll take my backpack because I plan to do a little grocery shopping on the way home. If I had a car I'd take a bigger bag.

My reasons are a liitle more selfish, though. I hate dealing with disposable bags.

[Rockstar]

The video on security cameras are made public to warn and inform the public against certain crimes or suspected criminals. Everyone within the bounds of that system still has a reasonable expectation of privacy unless that security system captured something it was intended to guard against.

Trained and payed personnel making public a video which only serves to cause further embarrassment is unprofessional and outside the scope and purpose of their job description and video system. I say hang'em.

Unless of course you wouldn't mind seeing yourself embarrassed without compensation on some Funniest Home Video show picking your arse in the mall too.

[Skybird]

A day of miracle and wonder: I agree with Rockstar on something.

[Rockstar]

Surely another sign the end of the world is near