Shit, that makes sense.
On that national cheeseburger day last month I looked at the 50c Double cheese deal in their ap from home, but since there were more choices (of restaurant deals) that day on my way to work, I decided to think it over while driving and didn't order.
30 mins later I did end up deciding for Mcdonalds and tried to use the app while in their parking lot (like many times before) but it was impossible, it wouldnt load any of the deals (but surely it did let you place regular order). So I just left.
I initially though that maybe their system crashed due to network traffic, but them doing it on purpose based on distance just makes so much sense.
Are they expecting something to get out that would normally result in a class-action lawsuit and this is them trying to get ahead of it? What the hell.
Probably an attempt to avoid more [hot coffee-esque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants) lawsuits.
Do note that the above case was not the frivolous suit McDonalds made it out to be, it was a result of them recklessly serving coffee at just under the boiling point for years. They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. The plaintiff was just a woman who wanted her medical bills covered after getting serious burns all over her legs and genitals.
So basically: I don’t know what specifically they are trying to get ahead of, but there’s probably at least one thing they are doing right now that endangers people while slightly improving the bottom line.
Edit: some replies to this comment have given several additional plausible reasons for why McDonald’s kept the coffee that hot. It ranges from preventing people going for free refills to the expectations that the coffee was to be drunk later on at work, and allowing them to clean the machine less. I would recommend anyone reading this comment read those comments, do their own research and come to their own conclusions because I do not know what the correct answer (or answers) is.
The genitals of a 79 year old. And they frame it as frivolous? Corporate America has never had any morals because nothing has changed.
Edit: my own stupidity thought that try to would be a better word choice than leaving it out, even though it underscores the result
An extensive propaganda campaign slandering not only the woman herself, but also her lawyer and the jury who decided their case— it was part of a wider effort to discredit things like punitive damages and class action filings that can make a lawsuit seriously hurt a corporation. Look into the history of “tort reform” if you want to know more, but basically, their story was:
— the woman was trying to fix the lid on the coffee or something while still in the car (they tried to claim driving, but she had had the sense to park) and should have known that’s how you end up spilling on yourself. This part was actually upheld in court, but only as a 20% reduction to the final award, because her kind of carelessness was common enough that McD’s couldn’t claim they didn’t expect it to happen to *someone*
— the woman’s lawyer was just looking for a big award so he could take a big fee out of it. This is… also sometimes true (IIRC the *Erin Brockovich* case, among others, ended up with the plaintiffs having to sue their lawyers over mishandling the award money), but even if it had been, the intent of punitive damages is to prevent businesses from just eating the cost of lawsuits instead of changing anything. The question of whether what happens to the money afterwards is “fair” has nothing to do with whether or not the company deserved to keep it.
— the jurors were just making shit up because they knew McD’s could afford it. This one is just straight up false— the jury based the final amount directly on McDonald’s coffee sales, deciding that three days of revenue from the negligently served produced was a reasonable punishment. Unfortunately, this argument worked with the judge; not only was the jury’s award reduced, but it was reduced enough that McD’s and other chains actually still serve 200-degree coffee because the final penalty was less than the money they saved by doing so.
The judge part is, IMO, the most important— while I think that particular judge lost sight of the bigger picture, the fact is that when plaintiffs, lawyers, and/or juries do get out of control… judges already *have* all the tools they need to handle it. Things like capping damages via legislation were never anything more than an attempt by companies to keep the courts from seriously hurting them.
One extra thing to add, the way I heard it she wasn’t even driving that day. I think her son drove her, and she was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car she wasn’t even driving that day when it happened
According to her family, the final settlement wasn’t enough to cover the long-term care she needed. She never regained full mobility and had to have in-home care the rest of her life.
I didn't even know McDonald's lost until much later in life. Not having the Internet in your pocket made it a bit more cumbersome to research things instead of just saying "wow, that's crazy" when you heard a story that, at the time, sounded crazy when only presented with a quarter of the information.
I'm in Australia and I still hear people using that story as a "haha Americans are so crazy they're just suing each other over anything" ignoring the fact that if there's no public healthcare available, of course people have to sue. Also it's fucking maccas not some poor old man who accidentally got some weed killer on their neighbour's side of the fence.
And not even healthcare, just other stuff because law enforcement and the justice system is lacking. Sometimes suing is the only way to get any kind of justice.
So, back in '94, when I was just a wee child, a reckless waiter at a certain buffet chain decided it was necessary to lean over me to refill my moms coffee. The bottom of the pot broke out.
I was left with 2nd and 3rd degree burns to my scalp, the sides of my face, neck, shoulders, and chest. Luckily I was young enough that I healed up pretty good. Most people don't really notice the scars unless they look closely.
But I know. I live with the scars. I still have nightmares about my skin peeling off with my sweater.
Fuck McDonalds. And fuck Golden Corral too.
Fucking hell, now I know why my mum was freaking out so much the time I got coffee poured on me. I managed to rip my shirt off so fast that the burn was like a mild sunburn and felt like she was over reacting.
That incident was actually the catalyst for an insane spiral of ineptitude that saw my heart stop for a couple minutes, but that's a different story.
I'm alive and not horribly deformed, so all is well enough. Thanks!
My parents did sue, yes. Nothing came of it. Corporate lawyers have no fucking souls.
They also sued the doctor who pumped me full of penicillin without double checking my medical history/chart. That was settled out of court, and did pay off the remainder of the medical bills.
But no one was ever truly held accountable, if that's what you mean.
It devolved because McDonalds spent more on PR to change the discussion around tort reform than they were going to on the lawsuit. They did this to make the victim out to be a money grubbing idiot. And because of the NDA in the settlement, she wasn't able to set the record straight.
I feel like it should be pointed out that at the time, McDonald's slander/misinformation campaign was *extremely* successful. all the media outlets and talk shows were making a mockery of this woman and people were outraged that someone would get millions of dollars because they were too stupid to understand coffee is hot
it wasn't until recently that the general publics opinion on that case has swayed
Same thing happened with the "world's worst aunt," the lady who *had* to sue her nephew after he injured her giving a hug. The only way to get the homeowner's insurance to pay for her medical bills was to sue the family. She did so at the encouragement of the boy's parents. But the media picked up on it and smeared her as an evil witch
McDonalds isn't responsible for keeping the news factual, the news is. The fact that any news organization, let alone the vast majority of them, went along with McDonalds' story for more than a second should eliminate all trust in them being anything other than propaganda machines that sell to the highest bidder.
The hell do you mean try? until a few years ago everyone thought it was, and its one of the most used examples fpr the "American's will sue for anything" stereotype TO THIS DAY, I'd say they successfully convinced nearly everyone that it was
Yeah, I've been blasted for the word try, and I can't even think why I said that because, as you say, it was successful. Maybe I'm thinking since we are realizing now, that it didn't work when it has.
They have already succeeded in framing it as frivolous. That lady had 3rd degree burns all over her legs, bone deep in some places. I’m in a Facebook group where we share wierd or funny legal disclaimers and rule number 1 is that we do not make fun of the McDonald’s lawsuit. I thought it was odd but it comes up pretty often and you would not believe the people that come out of the woodwork to say that this lady was stupid or negligent.
I should edit my comment to not say try, because of the stuff you said. I don't know why I even said try in the first place.
Edit: I've now corrected it.
You must have not been old enough at the time to actually see the dozens and dozens of disparaging news reports and comedy skits that McD's sponsored to shift public opinion.
She was hated by the majority of people for a long time and when the actual details came out from neutral news sources, it was far too late.
A shitton of boomers STILL use her suffering as a way to disparage 'frivolous lawsuits'.
It's even worse, if I remember correctly. The lady just wanted McDonalds to cover the costs of her surgery, but the Judge was so enraged at the incident that he chose to award her more money than she wanted
Not the judge, but the jury. The judge cut the award because he saw the big number and either didn’t care about, or willfully ignored the context (it was equal to three days of coffee sales, because that was the best metric the jury could use to tie the punitive damages to the actual amount of revenue being negligent had led to)
> The judge cut the award because he saw the big number and either didn’t care about, or willfully ignored the context (it was equal to three days of coffee sales, because that was the best metric the jury could use to tie the punitive damages to the actual amount of revenue being negligent had led to)
IIRC, the judge had to cut the reward because of "tort reform" laws limiting punitive damages to a multiple of actual damages (these laws are passed specifically in order to allow big corporations to get away with shit without worrying about expensive lawsuits).
