How much is appropriate for a Pun Jar donation, for a “pun by reference”? Is there a discount for not actually making y’all splorfle your coffee on this particular site’s screen?
I wonder if this picture is based on something i.e movie or painting
To play a game of chess simply to draw it in a picture is (to me) above and beyond!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who tried to figure out their game. I’d say more but I don’t have a chess board at hand to recreate it and ponder over it.
My “best” reading of the position:
white Kg1 Qb2 Rb1 c6 Bg2 Nf3 Pa3 d3 f2 g3 h2
(captured B N 3P)
black Kg8 Qd8 Re8 e7 Bb7 Pa6 c7 d4 f7 g7 h6
(captred B 2N 2P).
It’s likely the immediate preceding move was Rx46 (M).
Later on: yes. It’s black’s move and that rook seems dangling out there undefended, easy prey for the bishop. White enjoys only a mild advantage in material, but Phix seems much more confident.
The difficult man to identify is that on b7; it’s black and looks like a pawn or bishop (more like a bishop), but the captured black men do not seem to include a knight, It could be the “missing” knight which would explain why theobvious Bxc6 (R) isn’t immediate.
I’m pretty sure both sides have lost at least one knight (they may be hard hard to spot if not in profile). Phix has one left, visible near her king; last night I could have told you, when I had a pile of everything not accounted for on the board.
For what it’s worth, Pawn page 13 (two pages after the link above) is what got me formally started in cartooning and art studies. I had been working a lot with pencils professionally, and that page stood out because of the layout and construction. I could see how it worked and wanted to do that. So, I am!
Despite my best efforts, I can’t figure out who will win. Nudge’s style of play is a bit different that what I expected based on her habit of not thinking things through.
epic picture!
love the expressions
amazing background – i know its probably just rocks but to me the resemble lightning as though it was a battle between nudge and phix for dominion over the coffee shop
Tina was right – pastries so good the inspired a war! or a game of chess.
PAUL!!!
I love it!!
This is the artwork I commissioned Paul to do for me at the end of June. He did a great job and I can’t wait to get my hands on the original!!
Thank you for all the love/hate.
The commission is pretty much as you see here with Phix/Nudge playing chess as Tina waits on them with a nervous toothy grin. I left the rest of the details up to Paul and I must say that he did an outstanding job. No, it was not cheap! Save your pennies, nickels, dimes, etc… and someday you can have a commission of your very own!
Paul did one of me and Acacia sharing coffee when I was in the desert in ’09. I really like how it turned out. He does really awesome work and turns things around fairly fast — even for someone putting out a daily web comic. Buying the original comic art is nice, but having a one of a kind to your specifications original is something else
This picture is so full of Win – not sure if the wicked grin is for Tina, or ’cause she has advantage in the game – or just in general, ’cause she IS off-duty….
Nudge looks nervous, Phix looks confident and self-possessed. It’s very in character for both of them. The board is hard to read; neither seems to have a strong material advantage.
It’s difficult to make out the chess pieces, but if I were Nudge, I’d move either the queen to threaten Phix’s rook, or advance a pawn. Depending on player skill, it’s either mid-game or endgame.
Given that she’s behind Nudge (putting Nudge to her right, more or less), but has her head turned left, i’d have to say that, if she’s not looking at Tins, she’s looking at something off-panel to the right…
Also, little details I love, see something new each time I look. Horse Shoe on Nudge for instance. Tina’s keeping relatively cool considering the situation however.
I really like this one a lot! I guess it helps that two of my favorite characters are playing chess!(Not to mention my favorite barista bringing the java.) Thank you Joe Minotaur for commissioning this and giving Paul the idea; he did an awesome job.
Probably six to eight weeks, depending on conditions. She might be able to be reset, if she hasn’t done a lot of physical work. I wonder if Hephaestus is her farrier?
Of course, that McDonalds suit has been very badly reported. They served that coffee so hot that she received second and third degree scalds on her legs. Also, she was not – as so many claim – driving and juggling the coffee cup – she was the passenger…
And the huge award was all the first jury’s idea – she was basically suing for medical costs and a bit over for pain and sufering.
