A while back I posted a picture of a coffee cup, reportedly from Canada, that made fun of U.S. tort law and, indirectly, poor Stella Liebeck, the plaintiff in the infamous McDonald’s coffee spill.
Now Chris Fergus, a professor in Australia, sends along this photo showing another coffee cup maker having a grand old time with the case by including a warning on its cups stating, “Avoid Pouring on Crotch Area.” I don’t speak French, but can guess the French version amounts to something like “Don’t Pour It on Your Oolala.” Chris said he received the photo from one of his students and is unsure where it originated.
Hilarious, unless you happen to end up like Ms. Liebeck. Sorry for the graphic pic, but this is actually one of the milder pictures of her burn injuries:
And so here we are more than a decade later continuing to distort the American tort system with a case in which dangerously hot coffee sold through a drive-thru window caused third-degree burns to a 79-year-old woman who accidentally spilled it while a passenger in a stopped vehicle trying to add cream and sugar. Consult the original post for links to some eye-opening information about what really happened in the McDonald’s coffee spill case.
–Thanks to Chris Fergus
I am the guilty party who made up this java jacket for our small independent coffee shop. This has been around for many years before things went viral on the internet. My brother and I over coffee one day just decided to put this on the jacket to make fun of the ridiculous warnings on mega-corporations sleeves. I had heard of the McDonald’s case but this really was not in our minds at the time. At the printers he said, “Why not come up with a French version since due to political correctness in Canada we have to have everything in French as well as English.” Then I came up with the German…the Germans think it is Dutch and vice versa. This was our own private, local joke and was never meant to go around the globe like it did.
Ahh, thanks so much for the elucidation!
Quick question from your neighbors to the South: What the hell is wrong with you?