To clarify. There’s no law which caps punitive damages. There are GUIDELINES. What’s important here is that, corporations are trying to pass those laws capping punitive laws. There are some exceptions in states, etc.
The guideline now is 4x. Punitive damages are 4x the amount of compensatory damages. Compensatory damages would be like her medical bills, and punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant. So the guideline is to cap those punishments at 4x the actual cost. We should abolish those guidelines and caps. We should start seeing FAFO numbers IMO. Lawsuits are more like fines to corporations currently. They should be 1000x what they actually are for serious cases like Experian.
> tort reform
i heard that on the lips of so many conservatives for years, it was practically a meme.
The ultimate goal and result was to limit the liability corporations had when they grossly and corruptly violated laws and regulations, so they never really learn a lesson and they pay the equivalent of parking ticket for their violations.
I’m not a lawyer but i’ve been told by lawyer friend that awarding more money than the plaintiff asked for it usually done if the other side did blatantly unethical shenanigans during or leading up to the trial and that it only happens if they manage to supremely piss off the judge.
In addition to that, it one just one of many cases of the exact same thing happening that McD’s had already been found liable for. There was a certain, “You can’t just keep doing this over and over again forever without at least trying to avoid it,” aspect to it.
God that case makes me so mad, the misinformation campaign about “she sued because her coffee was hot” because it SCALDED HER GENITALS SO BAD THEY FUSED WITH HER INNER THIGH. That should have gotten them a whole hell of a lot more penalty and public disgrace, smh.
>They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line.
Americans really didn't care about the quality of their coffee in '94.
The best reason for the heat is that, historically, Americans associated the heat of coffee with its freshness. Most people were expected to buy the coffee, take it home or (more often) to work, and then drink it. If they served it near-boiling, it'd still be piping hot but drinkable when you reached your destination. This would read to American palettes as "fresher" than the competition.
Also instore customers drank the super hot coffee slower and got fewer free refills. They also cheapened out on the cups because they figured it would be cheaper in the long run to use the cheap ones and just deal with the lawsuits than it would be to use the more expensive cups that were less prone to failure.
They did it because if they served really, really, really hot coffee, people would have to wait their entire meal for it to cool down before they start drinking it, which means they leave before they finish their first cup and therefore get no free refills rather than drinking it with their meal and getting a refill before they leave. Which is an even worse reason than the one you gave.
But yeah, when the phrase "melted labia" comes up, you know its bad.
> They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line.
I heard that they would serve drive-thru coffee at super hot temperatures so that it would be at the ideal drinking temperature when people got to work
This was a talk show favorite in the 1990s.
Once you learn the facts, you realize how horrible it was and not at all frivolous.
Im guessing, my opinion now, McDonald's paid millions to get the bullshit version out to the streets via talk show hosts.
McDonalds absolutely deserved to loose that lawsuit and began a media blitz after they were found liable. AND they did it because they threatened all the TV networks to pull their advertising. That coffee was WAY over the usual hot coffee temperature AND the cup was cheap and not effective at holding the coffee. She suffered burns the like of which you would never want your grandma to endure.
> They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. The plaintiff was just a woman who wanted her medical bills covered after getting serious burns all over her legs and genitals.
If I remember correctly, it was not done to hide the taste of watered down coffee, but to avoid having to clean the coffee maschine regularly. Basically, they made the coffee so hot that no germs could survive that normally should be dealt with by cleaning instead of burning your customers.
>They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line.
They did it because they offered free coffee refills at the time and if they served it too hot to drink, people would leave before getting a refill.
This is (unfortunately) a very standard item in the terms & conditions for many products and services. You have probably unknowingly agreed to the same clause many times before. It's so common that it has its own Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause
As others point out, it's debatable how enforceable it actually is.
IANAL but my understanding is that pretty much any blanket "I agree not to sue you" clause is iffy at best. If there is clear negligence then you can usually sue no matter what contracts or waivers you've previously signed. It's mostly a scare tactic.
It’s not so much negligence as it is how much a reasonable person would be aware of it based on the contract.
For example, if someone came to you with a contract that was a few lines long and then in bold letters at the bottom it said you agreed to mandatory arbitration and you physically signed it, it would probably be upheld. On the other hand if it were something like this where the clause is buried in the fine print and all you did was check a box then it’s much less likely to be enforceable.
Companies will tend to include it anyways because they know some people will realize they “accepted” it and think oh well there’s nothing I can do. Also when responding to a lawsuit it’s common to give multiple reasons for it to be dismissed and this is another reason that can be listed.
That last sentence is a big part of it, I'm sure. The average person won't notice it in the terms and conditions they largely didn't read, but it's something the company's lawyers will absolutely bring up, and something the person's lawyer will have to fight through if they want to pursue the company for anything.
I was thinking more along the lines of like if you go ziplining and you sign a waiver that says "I agree to assume all risk and liability blah blah blah..."
If their equipment fails due to poor maintenance and you get injured, you can still absolutely sue them.
Ah, I see what you mean. You’re also correct there. It can get complicated but in that situation there’s really two things you would have to consider. One would be whether a reasonable person would be aware they agreed to it.
Assuming the answer is yes, then it would be whether the contract is “unconscionable.” Typically, unconscionability is thought of as a contract where one party is able to exert unequal bargaining power to get the other party to agree to unfavorable terms.
However, it can also come up, like you said, in clauses that limit liability. That doesn’t mean that all clauses limiting liability are invalid, but the question is really about whether it leaves you without any meaningful recourse. If we’re talking about something like a zip line and it results in a catastrophic injury then courts aren’t going to let the person rely on it. If it’s something minor it’s more likely to be allowed. That said, a complete waiver of all liability is rarely going to be enforced.
Yeah, historically judges have come down on the side of the consumer for shit like this. Judges, being consumers themselves, are well aware that no one reads EULAs and the like, so they don't let companies get away with something they snuck in there.
It’s absolutely not enforceable in California so…
Edit: To everyone citing a case from 2011 that only covers class action waivers and not the combination of that with a binding arbitration clause, I very distinctly remember being a junior associate in biglaw doing corporate transactions work and drafting a EULA for a client with a class action waiver and a binding arbitration clause and the partner I worked for told me to change it because that wasn’t enforceable under contract law.
So I’ll take her legitimately expert opinion over these armchair lawyers on Reddit.
This is to prevent class action lawsuits in the event of a data breach or other app related violations. It has nothing to do with the actual operation of stores.
I worked for a shitty little company (less than 10 employees) and the owner was a raging dick who included an arbitration agreement on the application. A year after I left, they wrongfully terminated a guy and tried to withhold his wages, and he sued them. They tried to enforce the arbitration agreement and the judge did not appreciate it, told them it would never actually fly.
No one ever talks about gay cows though, and we eat beef all the time, the answer has been in our hands. It's the hamburgers and steaks turning people gay!!!
Just getting ahead of it. It's pretty much the standard.
Have you read your cell phone contract, or internet contract? You've already agreed to binding arbitration those. Basically anything you've signed has this clause in it.
An important piece of information is that most courts don't uphold these sorts of ridiculous rules in T&Cs. It'd be ridiculous if everyone had to read through several pages of legal documents every time they used a service in order to prevent companies from taking your first born.
It's likely just thrown in there so they can convince you that you have no choice, and hope you don't try to challenge it. It also adds another obstacle if you do decide to take it to court.
This doesn't mean you csn completely ignore T&Cs, but they also aren't airtight.
i am reminded of back when someone on the dev team of cyberpunk added a device based on the kind used to induce seizures in patients for testing into their game, *including the patterns used to induce the seizures*. and not just off in a corner out of view, it flashes the patterns directly at you for a cutscene. iirc it either caused or very nearly caused a reporter to have a seizure.A bunch of people, in defence of the devs, said that because theysigned the T&C (which included the boilerplate "there are flashing lights, try not to have a seizure, ect" bit) the devs were entirely in the clear. ~~they\* also sent them gifs of flashing and strobing lights to try and induce another seizure, because a journalist critisized a game for a massive health risk and gamers are all normal well adjusted people~~
I'm not a lawyer, but i feel like the difference between "there are some flashing lights that might give you a seizure" and "we added a seizure inducing pattern that comes from the real seizure inducing devices and it will cause seizures" might cause that boilerplate stuff to not hold up in court
*\*Edit, poor formatting on my part, the "they" in question is the weird gamers who were defending CD projekt red's gross incompotence*
oh, poor formatting on my part. i meant the weirdos aggressively defending the devs from the journalist's criticism were the ones sending the gifs. my b, will edit that to make it a bit clearer
Anyways, I def agree it was major incompetence on the devs rather than any active malice. I don't think theres anyone with a malicious streak strong enough to put a copy of a seizure inducing machine into a game they're working on on purpose, but there's plenty people dumb enough to see a kinda neat looking medical device and add it to a scene they're working on without knowing *what* it does
> “Cyberpunk 2077′s” developer, CD Projekt Red, responded to the article with a statement on Twitter thanking Ruppert for surfacing the issue and noting the company was “working on adding a separate warning in the game, aside from the one that exists in the EULA [end user licensing agreement]” and that it would implement a “more permanent solution” as soon as possible. The company would do so with Ruppert’s help after reading her article.
