"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:
"Jose" wrote in message
t...

Well, that depends on whether you in fact -are- an idiot, or merely
unfortunate. If "much hotter than usual" means "death instead of
mild pain", then McD has some culpability.


How much culpability does McDonalds have if the coffee is "not at all
hotter than usual"?

Changing that variable doesn't appear to affect culpability in this case.
Here's why I think that:

It appears that if you sell a product that any reasonable seller would know
(or learned) causes great bodily harm in common circumstances (such as
easily spilled drinks) and did nothing to improve the product's safety,
then it appears that the U.S. legal system says you (the seller) share some
culpability. In other words, it appears the courts apply a "reasonable
person" standard to both sides of a dispute. They seem to have found that
it was not reasonable for McD to continue to follow the "National Coffee
Association" advice in light of hundreds of other previous complaints. By
the time of this incident McD should have known there was a safety issue
and could correct the problem by lowering the serving temperature. That's
the way I read the decision.

Getting back to aviation: there does not appear to be any evidence that a
failure of the SR22 caused the crash in question.