From what I hear from others (being a non-coffee drinker) is the reason to get McDonalds coffee is that it’s STILL HOT by the time you get to work. Besides, I can’t imagine anyone with half a brain opening a container of liquid (particularly a scalding hot one) in a moving car. Maybe she didn’t realize when she ordered HOT COFFEE that it was…well…hot?
Maybe everyone who hears about (and repeats, in the human fashion) the suit focuses on the reward one person received and not on the issue that coffee was being served at dangerously high temperatures at thousands of restaurants.
Very few of us are golems with high ethical standards. If human corporations faced the liability that demon corporations do, we wouldn’t have to find monetary ways to make them feel responsible.
…
Now I have in my head the image of a demonic Ronald McDonald screaming I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO HURT ANYONE
Did Dietzel set you guys up for this conversation?
my roommate did a report on that case in college, he found out some other stuff too… the amount that was originally requested was about 4 times the value that she actually got, the judge basically said the “I’m NOT going to give you bazillions of buck’s for being stupid… HOWEVER, i AM going to punish Mcd’s for doing it, so you’ll get a big payout, but not as big as you wanted though.” One of his reasons was that they had settled out-of-court about a dozen times previously, for the EXACT same thing, and that she was the first to say “BS on that!, I’m taking this all the way!” another thing was that they had some chemical analysis’s done on the coffee and found that after about only 30 minutes at the temp they were required to make it (180f i think it?), that it decomposes (or whatever they call it in chemistry) into it’s basic chemical compounds and that it could no longer be called “coffee” when it got served, yet the same coffee sits in the pot for a whole lot longer than 30 minutes (it usually got changed about 3 times during a shift of 8 HOURS), because it was easier and less costly to just leave it than it was to dump it out and make new every 20-25 minutes even if nobody bought any! another thing was they had to redesign the cup labels so that you can turn the cup in any direction and still see a warning label, before it was in only a few places and if you held it “juuust right” you could claim “but i didn’t SEE any warning officer”…
On February 27, 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, ordered a 49-cent cup of coffee from the drive-through window of a local McDonald’s restaurant. Liebeck was in the passenger’s seat of her Ford Probe, and her nephew Chris parked the car so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee. Liebeck placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap. Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants; they absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks, and groin. Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (9 kg, nearly 20% of her body weight), reducing her down to 83 pounds (38 kg). Two years of medical treatment followed.
Settlement offers
Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000 to cover her actual and anticipated expenses. Her past medical expenses were $10,500; her anticipated future medical expenses were approximately $2,500; and her loss of income was approximately $5,000 for a total of approximately $18,000. Instead, the company offered only $800. When McDonald’s refused to raise its offer, Liebeck retained Texas attorney Reed Morgan. Morgan filed suit in New Mexico District Court accusing McDonald’s of “gross negligence” for selling coffee that was “unreasonably dangerous” and “defectively manufactured”. McDonald’s refused Morgan’s offer to settle for $90,000. Morgan offered to settle for $300,000, and a mediator suggested $225,000 just before trial, but McDonald’s refused these final pre-trial attempts to settle.
Trial and verdict
The trial took place from August 8–17, 1994, before Judge Robert H. Scott. During the case, Liebeck’s attorneys discovered that McDonald’s required franchisees to serve coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C). At that temperature, the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds. Stella Liebeck’s attorney argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 °F (60 °C), and that a number of other establishments served coffee at a substantially lower temperature than McDonald’s. Liebeck’s lawyers presented the jury with evidence that 180 °F (82 °C) coffee like that McDonald’s served may produce third-degree burns (where skin grafting is necessary) in about 12 to 15 seconds. Lowering the temperature to 160 °F (71 °C) would increase the time for the coffee to produce such a burn to 20 seconds. (A British court later rejected this argument as scientifically false finding that 149 °F (65 °C) liquid could cause deep tissue damage in only two seconds.) Liebeck’s attorneys argued that these extra seconds could provide adequate time to remove the coffee from exposed skin, thereby preventing many burns. McDonald’s claimed that the reason for serving such hot coffee in its drive-through windows was that those who purchased the coffee typically were commuters who wanted to drive a distance with the coffee; the high initial temperature would keep the coffee hot during the trip. McDonalds research showed customers intend to consume the coffee while driving to their destination.