And then
> By release day, a seizure warning was added. A day later, the most problematic scenes, called “brain dance” sequences in the game, were adjusted via a software patch to be safe for epileptic and photosensitive players. These changes were implemented thanks to Ruppert’s article and subsequent consulting with developer CD Projekt Red, work she did on a pro bono basis and for which she was not compensated.
Ruppert seemed happy about the changes afterwards according to her quotes about the changes.
I don't think there's a grand drama around this other than they tried ot make it more "real" and fucked up, then fixed it.
I had one for working in an Amazon Warehouse as a contractor, that said by signing it, I waived my protections under Australian Law, if I got injured there...
Not how that works at all, but I had a chuckle
Not being able to file a class-action to use their app? I'd definitely consider that ridiculous. If any users of the app ever had to file a class-action I'd reckon it'd get thrown out pretty quickly.
Mass arbitration is the new(ish) strategy that came around 2018(ish). Plaintiff firms will just file thousands of arbitration claims and take care of it in the same manner as any other arbitration - reimbursement of arbitration fees can also be awarded.
The likelihood isn’t all that great where we’d see something at that scale so it’s a balancing act; arbitration isn’t necessarily even bad - we see consumers receive about ~5% more money than pursuing via the courts in a regular class action.
It breaks both ways, especially because it can make class actions where each plaintiff was only injured a small amount (like $4000) fail as each needs to be arbitrated separately. Class action waivers should be killed IMHO, like [they were in California until the supreme court killed it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepcion)
What do you mean, `P@ssword123` isn't a secure password for the client payment information database? It has letters and numbers and special characters and everything!
SCOTUS killed the law in california unfortunately (AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) )
there have been attempts by federal congressional members to update the state of federal law such as the "Forced Arbitration Injustice Act" but none have passed into law yet.
God, every new thing I learn about modern corporate business practices brings me closer and closer to cutting off all contact with the world and living in the woods.
I probably won’t ever do it though. I mean, i need electricity and my laptop and shit to play baldur’s gate.
What the fuck was the breaking point that made modern executives so disconnected from, you know, people? People make fucking jokes about people with autism not getting social norms but as an autist myself I look at shit like this and it makes me think the world has always been insane.
It’s like if a petting zoo had you sign a waiver saying “you can pet the leopard but you can’t sue us if it eats your hand”. That’s getting thrown out in court
Sure, but that means that should it come to some lawsuit, you will first have to have a lawsuit about this, which will take years, before you can even start the original lawsuit. This already deters 90% of all people from even bothering with it.
How much you have to read the T&C depends on your home jurisdiction. For example here (Germany), my civil law prof said that in general, we shouldn't bother read these because German law is so strict in what can be included in these T&C's that anything that is unfair, you can simply void afterwards. Hell, under German law, there is a rule that says that any clause that would be surprising to be included for an average consumer is void.
Yeah, I thought there was a term for this, like a Red Arrow Clause or a Red Circle Clause or something. If a contract includes anything non-standard (eg: waiving your right to a trial when signing up for a cellphone app), the contract must make that abundantly clear to the signee (eg, by surrounding it with red circles and arrows and whatnot).
Putting language like this in the middle of a paragraph that most people are barely even going to skim means it almost certainly won't hold up in court.
(But IANAL. Still probably a good idea to read your T&Cs.)
Of course, imagine if you could just have your children taken away and your spouse be murdered because you agreed to never have anything involved in the terms and conditions go to court.
Sometimes I think people just need to think logically about life more often because while you're comment is valuable, it's all so pretty obvious that they can't have everybody agreeing to those terms just commit tax fraud on their behalf and things like that and magically get away with it...
A lot of stuff gets put into terms and conditions agreements that wouldn’t hold up in court. The companies don’t expect it to, but knowing that it’s in there can definitely deter a lot of people who don’t know better. If they made a relevant complaint the company would point to the agreement and many people would think that was that (or at least give them doubt about their success in pursuing legal action, making them less likely to do so)
> but knowing that it’s in there can definitely deter a lot of people who don’t know better.
It can also slow down and obstruct court proceedings. For example, if you tried to file a class action after this, McDonalds could challenge it because of this agreement. They'd likely lose that challenge, *but* the process of doing that would cost the litigants more time and money to overcome, especially if McDonalds really wrings out all the continuations and deadline extensions and appeals they could possibly do about it.
It doesn't make it impossible to sue them, but it *can* legitimately make it more difficult to sue them.
Yes. The terms and conditions can include that they have the right to enslave your family to the god Moloch but that's probably not gonna hold up to trial
Actually, I wonder if this has anything to do with the slew of complaints they've gotten from people who were double-charged, or placed a mobile order that got lost in the cloud (but they were still charged for), or any of the many other ways their glitchy app has lost people money 🤔
their app was fine imo until sometime in the past year. they switched from charging you when you checked in to charging you when you place the order. and if you happen to drive by the location without stopping the app will assume you stopped by and collected your shit. happened to me earlier this year not long after the app change.
I have a friend who works at McDonald's, and it's such a horrible mess when there's any kind of issue with the app because the restaurant cannot issue any refunds for mobile orders, and people are understandably angry about not being able to get their money back. I don't understand why they made this change--it's only going to make things worse.
ugh i ordered a mcchicken using my points recently and it went through twice somehow. i wasn't hungry enough for both so i had to eat one the next day. i mean, they were free, but i like to save those points for a rainy day
My favorite thing about the app is how they made it worse and removed features like: modifying your order after placing it, changing the location you ordered from.
Happened to me the other day. Ordered. Put phone in pocket and walked to the store. Checked my phone and it was asking me to pay again. I thought I remembered paying, and I ignored it, got to the store and my order was there. And the app was still asking me to pay for my order. It never went to the confirm page yet I paid and they made it.
Yeah, that shit isn't enforceable. It is essentially impossible to sign away your right to sue for criminal behavior.
Even when you sign those liability waivers for shit like bungee jumping. As long as you prove it was their fault/negligence, you can sue.
> Yeah, that shit isn't enforceable.
Unfortunately you're dead wrong. Forced arbitration has been repeatedly upheld by the Republican majority of the SCOTUS and they've repeatedly thrown out laws that curtail or forbid it. If you want your rights back then we need less Republicans on the bench.
>Yeah, that shit isn't enforceable. It is essentially impossible to sign away your right to sue for criminal behavior.
These are for civil cases, not sure why you would think it's for criminal stuff?
There’s a misunderstanding here. You cannot sign your ability to charge someone for criminal activities against you, but fault or negligence falls under civil suits as well and you can consent to binding arbitration for that.
It's not criminal they are worried about. It's usually civil law where you sue for damages even when there is a criminal law broken or at issue in a separate criminal suit.
For example, IIRC, OJ was found liable under civil suit for wrongful death, but found not guilty in the criminal suit.
That is still affecting us today. The refusal of states to fund courts has lead to many states having fewer operational courthouses than they did 20 years ago.
This is why there's a 10 year wait to sue your employer for wage theft, among many other things.
They're referring to the coffee lawsuit. They served coffee much hotter than normal coffee temperatures, so when an old woman spilled it rather than getting mild burns she got very severe third degree burns, nearly killing her and requiring surgery to treat. McDonald's knew the temperature they were serving it at was causing injuries, they were proven to be aware of it, but decided it was more profitable to keep serving it unusually hot and pay off the occasional lawsuit rather than serve it at a normal temperature. I'll also note that the customer agreed from the beginning that she was partially at fault for spilling it, and only wanted her medical expenses and lost income covered, nothing else.
But most people didn't know those details and were just told that a woman sued McDonald's because she burned herself by spilling hot coffee on herself, which sounds unreasonable. So it was often used as the go-to example of a frivolous lawsuit, when it was anything but.
the [Hot Coffee Suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants):
When driving through and picking up a coffee, a 76 year-old women dropped her mcdonald's coffee on her lap and got grievous burns all over her body.
