Subject:
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Re: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?]
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 20 Jan 2000 15:05:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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2408 times
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Frank Filz wrote:
> Of course I see the McDonald's coffee issue as one where the system
> actually for the most part worked. A couple important points of note in
> this issue:
>
> - many complaints had been raised before about the temperature of the
> coffee
Irrelevent to the appropriate punishment. I personally know several
people who prefered it when the coffee was (to my judgement) assininely
hot. McDonalds was supplying a niche product - ultra hot coffee - and
people were buying it. They should know what they're getting and should
take appropriate precautions.
> - the suit was ultimately settled out of court
OK, so instead of the courts actually doing something silly, McDonalds
felt they had to settle that way to prevent the courts from doing
something silly. It's all the same. If the courts are so sure to do
something silly that you might as well just go along with a silly
punishment, it has the same effect.
> - McDonalds did reduce the temperature of their coffee
I don't consider that either good or bad, so I can't see how that has
any effect.
> The biggest problem is that the media doesn't report on the final
> disposition of these huge cases with the same fervor that they report
> the initial case. There is also the fact that the media doesn't present
> the same evidence that the jury sees (and part of that evidence is the
> attitude which the defendants have while testifying, I can just see them
> having a "who cares" attitude on the stand).
That seems doubtful. Maybe a defensive one. How does the media fervor
matter? I think I'm missing something.
> One also has to remember that sometimes these huge corporations need to
> see huge judgements in order for them to actually respond (you brought
> up the Ford Pinto case, the problem there was that the judgements were
> so small, it was cost effective for them to ignore the real problem).
The judegements were too small to make the company take notice, but not
too small to make individuals take notice. If the CEO had been hit with
a multi-million dollar fine, they would have made some changes.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?]
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| (...) You know what _really_ bugs me about US lawsuits? Punitive damages. The whole _concept_ is just utterly asinine. Fines, if any are necessary, should be _fines_, and therefore payable to the government, not J Random Victim. Jasper (25 years ago, 21-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?]
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| <3885F5ED.ABD@mindspring.com> <388625A1.F24912E7@eclipse.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (...) Of course I see the McDonald's coffee issue as one where the system actually for the most part worked. A (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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