Other documents obtained from McDonald’s showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald’s coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000. McDonald’s quality control manager, Christopher Appleton, testified that this number of injuries was insufficient to cause the company to evaluate its practices. He argued that all foods hotter than 130 °F (54 °C) constituted a burn hazard, and that restaurants had more pressing dangers to warn about. The plaintiffs argued that Appleton conceded that McDonald’s coffee would burn the mouth and throat if consumed when served.
A twelve-person jury reached its verdict on August 18, 1994. Applying the principles of comparative negligence, the jury found that McDonald’s was 80% responsible for the incident and Liebeck was 20% at fault. Though there was a warning on the coffee cup, the jury decided that the warning was neither large enough nor sufficient. They awarded Liebeck US$200,000 in compensatory damages, which was then reduced by 20% to $160,000. In addition, they awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages. The jurors apparently arrived at this figure from Morgan’s suggestion to penalize McDonald’s for one or two days’ worth of coffee revenues, which were about $1.35 million per day. The judge reduced punitive damages to $480,000, three times the compensatory amount, for a total of $640,000. The decision was appealed by both McDonald’s and Liebeck in December 1994, but the parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount less than $600,000
(Emphases added.)
So, the car was parked, not moving, and she originally wanted $20,000, which was basically her expenses.
Indeed, there were three offers of settlements – but they were quite reasonable amounts, from her side, and McDonald’s turned them down. (I like the chutzpah of offering $800 to someone who had $1o,500 in out-of-pocket medical expenses already and was going to run up more…)
The demands for successively larger amounts of money each time seem eminently logical to me – (A) Legal fees when you’re suing someone as big as McD’s ain’t cheap, and very likely she and her family were getting more and more pissed at being blown off.
Like US automakers in more than a few cases, McDonald’s knew of the hazard, but figured that it would be cheaper to settle for small amounts than to actually do something because most people wouldn’t sue someone who could afford the kind of lawyers they could.
Also note that McDonald’s tried to shift the emphasis to “Well, everybody knows it’ll burn your mouth,” away from “If you spill this on your legs it will cause third-degree burns.”
And, while she (and her attorneys) appealed the reduction of the verdict, i likely would have, too – if a few million bucks fall into my lap, i’d try to hang onto it, tool.
And the warning labels McD’s were ordered to put on their coffee basically said “We are serving this stuff way too hot to safely drink, but since we’re warning you, if you drink it, we’ll try not to pay your medical bills.”
I think they re-designed their coffee lids to make them harder to spill, and they did reduce the temp they served their coffee at.
My coffee maker (Kuerig) preps coffee with 192 degree water. A percolator uses boiling water; what comes out of the spout is usually 175+. Instant coffee is usually made by dumping boiling (200+ depending on altitude) water into a cup with the coffee.
Sorry, but coffee is HOT. and anyone who drinks it knows it. Yeah, accidents happen. And I agree that she probably deserved expenses. But this country is going to ridiculous extremes to protect us from our own stupidity.
I’ve seen those LARGE sized coffe cups on shows like Friends & such. But I haven’t been able to find them out here in CA. Are they just an East coast thing???
They’re definitely available on the left coast… my wife and I have a few, which I tend to use for hot tomato soup and for miso and stuff like that. I’m nervous about trying to actually use one for a full cuppa… even a caffeine-saturated programmer like me might go through the roof after a dose of espresso that large.
I don’t recall just where we got them… one was a promo from my employer, not sure about the others. You might want to try World Market (a.k.a. Cost Plus).
i know they have them up here in Seattle, but i forget where… give me a few days and i’ll see if i can remember/ find them again, i’ll send a link if i can.
Love Tina’s expression while serving Phix!
I like Phix’s cup…
Yeah.. Now ThAt’s wat I would call ” a good cupper..”.
*giggles* just saw that
love the tiny details
Yeah… “Somehow, I think that agreeing to deliver out, in return for a really good tip, wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done recently. Oh, boy…”
Awesome…totally awesome…
L like the sepia.