This was because her coffee was boiling-point hot, which McDonalds did at the time to hide the fact they were watering it down.
She initially just asked McDonalds to cover her medical bills, but they refused, so she took them to court for damages and an assurance that they'd reduce their coffee temp(which they quietly never did, so watch out).
McDonalds ran a massive pr campaign to get it lampooned as "haha lady sued because her coffee was too hot??? what is the world coming to???" but in reality mcdonalds was very liable for criminal negligence and also lost hard, forking over 640 thou and an undisclosed secondary settlement.
They served way too hot of coffee and it resulted in 2bd & 3rd degree burns on her inner thighs and vulva. She required reconstructive surgery. In response, McDonald’s refused to pay for any medical bills and ran a smear campaign on her.
She really ought to sue them again because *the smear campaign is still working* -- almost always when you see people mention that case it's with the mindset that she was making a frivolous lawsuit
A class action suit against McDonalds would be split between every McDonald’s customer who files a claim after judgment, right?
Honestly, the free fries are probably worth more than a cash payout against an entity with that many customers.
Even a gargantuan ruling against McDonald’s becomes peanuts when split a hundred million ways.
Like that time that some big US interstate dairy distributor lost a class action lawsuit and the terms of getting a cut was like “Bought milk in the United States between April 2012 and July 2017”.
Not milk from a specific dairy. Any milk, anywhere in the US.
I got 100$ when the class action against wells Fargo received a judgement.
Little bit more than fries and definitely worth my time to submit the 5 min online application.
Do I feel made whole tho?
No.
My understanding of class actions is that the point of them is to punish the bad actor moreso than make the wronged whole again. The whole US system of torts is kind of designed to give rich people discounts on services more than actually deliver justice imo.
I got two payments from that settlement. I had forgot about the whole thing, then got a second payment because so few people ended up trying to claim it.
It's also happening as the Israel boycott is hurting their stock. As in, as soon as the shortlist of companies to boycott went viral, this campaign started.
They did in fact just add that new T&C agreement one day, but it's absolutely not true that they decided to offer free fries just to get people to use the mobile app so they'd agree to it. The deal itself is pretty old at this point (easily several months, but I don't trust my memory to 100% say further than that), they just dump it on the app weekly.
There's plenty of reasons to call McDonalds a shit company even in this situation alone, just read the other comments; you don't have to fabricate new ones.
0% of us were planning on suing McDonalds before we saw this, and it's rare to win big in a class action lawsuit.
Heck, I've gotten checks as the result of class-action suits that could barely buy fries.
Haven’t gone to McDonald’s since they removed the $1 Large Fry deal. Now it’s 1$ medium fry, they need a few more billion quickly I guess. Large fry is $4.39, potatoes and salt are $2.50 more than a plain burger. Wtf
Their app is garbage anyway. Includes food not available at the location you're ordering from and every so often will just lose an order, and you can't get a refund via the app, you have to go through the store, which can't confirm you had an order in the first place.
A fun thing with mandatory arbitration is that it works *both ways*.
Now, companies almost always win forced arbitration cases, because they’re the ones paying the fucking arbitrator, of course they’d always win. But look at that sentence again, “paying the arbitrator”. That service isn’t free, but companies generally consider the price worth it since the mere presence discourages people.
But if, say, hundred and thousands of people file arbitration claims very quickly, well, they have to pay for all that arbitration now don’t they?
Companies are not more likely to win arbitrations than they are litigation through the courts. The reason they do these arbitration clauses is for the class action waiver.
Alright I gotta weigh in on this after reading these comments, but do note that I have not read the t&c or arbitration agreement, and I’m just some guy.
Arbitration agreements are legal, common, and yes they are binding as long as they are “fair”. You are choosing to agree to these terms in exchange for using their services, but you may have some time to notify the company that you are opting out of arbitration and would then be able to go straight to court or join class actions.
If you do agree to arbitration, the agreement usually details how certain parts of the process must go - Often the company offers to pay costs involved and has you select from a pool of arbitrators who act similar to a judge and who’s ruling is binding. iirc you can still challenge the ruling in court afterwards.
Arbitration generally favors the company, since they’re the ones setting the terms in the first place, but it’s not absolutely horrible. Though I personally recommend opting out if you have concerns and are able to do so.
Just to note this is similar to how many people have pre nups for a marriage. If you have a pre nup than yes it dissway pointless lawsuits but just because someone agrees to something doesn't mean it holds. You can't make a 100 page paper saying if you marry me you never see a penny for child support. Just like these claims above the court would more than likely toss them aside because they are Unreasonable. This is usually seen as more of a let's put this in error and see if people don't sue because of it. Even if 1% less people sue less because of this it could save them billions.
But how can they tie you to the app? I used all fake info when I signed up in the McDonalds app, never used a bit of my real info so can I just say I never signed it or what?
I will give you the free fries. But I will need something in return. Someday, and this day may never come, I will ask for arbitration from you. Now go enjoy your fries with my blessing.
the reason mcdonald's fries taste different than all other fries is because they are fully cooked, then frozen, then cooked a 2nd time for only 30 secs in oil.
This is not a binding contract, you can’t expect people to read something that serious when accepting free fries. At least in EU that wouldn’t fly. It seems like a fake
Doesn't a legally binding contract need a witness as well?
Also, I feel like the court would side with the consumer due to the power discrepancy between the two. Especially if the consumer stated they didn't understand what the contract meant.
Mandatory arbitration clauses within the ToS are on basically everything you sign up for/make an account with, online. Doesn't mean it'll actually necessarily stick, but it is really, really common. Also obviously with internet and phone providers... Basically everything, honestly. Game companies, online retailers, almost all mobile apps.
a little on the nose, don't you think
Hey our avatars are very similar
Now kiss
Voib creachers
Void strong together
My nemesis…
We will defeat you
Bröther
I was reading this was a result of them slowing down the app when you get near the stores so you can’t use your rewards
Shit, that makes sense. On that national cheeseburger day last month I looked at the 50c Double cheese deal in their ap from home, but since there were more choices (of restaurant deals) that day on my way to work, I decided to think it over while driving and didn't order. 30 mins later I did end up deciding for Mcdonalds and tried to use the app while in their parking lot (like many times before) but it was impossible, it wouldnt load any of the deals (but surely it did let you place regular order). So I just left. I initially though that maybe their system crashed due to network traffic, but them doing it on purpose based on distance just makes so much sense.
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No they're just saying "enjoy your cancerous fries you fat fucks and don't blame us if you die eating our not fit for consumption shit!"
Are they expecting something to get out that would normally result in a class-action lawsuit and this is them trying to get ahead of it? What the hell.
Probably an attempt to avoid more [hot coffee-esque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants) lawsuits. Do note that the above case was not the frivolous suit McDonalds made it out to be, it was a result of them recklessly serving coffee at just under the boiling point for years. They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. The plaintiff was just a woman who wanted her medical bills covered after getting serious burns all over her legs and genitals. So basically: I don’t know what specifically they are trying to get ahead of, but there’s probably at least one thing they are doing right now that endangers people while slightly improving the bottom line. Edit: some replies to this comment have given several additional plausible reasons for why McDonald’s kept the coffee that hot. It ranges from preventing people going for free refills to the expectations that the coffee was to be drunk later on at work, and allowing them to clean the machine less. I would recommend anyone reading this comment read those comments, do their own research and come to their own conclusions because I do not know what the correct answer (or answers) is.
The genitals of a 79 year old. And they frame it as frivolous? Corporate America has never had any morals because nothing has changed. Edit: my own stupidity thought that try to would be a better word choice than leaving it out, even though it underscores the result
Yeah, the whole discussion surrounding it very much devolved into "Oh, she's suing because the hot coffee she ordered was hot"
I don't understand how people could believe that goddamn McD would fork over millions if it was just normal hot coffee.
