@Dowaco,
the thing is, however, in the hot coffee case the vehicle was not in fact moving. Rather, the woman's son-in-law (who was driving) parked so that she could add cream and sugar. Unfortunately, media reports at the time seriously misrepresented the case and made it a lot more ridiculous than it originally was.
Personally, however, I have always felt that the woman should have born a far greater share of the responsibility than she actually did.
@Von Dondu,
I saw your comments regarding tort reform and I also know that this case tends to be a rallying cry for conservatives seeking tort reform; so much so, that they often perpetuate the distortion surrounding it. My apologies for reading into something that was not there.
In this case, the injured woman was found to be 20% responsible, so McDonald's was not held entirely responsible. We could disagree about the percentages, but I think a sharing of responsibility and a corresponding damage award is fair.
I do not argue against a sharing of blame, sorry, I should have been more clear. Indeed, I entirely agree, culpability rests with both sides. I guess part of the difference is that I feel the percentages should have broken down into something like 60 to 40, with Stella Liebeck taking the lion's share of responsibility.
I admit, though, I do have some trouble with the notion of breaking down ethical and legal questions like this into quantifiable measures. To me, there are far too many highly subjective variables at work. But, admittedly, I don't think like an economist.
The way I see it, Stella Liebeck should have used far more common sense than she did. She was holding, between her knees, a flimsy cup of hot coffee and she pulled the lid off of it. Now, elderly people and children are far more sensitive to extreme temperatures, which was argued in this case. But, if Liebeck was hurt by her greater sensitivity to heat, than surely she would have felt the high temperature of the coffee when she initially held it in her hand and when she placed it between her knees.
To me, personally, this shows a total lack of common sense. Placing anything between the knees, much less a flimsy cup of hot liquid, is hardly stable. Added to this, think of the sitting positions in the back seat of a car, your knees and legs are far more likely to be angled rather than straight out, which will reduce stability yet further. If you open the container, the chances of it sloshing out are very high. No, the vehicle was not moving, it was stationary, but even so, this was an extremely stupid thing to do, and Stella Liebeck, in my mind, bears much more than 20% of the blame.
The defense in this case argued that the majority of customers
like their coffee hot, and they also argued that McDonald's was serving the coffee according to industry standards. Another point made was that while there were about 700 previous cases against the temperature of McDonald's coffee, these were a mere fraction of the billions upon billions of cups sold without incident.
Now, while I was researching this case initially I found that the industry standard for hot coffee seems to vary dramatically, ranging anywhere from 130 to 200 degrees. It is also a point for debate where Liebeck's case is concerned. Thus, to me, when the plaintiff's lawyers stated that McDonald's coffee temperatures were above industry standards I do have to hesitate. Yes, they were on the high end of the spectrum, undeniably, but did they exceed the accepted range? Were they breaking a law by serving coffee at a temperature the majority of customers enjoy it at?
Who is at fault here? Certainly, when they became aware of the problem, McDonald's should have started taking measures to ensure that their cups had large warning signs, and perhaps for Drive Thru customers they should have started using larger cups than normal to reduce the chance of spillage.
But, I still do not think this is enough to justify a lawsuit against the company, especially one of this proportion. Granted, Liebeck did not actually receive the 2.7 million dollars in damages, she actually ended up with something less than $600 thousand dollars, which wasn't really much, all things considered.
Regarding the argument that these 700 previous cases represent a fraction of all the coffee served, I honestly do feel this is callous. But, if we do look at this in quantifiable measures, there is more than a grain of logic involved. The overwhelmingly vast majority of McDonald's coffee drinkers manage to safely consume their beverages without incident. I do think this holds a certain amount of leverage when weighing up responsibility here.
Okay, that is all I can write for more, but I'll try to find more time later.
If you read the message threads about Flame Warriors, I'm sort of like a lazy Big Cat. I play with threads that interest me, and once in a while I pounce. 