Is Tina wearing skates?
Arrrgh.
“I like…”
Can’t see any wheels, so I’m pretty sure they’re just boots.
But you can’t see her legs below about mid-calf…
Do they even make boot skates?
Yes. But they usually lace up the front.
http://www.rhythmskatedepot.com/images/skates/express_lg.jpg
I was joking about old drive-in diners where the carhops wore skates…
(If i were ever crazy enough to try skating – either ice or roller – i’d have to have high boot skates to support the ankle i recked up back in 1972…)
Carhops
When we were growing up, there was a “Dog-n-suds downtown. My sister even worked there for a while. I think some of the carhops wore skates.
I notice that Nudge is not fully caprine in her manifestation.
Well, we knew she had equine-type hooves from the comic grace note when Phix clocked her one.
OH!! Carhops, right. Um, sorry. Sleep deprivation strikes again.
Can I get some chocolate and caramel sauce with chopped peanuts? I prefer Turtle Cheesecake myself.
And… you know, it never really hit me that Phix could be a redhead…
Same here..
Well, Cleopatra (who was actually Greek) quite likely was a redhead…
It never occurred to me that she might NOT be.
*cough*
kind of lost me with that comment…
you have very odd coffee.
or tasty depending on your tastebuds
Been a while since you went to Sonic (where they still have skating carhops, btw) for a sundae, I take it.
never been
american diner i assume?
from the uk
Looks like Phix has Nudge pinned with her Rook, unless that’s Nudge’s Bishop at G2, then the answer is obvious…
No, I think that’s a rook; it looks like Nudge castled on the queen side.
No; the black rooks are stacked on the e-file.
OH NO! Its Attack of the Chess Nerds! Everybody RUN!
I suppose it’s now obligatory to make reference to one of the classics…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/turtlemom_nancy/5264341976/
How much is appropriate for a Pun Jar donation, for a “pun by reference”? Is there a discount for not actually making y’all splorfle your coffee on this particular site’s screen?
hsssss
I wonder if this picture is based on something i.e movie or painting
To play a game of chess simply to draw it in a picture is (to me) above and beyond!
Paula, I was wondering that too; this sort of situation looks so familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.
I did watch a swedish foreign film where a guy challenged death to a chess game, i suspect thats where I am getting it from
(the peeps in it sounded exactly like the swedish chef from the muppets – unsure if this was intentional but did make it more amusing for me)
Ingmar Bergman The Seventh Seal.
Thats the one
was quite good
..and then there’s De Düva
i be commin soon backa
love the script
I’m glad I’m not the only one who tried to figure out their game. I’d say more but I don’t have a chess board at hand to recreate it and ponder over it.
My “best” reading of the position:
white Kg1 Qb2 Rb1 c6 Bg2 Nf3 Pa3 d3 f2 g3 h2
(captured B N 3P)
black Kg8 Qd8 Re8 e7 Bb7 Pa6 c7 d4 f7 g7 h6
(captred B 2N 2P).
It’s likely the immediate preceding move was Rx46 (M).
Later on: yes. It’s black’s move and that rook seems dangling out there undefended, easy prey for the bishop. White enjoys only a mild advantage in material, but Phix seems much more confident.
The difficult man to identify is that on b7; it’s black and looks like a pawn or bishop (more like a bishop), but the captured black men do not seem to include a knight, It could be the “missing” knight which would explain why theobvious Bxc6 (R) isn’t immediate.
I’m pretty sure both sides have lost at least one knight (they may be hard hard to spot if not in profile). Phix has one left, visible near her king; last night I could have told you, when I had a pile of everything not accounted for on the board.
BTW, the size of Phix’s coffee is roughly the correct size I require in the morning…
ditto
txmystic- Too small. but mine’s tea.
Mmm…tea. Thanks for reminding me of my stash here at work.
I need something to make my throat stop feeling like it was swabbed by sandpaper overnight.
^^Indeed. Stupid drought!
I also do Irish breakfast Tea. Yum-o.
Aw, mannn. Ya gotta quite spoiling us with these awesome colored/shaded pieces.
+1, “Like” and all ah Twitter about this one.