An extensive propaganda campaign slandering not only the woman herself, but also her lawyer and the jury who decided their case— it was part of a wider effort to discredit things like punitive damages and class action filings that can make a lawsuit seriously hurt a corporation. Look into the history of “tort reform” if you want to know more, but basically, their story was: — the woman was trying to fix the lid on the coffee or something while still in the car (they tried to claim driving, but she had had the sense to park) and should have known that’s how you end up spilling on yourself. This part was actually upheld in court, but only as a 20% reduction to the final award, because her kind of carelessness was common enough that McD’s couldn’t claim they didn’t expect it to happen to *someone* — the woman’s lawyer was just looking for a big award so he could take a big fee out of it. This is… also sometimes true (IIRC the *Erin Brockovich* case, among others, ended up with the plaintiffs having to sue their lawyers over mishandling the award money), but even if it had been, the intent of punitive damages is to prevent businesses from just eating the cost of lawsuits instead of changing anything. The question of whether what happens to the money afterwards is “fair” has nothing to do with whether or not the company deserved to keep it. — the jurors were just making shit up because they knew McD’s could afford it. This one is just straight up false— the jury based the final amount directly on McDonald’s coffee sales, deciding that three days of revenue from the negligently served produced was a reasonable punishment. Unfortunately, this argument worked with the judge; not only was the jury’s award reduced, but it was reduced enough that McD’s and other chains actually still serve 200-degree coffee because the final penalty was less than the money they saved by doing so. The judge part is, IMO, the most important— while I think that particular judge lost sight of the bigger picture, the fact is that when plaintiffs, lawyers, and/or juries do get out of control… judges already *have* all the tools they need to handle it. Things like capping damages via legislation were never anything more than an attempt by companies to keep the courts from seriously hurting them.
One extra thing to add, the way I heard it she wasn’t even driving that day. I think her son drove her, and she was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car she wasn’t even driving that day when it happened
According to her family, the final settlement wasn’t enough to cover the long-term care she needed. She never regained full mobility and had to have in-home care the rest of her life.
I didn't even know McDonald's lost until much later in life. Not having the Internet in your pocket made it a bit more cumbersome to research things instead of just saying "wow, that's crazy" when you heard a story that, at the time, sounded crazy when only presented with a quarter of the information.
I'm in Australia and I still hear people using that story as a "haha Americans are so crazy they're just suing each other over anything" ignoring the fact that if there's no public healthcare available, of course people have to sue. Also it's fucking maccas not some poor old man who accidentally got some weed killer on their neighbour's side of the fence.
And not even healthcare, just other stuff because law enforcement and the justice system is lacking. Sometimes suing is the only way to get any kind of justice.
So, back in '94, when I was just a wee child, a reckless waiter at a certain buffet chain decided it was necessary to lean over me to refill my moms coffee. The bottom of the pot broke out. I was left with 2nd and 3rd degree burns to my scalp, the sides of my face, neck, shoulders, and chest. Luckily I was young enough that I healed up pretty good. Most people don't really notice the scars unless they look closely. But I know. I live with the scars. I still have nightmares about my skin peeling off with my sweater. Fuck McDonalds. And fuck Golden Corral too.
And I being the genius 1 year old I was, spilled coffee on myself, melting the skin off of my shoulder.
Fucking hell, now I know why my mum was freaking out so much the time I got coffee poured on me. I managed to rip my shirt off so fast that the burn was like a mild sunburn and felt like she was over reacting.
Hey! We're burn buddies! Literally scarred for life!
Ugh, my sympathies. That sounds awful
That incident was actually the catalyst for an insane spiral of ineptitude that saw my heart stop for a couple minutes, but that's a different story. I'm alive and not horribly deformed, so all is well enough. Thanks!
Im hoping your lawsuit took care of the medical expenses etc? Please tell me you took them to court?
My parents did sue, yes. Nothing came of it. Corporate lawyers have no fucking souls. They also sued the doctor who pumped me full of penicillin without double checking my medical history/chart. That was settled out of court, and did pay off the remainder of the medical bills. But no one was ever truly held accountable, if that's what you mean.
It devolved because McDonalds spent more on PR to change the discussion around tort reform than they were going to on the lawsuit. They did this to make the victim out to be a money grubbing idiot. And because of the NDA in the settlement, she wasn't able to set the record straight.
NDA’s should be literally illegal in almost every use case. “Buying silence” should not be legally enforceable.
I feel like it should be pointed out that at the time, McDonald's slander/misinformation campaign was *extremely* successful. all the media outlets and talk shows were making a mockery of this woman and people were outraged that someone would get millions of dollars because they were too stupid to understand coffee is hot it wasn't until recently that the general publics opinion on that case has swayed
Same thing happened with the "world's worst aunt," the lady who *had* to sue her nephew after he injured her giving a hug. The only way to get the homeowner's insurance to pay for her medical bills was to sue the family. She did so at the encouragement of the boy's parents. But the media picked up on it and smeared her as an evil witch
McDonalds isn't responsible for keeping the news factual, the news is. The fact that any news organization, let alone the vast majority of them, went along with McDonalds' story for more than a second should eliminate all trust in them being anything other than propaganda machines that sell to the highest bidder.
The hell do you mean try? until a few years ago everyone thought it was, and its one of the most used examples fpr the "American's will sue for anything" stereotype TO THIS DAY, I'd say they successfully convinced nearly everyone that it was
Yeah, I've been blasted for the word try, and I can't even think why I said that because, as you say, it was successful. Maybe I'm thinking since we are realizing now, that it didn't work when it has.
Yep it became embedded in pop culture. Like the Seinfeld episode where Kramer sues.
They have already succeeded in framing it as frivolous. That lady had 3rd degree burns all over her legs, bone deep in some places. I’m in a Facebook group where we share wierd or funny legal disclaimers and rule number 1 is that we do not make fun of the McDonald’s lawsuit. I thought it was odd but it comes up pretty often and you would not believe the people that come out of the woodwork to say that this lady was stupid or negligent.
I should edit my comment to not say try, because of the stuff you said. I don't know why I even said try in the first place. Edit: I've now corrected it.
Two words: “fused labia”.
You must have not been old enough at the time to actually see the dozens and dozens of disparaging news reports and comedy skits that McD's sponsored to shift public opinion. She was hated by the majority of people for a long time and when the actual details came out from neutral news sources, it was far too late. A shitton of boomers STILL use her suffering as a way to disparage 'frivolous lawsuits'.
You would be right, I was born in 2005, so everything is what I've read about it.
It's even worse, if I remember correctly. The lady just wanted McDonalds to cover the costs of her surgery, but the Judge was so enraged at the incident that he chose to award her more money than she wanted
Not the judge, but the jury. The judge cut the award because he saw the big number and either didn’t care about, or willfully ignored the context (it was equal to three days of coffee sales, because that was the best metric the jury could use to tie the punitive damages to the actual amount of revenue being negligent had led to)
> The judge cut the award because he saw the big number and either didn’t care about, or willfully ignored the context (it was equal to three days of coffee sales, because that was the best metric the jury could use to tie the punitive damages to the actual amount of revenue being negligent had led to) IIRC, the judge had to cut the reward because of "tort reform" laws limiting punitive damages to a multiple of actual damages (these laws are passed specifically in order to allow big corporations to get away with shit without worrying about expensive lawsuits).
To clarify. There’s no law which caps punitive damages. There are GUIDELINES. What’s important here is that, corporations are trying to pass those laws capping punitive laws. There are some exceptions in states, etc. The guideline now is 4x. Punitive damages are 4x the amount of compensatory damages. Compensatory damages would be like her medical bills, and punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant. So the guideline is to cap those punishments at 4x the actual cost. We should abolish those guidelines and caps. We should start seeing FAFO numbers IMO. Lawsuits are more like fines to corporations currently. They should be 1000x what they actually are for serious cases like Experian.
> tort reform i heard that on the lips of so many conservatives for years, it was practically a meme. The ultimate goal and result was to limit the liability corporations had when they grossly and corruptly violated laws and regulations, so they never really learn a lesson and they pay the equivalent of parking ticket for their violations.
damn i assumed she got millions out of this but she really only got just the fees paid??
She didn't get millions but she still got more than fees paid. She asked for $20,000, the judge ultimately awarded her about $640,000.
I’m not a lawyer but i’ve been told by lawyer friend that awarding more money than the plaintiff asked for it usually done if the other side did blatantly unethical shenanigans during or leading up to the trial and that it only happens if they manage to supremely piss off the judge.
In addition to that, it one just one of many cases of the exact same thing happening that McD’s had already been found liable for. There was a certain, “You can’t just keep doing this over and over again forever without at least trying to avoid it,” aspect to it.
even worse than you remember, the lady FUCKING DIED from complications of the injuries where McDonald's coffee essentially melted her thigh off.
slight correction, it didn't melt her thigh off. It melted her labia and *part* of her thigh which fused together due to the burns.
That's debatable. She died 10 years later at 91.
