Delivery driver said he was disfigured when improperly secured drink spilled after he picked it up at a drive-through

Summary

A California jury awarded Michael Garcia $50 million after he suffered severe burns from a spilled Starbucks hot tea, requiring skin grafts and causing permanent disfigurement.

Garcia’s lawsuit alleged a Starbucks employee failed to secure the drink in a tray, leading to the spill. Starbucks offered a $30 million settlement with confidentiality, which Garcia rejected.

The company plans to appeal, calling the damages excessive.

The case echoes past lawsuits over hot beverage burns, including the famous McDonald’s coffee case from the 1990s.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 hours ago

    If you went that low, coffee snobs would probably riot. I don’t know the correct number, though. I’ll leave you with an anecdote, which is this:

    I once spilled a cup of coffee water directly on my crotch at camp, via the expedient of not realizing my collapsible silicone camp cup was not fully deployed. I had just taken the pot off of my camp stove where it was at a rolling boil, poured it straight into the cup, which collapsed, and then onto myself. Total time from taking the boiling pot off the fire to dousing myself was about four seconds. That’s basically as hot as water can get unenclosed, under normal terrestrial conditions.

    That hurt like a bastard for about 30 seconds, and my thighs were red for the rest of the day. I obviously didn’t require any skin grafts. (I was also able to stand up right away and fan off, and wasn’t trapped in a car.)

    If the plaintiff was burned to the point that skin grafts were necessary then there was definitely something wrong with that cup of coffee.

    Edit: Actually, for science. I just poured a cup straight out of my home coffee maker and bunged a thermometer in it. 170° F, or 76.66° C. I drank it and didn’t feel even a little bit like rioting, so that temperature is probably decent for serving. (Not necessarily brewing, which is 90-something C.) In fact, I would be immensely surprised if Starbucks did not have some kind of corporate guideline or policy about this, especially in the post-McDonald’s case world.