Yea more peeps have been posting stuff recently that makes me reach for the ‘like’ button.
i need to spend less time on facebook
Oh. WOOWW! Love, love LOVE it!
The situation drawn, could lead to an enormous amount of gags..
ooh or a caption contest!
mine =
Tina (to nudge) “let the wookie..err..sphinx win!”
“Ah good, the snacks have arrived. The stuff on the tray is for you, Nudge.”
Win! Absolute win!!
her grin and that comment go so well…
Well played Paula!
Fun stuff!
Reminds me a bit of of the chess match in Pawn (NSFW-ish).
…or Cheating Death…
(Definitely NSFW)
Oh – BTW – After Joe Minotaur i hate you best.
All i can say is it looks like i’m lucky and it doesn’t update a lot…
Yeah, doesn’t update a lot is putting it… mildly…
Judging by the comments i saw, on the latest page, it must have updated in the last couple months or so.
Heck – i still check in on Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki every so often – and it updates maybe twice a year…
Yay, a fellow PAWN fan!
Baalah’s a BAD loser.
If not such a bad person.
For what it’s worth, Pawn page 13 (two pages after the link above) is what got me formally started in cartooning and art studies. I had been working a lot with pencils professionally, and that page stood out because of the layout and construction. I could see how it worked and wanted to do that. So, I am!
Despite my best efforts, I can’t figure out who will win. Nudge’s style of play is a bit different that what I expected based on her habit of not thinking things through.
The Phix is in…
txmystic- Shakes jar, shrugs puts in Confederate dollar (dirty and tattered paper), OK?
…along with my payment to the pun jar
plink!
oh wow
epic picture!
love the expressions
amazing background – i know its probably just rocks but to me the resemble lightning as though it was a battle between nudge and phix for dominion over the coffee shop
Tina was right – pastries so good the inspired a war! or a game of chess.
To me it looks like a portal energy wall. What Tina may have just stepped through to get from the coffee shop to where the players are.
Oh, and again: Hands. Paul draws some fantastic hands.
*jealous*
and animal feet
I can almost see Nudge tapping her hoof as she’s thinking.
PAUL!!!
I love it!!
This is the artwork I commissioned Paul to do for me at the end of June. He did a great job and I can’t wait to get my hands on the original!!
Hate.
You.
Arrrrrgh!
Very nice still.
sigh
Looks like I’m gonna have to save some pennies and commission something.
Thank you for commisioning it
feel quite guilty to see it for free
chuffed also
Thank you for all the love/hate.
The commission is pretty much as you see here with Phix/Nudge playing chess as Tina waits on them with a nervous toothy grin. I left the rest of the details up to Paul and I must say that he did an outstanding job. No, it was not cheap! Save your pennies, nickels, dimes, etc… and someday you can have a commission of your very own!
Paul did one of me and Acacia sharing coffee when I was in the desert in ’09. I really like how it turned out. He does really awesome work and turns things around fairly fast — even for someone putting out a daily web comic. Buying the original comic art is nice, but having a one of a kind to your specifications original is something else
Sooo jealous!
But glad you requested it since it means we get to see it.
Great commission. Love the picture.
You know that would make a Awesome poster. Wonder if Paul would do that cause that would be So Cool XD
You can get a print of the comic by clicking the “buy print” button bellow the comic.
This picture is so full of Win – not sure if the wicked grin is for Tina, or ’cause she has advantage in the game – or just in general, ’cause she IS off-duty….
When Phix was introduced her clothing seemed frayed.
Now…. Nice vest.
I know little about chess, but it looks 60/40 rather than 80/20 you would expect of Phix.
Nudge is still a trickster…
Phix is a cat… she’s playing with her prey.
That’s my bet, too.
Nudge looks nervous, Phix looks confident and self-possessed. It’s very in character for both of them. The board is hard to read; neither seems to have a strong material advantage.
It’s difficult to make out the chess pieces, but if I were Nudge, I’d move either the queen to threaten Phix’s rook, or advance a pawn. Depending on player skill, it’s either mid-game or endgame.
What the hell is this???
They still have their tops on!