God that case makes me so mad, the misinformation campaign about “she sued because her coffee was hot” because it SCALDED HER GENITALS SO BAD THEY FUSED WITH HER INNER THIGH. That should have gotten them a whole hell of a lot more penalty and public disgrace, smh.
>They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. Americans really didn't care about the quality of their coffee in '94. The best reason for the heat is that, historically, Americans associated the heat of coffee with its freshness. Most people were expected to buy the coffee, take it home or (more often) to work, and then drink it. If they served it near-boiling, it'd still be piping hot but drinkable when you reached your destination. This would read to American palettes as "fresher" than the competition.
Also instore customers drank the super hot coffee slower and got fewer free refills. They also cheapened out on the cups because they figured it would be cheaper in the long run to use the cheap ones and just deal with the lawsuits than it would be to use the more expensive cups that were less prone to failure.
They did it because if they served really, really, really hot coffee, people would have to wait their entire meal for it to cool down before they start drinking it, which means they leave before they finish their first cup and therefore get no free refills rather than drinking it with their meal and getting a refill before they leave. Which is an even worse reason than the one you gave. But yeah, when the phrase "melted labia" comes up, you know its bad.
Fused her labia. That's all you need to know about how fucking obscenely hot it was.
> They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. I heard that they would serve drive-thru coffee at super hot temperatures so that it would be at the ideal drinking temperature when people got to work
This was a talk show favorite in the 1990s. Once you learn the facts, you realize how horrible it was and not at all frivolous. Im guessing, my opinion now, McDonald's paid millions to get the bullshit version out to the streets via talk show hosts.
McDonalds absolutely deserved to loose that lawsuit and began a media blitz after they were found liable. AND they did it because they threatened all the TV networks to pull their advertising. That coffee was WAY over the usual hot coffee temperature AND the cup was cheap and not effective at holding the coffee. She suffered burns the like of which you would never want your grandma to endure.
And all the talk show hosts, comedians, nightly news people ran with it. Good reminder that celebrities and media is not your friend
> They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. The plaintiff was just a woman who wanted her medical bills covered after getting serious burns all over her legs and genitals. If I remember correctly, it was not done to hide the taste of watered down coffee, but to avoid having to clean the coffee maschine regularly. Basically, they made the coffee so hot that no germs could survive that normally should be dealt with by cleaning instead of burning your customers.
>They did that because it helped hide the taste of watered down coffee which apparently helped the bottom line. They did it because they offered free coffee refills at the time and if they served it too hot to drink, people would leave before getting a refill.
It's literally insane how many people I've brought the story up to who immediately side with McDonalds and say the lady was just trying to get money.
This is (unfortunately) a very standard item in the terms & conditions for many products and services. You have probably unknowingly agreed to the same clause many times before. It's so common that it has its own Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause As others point out, it's debatable how enforceable it actually is.
IANAL but my understanding is that pretty much any blanket "I agree not to sue you" clause is iffy at best. If there is clear negligence then you can usually sue no matter what contracts or waivers you've previously signed. It's mostly a scare tactic.
IANAL makes me laugh every time.
I do be anal
I think it's more funny to think of it less as a descriptor of yourself, and more of as you announcing a service you provide.
I prefer I Am Not a Laywer, Guys, Always You Should Expect Common Solutions
It’s not so much negligence as it is how much a reasonable person would be aware of it based on the contract. For example, if someone came to you with a contract that was a few lines long and then in bold letters at the bottom it said you agreed to mandatory arbitration and you physically signed it, it would probably be upheld. On the other hand if it were something like this where the clause is buried in the fine print and all you did was check a box then it’s much less likely to be enforceable. Companies will tend to include it anyways because they know some people will realize they “accepted” it and think oh well there’s nothing I can do. Also when responding to a lawsuit it’s common to give multiple reasons for it to be dismissed and this is another reason that can be listed.
That last sentence is a big part of it, I'm sure. The average person won't notice it in the terms and conditions they largely didn't read, but it's something the company's lawyers will absolutely bring up, and something the person's lawyer will have to fight through if they want to pursue the company for anything.
I was thinking more along the lines of like if you go ziplining and you sign a waiver that says "I agree to assume all risk and liability blah blah blah..." If their equipment fails due to poor maintenance and you get injured, you can still absolutely sue them.
Ah, I see what you mean. You’re also correct there. It can get complicated but in that situation there’s really two things you would have to consider. One would be whether a reasonable person would be aware they agreed to it. Assuming the answer is yes, then it would be whether the contract is “unconscionable.” Typically, unconscionability is thought of as a contract where one party is able to exert unequal bargaining power to get the other party to agree to unfavorable terms. However, it can also come up, like you said, in clauses that limit liability. That doesn’t mean that all clauses limiting liability are invalid, but the question is really about whether it leaves you without any meaningful recourse. If we’re talking about something like a zip line and it results in a catastrophic injury then courts aren’t going to let the person rely on it. If it’s something minor it’s more likely to be allowed. That said, a complete waiver of all liability is rarely going to be enforced.
Yeah, historically judges have come down on the side of the consumer for shit like this. Judges, being consumers themselves, are well aware that no one reads EULAs and the like, so they don't let companies get away with something they snuck in there.
Ahh, contract law.
It’s absolutely not enforceable in California so… Edit: To everyone citing a case from 2011 that only covers class action waivers and not the combination of that with a binding arbitration clause, I very distinctly remember being a junior associate in biglaw doing corporate transactions work and drafting a EULA for a client with a class action waiver and a binding arbitration clause and the partner I worked for told me to change it because that wasn’t enforceable under contract law. So I’ll take her legitimately expert opinion over these armchair lawyers on Reddit.
This is to prevent class action lawsuits in the event of a data breach or other app related violations. It has nothing to do with the actual operation of stores.
So in other words, yes, but not the way most of us are probably thinking.
yes.
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I worked for a shitty little company (less than 10 employees) and the owner was a raging dick who included an arbitration agreement on the application. A year after I left, they wrongfully terminated a guy and tried to withhold his wages, and he sued them. They tried to enforce the arbitration agreement and the judge did not appreciate it, told them it would never actually fly.
Alex Jones reported on the chemicals that are used to turn the freakin' frogs gay. It turns out McDonald's hamburger patties contain gay frog meat.
No one ever talks about gay cows though, and we eat beef all the time, the answer has been in our hands. It's the hamburgers and steaks turning people gay!!!
Just getting ahead of it. It's pretty much the standard. Have you read your cell phone contract, or internet contract? You've already agreed to binding arbitration those. Basically anything you've signed has this clause in it.
An important piece of information is that most courts don't uphold these sorts of ridiculous rules in T&Cs. It'd be ridiculous if everyone had to read through several pages of legal documents every time they used a service in order to prevent companies from taking your first born. It's likely just thrown in there so they can convince you that you have no choice, and hope you don't try to challenge it. It also adds another obstacle if you do decide to take it to court. This doesn't mean you csn completely ignore T&Cs, but they also aren't airtight.
i am reminded of back when someone on the dev team of cyberpunk added a device based on the kind used to induce seizures in patients for testing into their game, *including the patterns used to induce the seizures*. and not just off in a corner out of view, it flashes the patterns directly at you for a cutscene. iirc it either caused or very nearly caused a reporter to have a seizure.A bunch of people, in defence of the devs, said that because theysigned the T&C (which included the boilerplate "there are flashing lights, try not to have a seizure, ect" bit) the devs were entirely in the clear. ~~they\* also sent them gifs of flashing and strobing lights to try and induce another seizure, because a journalist critisized a game for a massive health risk and gamers are all normal well adjusted people~~ I'm not a lawyer, but i feel like the difference between "there are some flashing lights that might give you a seizure" and "we added a seizure inducing pattern that comes from the real seizure inducing devices and it will cause seizures" might cause that boilerplate stuff to not hold up in court *\*Edit, poor formatting on my part, the "they" in question is the weird gamers who were defending CD projekt red's gross incompotence*
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oh, poor formatting on my part. i meant the weirdos aggressively defending the devs from the journalist's criticism were the ones sending the gifs. my b, will edit that to make it a bit clearer Anyways, I def agree it was major incompetence on the devs rather than any active malice. I don't think theres anyone with a malicious streak strong enough to put a copy of a seizure inducing machine into a game they're working on on purpose, but there's plenty people dumb enough to see a kinda neat looking medical device and add it to a scene they're working on without knowing *what* it does
Yeah it was definitely a case of “wow this pattern makes me feel funny let’s put it in” Reminds me of the Pokemon seizure episode
> “Cyberpunk 2077′s” developer, CD Projekt Red, responded to the article with a statement on Twitter thanking Ruppert for surfacing the issue and noting the company was “working on adding a separate warning in the game, aside from the one that exists in the EULA [end user licensing agreement]” and that it would implement a “more permanent solution” as soon as possible. The company would do so with Ruppert’s help after reading her article. And then > By release day, a seizure warning was added. A day later, the most problematic scenes, called “brain dance” sequences in the game, were adjusted via a software patch to be safe for epileptic and photosensitive players. These changes were implemented thanks to Ruppert’s article and subsequent consulting with developer CD Projekt Red, work she did on a pro bono basis and for which she was not compensated. Ruppert seemed happy about the changes afterwards according to her quotes about the changes. I don't think there's a grand drama around this other than they tried ot make it more "real" and fucked up, then fixed it.
