If we weren't in a sue-happy environment we wouldn't have the "Warning - Coffee may be hot" There actually is no law on the books requiring such warnings. One day some idiot spilled a cup of McDonald's coffee on themselves, and burned themselves. They sued MickyD's and won, the Idiot claimed that <snip> didn't know the coffee would be hot and since there wasn't a warning declaring the coffee as such, MickyD's was responsible. Since then all companies that put themselves in any kind of situation where an idiot could be hurt put simliar warning on all their products, to prevent themselves from losing millions to people without common sense.
Sigh.....
Ah yes, the media had fun with this one. What idiot doesn't know coffee is hot, eh?
except "Warning: Coffee is hot!" labels had nothing to do with this lawsuit.
Fact 1. Multiple scientific studies were presented that showed the correlation between skin burn severity, liquid temperature, and exposure time
Fact 2. Multiple scientific studies were presented that documented human reflexive response time
Fact 3. McDonald's coffee was served a a temperature capable of producing burns BEFORE possible human response
Fact 4. Internal McDonald's documents showed corporate knowledge of prior burn incidents
Fact 5. Internal McDonald's documents showed coffee temp was specified due to business/profit concerns, not customer requests as they argued (higher brewing temp permits more coffee to be brewed from a given batch of coffee grounds, cost savings ~ 1 cent/cup)
The award in this case was punitive. It was not "reward" for the plaintiff. It was a punishment for McDonald's intended to force a change in a practice deemed unsafe.