Chess… your doing it wrong.
it looks as though nudge hasn’t
Hey, Nudge is currently top-free. (Yes, I know she’s usually top-free, but my point still stands.)
Maybe it’s Strip Chess, and they haven’t gotten very far?
They’ve each made 4 captures.
I don’t know if I was careless or tired, but that 4 should be a 5.
A sphinx, a demon, a barista & a game of chess. This is so great, I won’t ruin it by trying to make up a crappy joke.
Sounds like the makings of a Terry Pratchet novel really..
Paula- I’d buy that.
From the predatory look that Phix is giving Tina, I would have titled this page “Checkmate”….
Lions do devour humans in the wild, after all….
Is Phix looking at Tina or Nudge? At first I thought it was Tina, but now I’m not so sure.
Given that she’s behind Nudge (putting Nudge to her right, more or less), but has her head turned left, i’d have to say that, if she’s not looking at Tins, she’s looking at something off-panel to the right…
can we get that a background, that would be amazing
Keep drawing Tina like that and I’ll have to change my name to Tina Fanboi lol
Also, little details I love, see something new each time I look. Horse Shoe on Nudge for instance. Tina’s keeping relatively cool considering the situation however.
Oh, but that name’s already taken
You know that’s going up on eBay, and I weep to know that I won’t be able to afford it. Lovely work!
The Old Wolf
It’s already taken. If you scan up, you will find my post regarding my commissioning of this item.
No time to scan up, but happy for u!
Nudge’s top half looks less “fuzzy” than it did in her earlier appearances.
Maybe she’s brushing out her pelt more often these days.
(Is suddenly taken aback by the related question: Does Phix groom herself like a cat?
Maybe there are things mortal man is not meant to know…)
Can you imagine the size of the hairballs …
Can you imagine the size of the hairballs…
I really like this one a lot! I guess it helps that two of my favorite characters are playing chess!(Not to mention my favorite barista bringing the java.) Thank you Joe Minotaur for commissioning this and giving Paul the idea; he did an awesome job.
I wonder how often Nudge has to be Re-shoed?
Probably six to eight weeks, depending on conditions. She might be able to be reset, if she hasn’t done a lot of physical work. I wonder if Hephaestus is her farrier?
I think it would be determined by how often Phix knocks one loose…
Best. Ever.
Ever.
Would have been nifty if the pieces on the board had been recognisably the Wapsi cast…
There wasa Lexx episode that used the cast as figures for “Living Chess”.
I think I had this dream once. Woke up screaming when I spilled the coffee on myself.
Did you sue Mucho Mocha?
Of course, that McDonalds suit has been very badly reported. They served that coffee so hot that she received second and third degree scalds on her legs. Also, she was not – as so many claim – driving and juggling the coffee cup – she was the passenger…
And the huge award was all the first jury’s idea – she was basically suing for medical costs and a bit over for pain and sufering.
From what I hear from others (being a non-coffee drinker) is the reason to get McDonalds coffee is that it’s STILL HOT by the time you get to work. Besides, I can’t imagine anyone with half a brain opening a container of liquid (particularly a scalding hot one) in a moving car. Maybe she didn’t realize when she ordered HOT COFFEE that it was…well…hot?
Maybe everyone who hears about (and repeats, in the human fashion) the suit focuses on the reward one person received and not on the issue that coffee was being served at dangerously high temperatures at thousands of restaurants.
Very few of us are golems with high ethical standards. If human corporations faced the liability that demon corporations do, we wouldn’t have to find monetary ways to make them feel responsible.
…
Now I have in my head the image of a demonic Ronald McDonald screaming I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO HURT ANYONE
Did Dietzel set you guys up for this conversation?
how did they even get it that hot i mean – boiling water is hot enough for a cup of coffee ya?
why have it hotter?