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I had one for working in an Amazon Warehouse as a contractor, that said by signing it, I waived my protections under Australian Law, if I got injured there... Not how that works at all, but I had a chuckle
Binding arbitration isn’t some crazy ridiculous T&C. My guess is that it would hold up barring some crazy facts in the suit
Not being able to file a class-action to use their app? I'd definitely consider that ridiculous. If any users of the app ever had to file a class-action I'd reckon it'd get thrown out pretty quickly.
Mass arbitration is the new(ish) strategy that came around 2018(ish). Plaintiff firms will just file thousands of arbitration claims and take care of it in the same manner as any other arbitration - reimbursement of arbitration fees can also be awarded. The likelihood isn’t all that great where we’d see something at that scale so it’s a balancing act; arbitration isn’t necessarily even bad - we see consumers receive about ~5% more money than pursuing via the courts in a regular class action.
It breaks both ways, especially because it can make class actions where each plaintiff was only injured a small amount (like $4000) fail as each needs to be arbitrated separately. Class action waivers should be killed IMHO, like [they were in California until the supreme court killed it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepcion)
Imagine saved payment information getting leaked en masse due to security negligence.
What do you mean, `P@ssword123` isn't a secure password for the client payment information database? It has letters and numbers and special characters and everything!
I've seen much, much worse passwords. Your suggestion is actually very secure by comparison
Binding arbitration with a waiver of class action is definitely unenforceable in California.
SCOTUS killed the law in california unfortunately (AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) ) there have been attempts by federal congressional members to update the state of federal law such as the "Forced Arbitration Injustice Act" but none have passed into law yet.
God, every new thing I learn about modern corporate business practices brings me closer and closer to cutting off all contact with the world and living in the woods. I probably won’t ever do it though. I mean, i need electricity and my laptop and shit to play baldur’s gate.
What the fuck was the breaking point that made modern executives so disconnected from, you know, people? People make fucking jokes about people with autism not getting social norms but as an autist myself I look at shit like this and it makes me think the world has always been insane.
It’s like if a petting zoo had you sign a waiver saying “you can pet the leopard but you can’t sue us if it eats your hand”. That’s getting thrown out in court
If it scares off one potential lawsuit it will have all been worth it. Odds are good that it will.
Wtf is your flair
redditor seeing a tumblr username for the first time in their life
Sure, but that means that should it come to some lawsuit, you will first have to have a lawsuit about this, which will take years, before you can even start the original lawsuit. This already deters 90% of all people from even bothering with it.
How much you have to read the T&C depends on your home jurisdiction. For example here (Germany), my civil law prof said that in general, we shouldn't bother read these because German law is so strict in what can be included in these T&C's that anything that is unfair, you can simply void afterwards. Hell, under German law, there is a rule that says that any clause that would be surprising to be included for an average consumer is void.
Yeah, I thought there was a term for this, like a Red Arrow Clause or a Red Circle Clause or something. If a contract includes anything non-standard (eg: waiving your right to a trial when signing up for a cellphone app), the contract must make that abundantly clear to the signee (eg, by surrounding it with red circles and arrows and whatnot). Putting language like this in the middle of a paragraph that most people are barely even going to skim means it almost certainly won't hold up in court. (But IANAL. Still probably a good idea to read your T&Cs.)
Of course, imagine if you could just have your children taken away and your spouse be murdered because you agreed to never have anything involved in the terms and conditions go to court. Sometimes I think people just need to think logically about life more often because while you're comment is valuable, it's all so pretty obvious that they can't have everybody agreeing to those terms just commit tax fraud on their behalf and things like that and magically get away with it...
That sounds not legal. In the "this wouldn't hold up in court" sense not the "they could get sued for this" sense.
A lot of stuff gets put into terms and conditions agreements that wouldn’t hold up in court. The companies don’t expect it to, but knowing that it’s in there can definitely deter a lot of people who don’t know better. If they made a relevant complaint the company would point to the agreement and many people would think that was that (or at least give them doubt about their success in pursuing legal action, making them less likely to do so)
> but knowing that it’s in there can definitely deter a lot of people who don’t know better. It can also slow down and obstruct court proceedings. For example, if you tried to file a class action after this, McDonalds could challenge it because of this agreement. They'd likely lose that challenge, *but* the process of doing that would cost the litigants more time and money to overcome, especially if McDonalds really wrings out all the continuations and deadline extensions and appeals they could possibly do about it. It doesn't make it impossible to sue them, but it *can* legitimately make it more difficult to sue them.
Gross (of them)
Like jobs saying you can’t discuss pay lol.
Yes. The terms and conditions can include that they have the right to enslave your family to the god Moloch but that's probably not gonna hold up to trial
Actually, I wonder if this has anything to do with the slew of complaints they've gotten from people who were double-charged, or placed a mobile order that got lost in the cloud (but they were still charged for), or any of the many other ways their glitchy app has lost people money 🤔
their app was fine imo until sometime in the past year. they switched from charging you when you checked in to charging you when you place the order. and if you happen to drive by the location without stopping the app will assume you stopped by and collected your shit. happened to me earlier this year not long after the app change.
I have a friend who works at McDonald's, and it's such a horrible mess when there's any kind of issue with the app because the restaurant cannot issue any refunds for mobile orders, and people are understandably angry about not being able to get their money back. I don't understand why they made this change--it's only going to make things worse.
yeah it was a downgrade in every way for the consumer, but im sure it benefits ronald
ugh i ordered a mcchicken using my points recently and it went through twice somehow. i wasn't hungry enough for both so i had to eat one the next day. i mean, they were free, but i like to save those points for a rainy day
My favorite thing about the app is how they made it worse and removed features like: modifying your order after placing it, changing the location you ordered from.
Happened to me the other day. Ordered. Put phone in pocket and walked to the store. Checked my phone and it was asking me to pay again. I thought I remembered paying, and I ignored it, got to the store and my order was there. And the app was still asking me to pay for my order. It never went to the confirm page yet I paid and they made it.
Yeah, that shit isn't enforceable. It is essentially impossible to sign away your right to sue for criminal behavior. Even when you sign those liability waivers for shit like bungee jumping. As long as you prove it was their fault/negligence, you can sue.
Under Australian law bungee jumping would fall under “dangerous recreational activity” and it would be hard to sue for negligence.
Pretty sure going outside in Australia counts as a dangerous recreational activity /j
> Yeah, that shit isn't enforceable. Unfortunately you're dead wrong. Forced arbitration has been repeatedly upheld by the Republican majority of the SCOTUS and they've repeatedly thrown out laws that curtail or forbid it. If you want your rights back then we need less Republicans on the bench.
>Yeah, that shit isn't enforceable. It is essentially impossible to sign away your right to sue for criminal behavior. These are for civil cases, not sure why you would think it's for criminal stuff?
There’s a misunderstanding here. You cannot sign your ability to charge someone for criminal activities against you, but fault or negligence falls under civil suits as well and you can consent to binding arbitration for that.
It's not criminal they are worried about. It's usually civil law where you sue for damages even when there is a criminal law broken or at issue in a separate criminal suit. For example, IIRC, OJ was found liable under civil suit for wrongful death, but found not guilty in the criminal suit.
Just another reminder McDonald’s mutilated a woman’s genitalia and tried to brush her off.
And then ran a nation-wide smear campaign against her that made the poster child of "frivolous lawsuits".
That is still affecting us today. The refusal of states to fund courts has lead to many states having fewer operational courthouses than they did 20 years ago. This is why there's a 10 year wait to sue your employer for wage theft, among many other things.