my roommate did a report on that case in college, he found out some other stuff too… the amount that was originally requested was about 4 times the value that she actually got, the judge basically said the “I’m NOT going to give you bazillions of buck’s for being stupid… HOWEVER, i AM going to punish Mcd’s for doing it, so you’ll get a big payout, but not as big as you wanted though.” One of his reasons was that they had settled out-of-court about a dozen times previously, for the EXACT same thing, and that she was the first to say “BS on that!, I’m taking this all the way!” another thing was that they had some chemical analysis’s done on the coffee and found that after about only 30 minutes at the temp they were required to make it (180f i think it?), that it decomposes (or whatever they call it in chemistry) into it’s basic chemical compounds and that it could no longer be called “coffee” when it got served, yet the same coffee sits in the pot for a whole lot longer than 30 minutes (it usually got changed about 3 times during a shift of 8 HOURS), because it was easier and less costly to just leave it than it was to dump it out and make new every 20-25 minutes even if nobody bought any! another thing was they had to redesign the cup labels so that you can turn the cup in any direction and still see a warning label, before it was in only a few places and if you held it “juuust right” you could claim “but i didn’t SEE any warning officer”…
@Yamara: yeah, but then they’d go out of business entirely… especially after the movie “supersize me” came out.
Okay. Here are the facts of the case.
(Emphases added.)
So, the car was parked, not moving, and she originally wanted $20,000, which was basically her expenses.
Indeed, there were three offers of settlements – but they were quite reasonable amounts, from her side, and McDonald’s turned them down. (I like the chutzpah of offering $800 to someone who had $1o,500 in out-of-pocket medical expenses already and was going to run up more…)
The demands for successively larger amounts of money each time seem eminently logical to me – (A) Legal fees when you’re suing someone as big as McD’s ain’t cheap, and very likely she and her family were getting more and more pissed at being blown off.
Like US automakers in more than a few cases, McDonald’s knew of the hazard, but figured that it would be cheaper to settle for small amounts than to actually do something because most people wouldn’t sue someone who could afford the kind of lawyers they could.
Also note that McDonald’s tried to shift the emphasis to “Well, everybody knows it’ll burn your mouth,” away from “If you spill this on your legs it will cause third-degree burns.”
And, while she (and her attorneys) appealed the reduction of the verdict, i likely would have, too – if a few million bucks fall into my lap, i’d try to hang onto it, tool.
And the warning labels McD’s were ordered to put on their coffee basically said “We are serving this stuff way too hot to safely drink, but since we’re warning you, if you drink it, we’ll try not to pay your medical bills.”
I think they re-designed their coffee lids to make them harder to spill, and they did reduce the temp they served their coffee at.
My coffee maker (Kuerig) preps coffee with 192 degree water. A percolator uses boiling water; what comes out of the spout is usually 175+. Instant coffee is usually made by dumping boiling (200+ depending on altitude) water into a cup with the coffee.
Sorry, but coffee is HOT. and anyone who drinks it knows it. Yeah, accidents happen. And I agree that she probably deserved expenses. But this country is going to ridiculous extremes to protect us from our own stupidity.
Most impressive!
I am a big fan of ladies in vests. Nicely done indeed.
IMO that’s less a vest than a waistcoat. (N.B.: translate to en-GB for correct context)
I’ve seen those LARGE sized coffe cups on shows like Friends & such. But I haven’t been able to find them out here in CA. Are they just an East coast thing???
They’re definitely available on the left coast… my wife and I have a few, which I tend to use for hot tomato soup and for miso and stuff like that. I’m nervous about trying to actually use one for a full cuppa… even a caffeine-saturated programmer like me might go through the roof after a dose of espresso that large.
I don’t recall just where we got them… one was a promo from my employer, not sure about the others. You might want to try World Market (a.k.a. Cost Plus).
i know they have them up here in Seattle, but i forget where… give me a few days and i’ll see if i can remember/ find them again, i’ll send a link if i can.
a quick Google-Fu, and here’s a link to a place that sells them:
http://www.ceramic-mugs.com/printed-ceramics.htm
#2400 looks to be the closest size at 23oz…
i found some that are 30oz, but they are straight-sided rather than the curved sides as seen here, if you really want the volume not the shape…
My wife confirmed that my hunch was correct… she got several of our megacups at Cost Plus.
Nudge gots ironed Hooves !!! :’-D
Let the Wookie win.
HA! I ALWAYS SAID PHIX WAS RATHER CHESS-TY!
Please tell me this is a Desktop Wallpaper somewhere. It’s awesome. I’d pay for it.