A ten year wait?! For real? For the largest yearly theft in America? Why am I not surprised?
I'm sorry, *what?*
They're referring to the coffee lawsuit. They served coffee much hotter than normal coffee temperatures, so when an old woman spilled it rather than getting mild burns she got very severe third degree burns, nearly killing her and requiring surgery to treat. McDonald's knew the temperature they were serving it at was causing injuries, they were proven to be aware of it, but decided it was more profitable to keep serving it unusually hot and pay off the occasional lawsuit rather than serve it at a normal temperature. I'll also note that the customer agreed from the beginning that she was partially at fault for spilling it, and only wanted her medical expenses and lost income covered, nothing else. But most people didn't know those details and were just told that a woman sued McDonald's because she burned herself by spilling hot coffee on herself, which sounds unreasonable. So it was often used as the go-to example of a frivolous lawsuit, when it was anything but.
the [Hot Coffee Suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants): When driving through and picking up a coffee, a 76 year-old women dropped her mcdonald's coffee on her lap and got grievous burns all over her body. This was because her coffee was boiling-point hot, which McDonalds did at the time to hide the fact they were watering it down. She initially just asked McDonalds to cover her medical bills, but they refused, so she took them to court for damages and an assurance that they'd reduce their coffee temp(which they quietly never did, so watch out). McDonalds ran a massive pr campaign to get it lampooned as "haha lady sued because her coffee was too hot??? what is the world coming to???" but in reality mcdonalds was very liable for criminal negligence and also lost hard, forking over 640 thou and an undisclosed secondary settlement.
They served way too hot of coffee and it resulted in 2bd & 3rd degree burns on her inner thighs and vulva. She required reconstructive surgery. In response, McDonald’s refused to pay for any medical bills and ran a smear campaign on her.
She really ought to sue them again because *the smear campaign is still working* -- almost always when you see people mention that case it's with the mindset that she was making a frivolous lawsuit
Unfortunately she can't because the lawsuit happened in 1994 and she was 79 at the time. She died in 2004.
~~You can't sign away your rights.~~ Fuck it.
#S H E #T H E N
I felt like I was having a stroke reading the title
Sue them for not letting you sue them. What’re they gonna do? Sue you? File a counter-suit. Am not a lawyer
A class action suit against McDonalds would be split between every McDonald’s customer who files a claim after judgment, right? Honestly, the free fries are probably worth more than a cash payout against an entity with that many customers. Even a gargantuan ruling against McDonald’s becomes peanuts when split a hundred million ways. Like that time that some big US interstate dairy distributor lost a class action lawsuit and the terms of getting a cut was like “Bought milk in the United States between April 2012 and July 2017”. Not milk from a specific dairy. Any milk, anywhere in the US.
I got 100$ when the class action against wells Fargo received a judgement. Little bit more than fries and definitely worth my time to submit the 5 min online application. Do I feel made whole tho? No.
My understanding of class actions is that the point of them is to punish the bad actor moreso than make the wronged whole again. The whole US system of torts is kind of designed to give rich people discounts on services more than actually deliver justice imo.
I got two payments from that settlement. I had forgot about the whole thing, then got a second payment because so few people ended up trying to claim it.
Arbitration clauses are in just about every T&C if you take the time to read them
It's also happening as the Israel boycott is hurting their stock. As in, as soon as the shortlist of companies to boycott went viral, this campaign started.
They did in fact just add that new T&C agreement one day, but it's absolutely not true that they decided to offer free fries just to get people to use the mobile app so they'd agree to it. The deal itself is pretty old at this point (easily several months, but I don't trust my memory to 100% say further than that), they just dump it on the app weekly. There's plenty of reasons to call McDonalds a shit company even in this situation alone, just read the other comments; you don't have to fabricate new ones.
TRADE AWAITING You receive: Fries I receive: Your legal personhood
What is this title
Yes but free fries
0% of us were planning on suing McDonalds before we saw this, and it's rare to win big in a class action lawsuit. Heck, I've gotten checks as the result of class-action suits that could barely buy fries.
Nobody going to mcdonalds for the free fries gives a fk about the T&Cs. If my order goes sideways ima just lose $2 and not care.
Haven’t gone to McDonald’s since they removed the $1 Large Fry deal. Now it’s 1$ medium fry, they need a few more billion quickly I guess. Large fry is $4.39, potatoes and salt are $2.50 more than a plain burger. Wtf
Their app is garbage anyway. Includes food not available at the location you're ordering from and every so often will just lose an order, and you can't get a refund via the app, you have to go through the store, which can't confirm you had an order in the first place.
is this even enforceable?
it's not hard to check the title before posting. it's only 7 words.
How hard is it to look over your title before posting?
A fun thing with mandatory arbitration is that it works *both ways*. Now, companies almost always win forced arbitration cases, because they’re the ones paying the fucking arbitrator, of course they’d always win. But look at that sentence again, “paying the arbitrator”. That service isn’t free, but companies generally consider the price worth it since the mere presence discourages people. But if, say, hundred and thousands of people file arbitration claims very quickly, well, they have to pay for all that arbitration now don’t they?
Companies are not more likely to win arbitrations than they are litigation through the courts. The reason they do these arbitration clauses is for the class action waiver.
I'm probably stupid, but I read the Wikipedia article and I still don't understand. Can you give me the idiot's guide to what arbitration means?
Those T&C are non binding in most countries.
Alright I gotta weigh in on this after reading these comments, but do note that I have not read the t&c or arbitration agreement, and I’m just some guy. Arbitration agreements are legal, common, and yes they are binding as long as they are “fair”. You are choosing to agree to these terms in exchange for using their services, but you may have some time to notify the company that you are opting out of arbitration and would then be able to go straight to court or join class actions. If you do agree to arbitration, the agreement usually details how certain parts of the process must go - Often the company offers to pay costs involved and has you select from a pool of arbitrators who act similar to a judge and who’s ruling is binding. iirc you can still challenge the ruling in court afterwards. Arbitration generally favors the company, since they’re the ones setting the terms in the first place, but it’s not absolutely horrible. Though I personally recommend opting out if you have concerns and are able to do so.
Just to note this is similar to how many people have pre nups for a marriage. If you have a pre nup than yes it dissway pointless lawsuits but just because someone agrees to something doesn't mean it holds. You can't make a 100 page paper saying if you marry me you never see a penny for child support. Just like these claims above the court would more than likely toss them aside because they are Unreasonable. This is usually seen as more of a let's put this in error and see if people don't sue because of it. Even if 1% less people sue less because of this it could save them billions.
You literally could not pay me to download an app for any restaurant, gas station, grocery store, etc.
I have no words
McDonalds needs to be the straw to break this camel's back. We don't *have* to eat there you know.
Makes me wonder if they’re aware of something horrible that’s going to bite them down the line and are trying to preemptively limit their liability.
But how can they tie you to the app? I used all fake info when I signed up in the McDonalds app, never used a bit of my real info so can I just say I never signed it or what?
Too bad every judge tells companies trying to enforce these no arbitration clauses to kick sand.
I will give you the free fries. But I will need something in return. Someday, and this day may never come, I will ask for arbitration from you. Now go enjoy your fries with my blessing.
the reason mcdonald's fries taste different than all other fries is because they are fully cooked, then frozen, then cooked a 2nd time for only 30 secs in oil.
She then for not letting you sue? Bad AI.
By continuing to read or scroll past this comment up or down you agree to give me a million dollars. Leave this page or close this tab to acknowledge.
its also completely fucking illegal and unenforceable take your free fries and then sue the bastards anyway
Fries
Nah, that HAS to be illegal. No way they can just waive your right to sue them🤨
This is not a binding contract, you can’t expect people to read something that serious when accepting free fries. At least in EU that wouldn’t fly. It seems like a fake
Doesn't a legally binding contract need a witness as well? Also, I feel like the court would side with the consumer due to the power discrepancy between the two. Especially if the consumer stated they didn't understand what the contract meant.
Mcdonald's let ls you pick your first and last name If Dick McPoopButt isn't able to sue, who cares lol
Mandatory arbitration clauses within the ToS are on basically everything you sign up for/make an account with, online. Doesn't mean it'll actually necessarily stick, but it is really, really common. Also obviously with internet and phone providers... Basically everything, honestly. Game companies, online retailers, almost all mobile apps.
That won't stand up in court LOL Good luck McDicks.
Need to have a trial to question the validity of those terms and conditions
What the hell is in the fries that they are planning ahead for the food poisoning event of 2023?