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Woman sues over 'misleading' trailer for "Drive"

Team Broccoli said:
hyzmarca said:
Admiral2 said:
Woman: "My coffee spilled in my lap. It's hot. I'm suing McDonalds."

Judge: "McDonalds, give this woman millions of dollars."


I'm constantly amazed at the bullshit court systems will tolerate.
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Why yes, third degree burns and and skin graft surgery are fun fun fun. Everyone should try it. It's hard to imagine why anyone would be upset by that.

At the temperature McDonalds served coffee, they might as well just set up a machine that randomly dips people's genitals in boiling water.
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Granted, I don't drink coffee, but for some reason I don't think that people who do do so to pour it on their balls.

That lawsuit was silly. Sure the coffee was hot (shocker), but did McDonald's make her spill it on her lap? No. She was a dumbass who spilled it herself. That is like getting a steak knife back from a sharpener, tripping, accidentally stabbing yourself in the process, and then suing the sharpener for making the knife too sharp.
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Actually, it's nothing like that. The coffee was served not just hot, but too hot for human consumption, and hot enough to pose a severe health hazard. I don't know about you, but I don't want my coffee to cause third-degree burns on contact. And it wasn't the first time McDonald's had been made aware of their excessively-hot coffee. It was just the first time someone got somewhere suing them for it.

Yes, everyone expects coffee to be hot. But does anyone expect it to cause instant third-degree burns, should it spill on you?

Didn't think so.
 
Ah, yes, the old "suing over hot coffee" argument. Completely forgetting that law suit was legitimate. As has already been said up-thread:

The coffee caused the woman third-degree burns over her lap almost instantly. That's not simply "hot."

Investigations showed the McDonalds as a matter of policy served coffee this hot, far hotter than could be safely handled and drank. Far hotter than industry standard for businesses that serve coffee.

The woman originally tried to get McDonald's to simply pay for her injuries outside of court, McDonald's refused and she sued, only for the medical damages. The court deemed her partly responsible for the injuries (she was the one who handled the cup) and split the damages between her and McDonald's with McDonald's getting the bulk of the bill. The court then awarded her punitive ("don't let this happen again!") damages on top of what she was suing for. McDonald's appealed, a second trial produced virtually the same result only with a smaller award and eventually McDonald's settled out of court.

But the coffee wasn't just hot it was so hot it gave the woman third-degree burns. Instantly.

That's far beyond "hot coffee."

Hot Coffee Facts

That meme is used and tired, and the facts of what happened are at the point where they should be well known. That was a legit lawsuit.
 
Trekker4747 said:
There was a particularly egregious case a few years ago where a movie about a man-eating alligator was marketed as a serial killer movie. Nowhere in the ads was any hint that the "serial killer" was a reptile!
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Wasn't "Snow Dogs" another case? IIRC the Cuba Gooding, Jr. movie suggested it was a family picture about Cuba and a bunch of wacky nearly anthropomorphic dogs on some sled race or something. But the scenes shown in the trailer were really part of a dream sequence in the movie, the rest of the movie played mostly straight.
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And "Kangaroo Jack", which made it look like the movie was about a talking, rapping kangaroo. I got into an argument with a teenager on this point. Neither of us had seen the movie, but I watched the trailers closely enough to tell what they were pulling. She, however, insisted the movie was about a talking kangaroo, and went to see it.

She was disappointed.


Eviscero said:
No, but it's false advertising, which is illegal outside of entertainment. That it's a hassle to the audience is almost beside the point. The more I think about it, the curiouser it seems.
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I came to the conclusion quite some time ago that every bit of what you see in the media is slanted to try to convince you of something. Some of it may even be true, but that's beside the point-- it's ALL slanted, and it's ALL trying to sell you on some viewpoint or product. The only difference between entertainment ads and the rest is that it's easier to spot the disconnect.


davejames said:
Plus there has to be a point where common sense takes over. No one really expects that one spray of Axe body spray will suddenly bring dozens of hot supermodels to your side. ;)
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WHAAAAT??? Do you know how much I've paid for that stuff?????
 
Silvercrest said:
I came to the conclusion quite some time ago that every bit of what you see in the media is slanted to try to convince you of something. Some of it may even be true, but that's beside the point-- it's ALL slanted, and it's ALL trying to sell you on some viewpoint or product.
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Isn't that essentially the definition of any kind of communication?
 
Maybe in our society it is. But communication should be first and foremost about delivering facts. It's possible to do that without slanting them, without downplaying the facts you don't like, without changing the facts to be politically correct, without belittling the other guy or making him look like an idiot. OR without cherry-picking scenes from a trailer to convince the audience the movie is about something it isn't.

As an example: Computers can talk to each other without slanting the facts, so it IS possible. Humans don't appear to want to.
 
I remember McDonald's coffee back in the day before the lawsuit. Man that shit was hot. You had to blow on it and let it cool with the cap off just to be able to take one sip larger than a drop. I could never figure out why they always served it so undrinkably hot. Just putting your lips to the shit was enough to let you know it would burn you.
 
Silvercrest said:
As an example: Computers can talk to each other without slanting the facts, so it IS possible. Humans don't appear to want to.
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The implicit "slant" is that the information is accurate. That can be abused by viruses and such.

Even if you're just relating facts, you're still trying to convince someone of the viewpoint that those facts are relevant and accurate.
 
CarbonCopy said:
I remember McDonald's coffee back in the day before the lawsuit. Man that shit was hot. You had to blow on it and let it cool with the cap off just to be able to take one sip larger than a drop. I could never figure out why they always served it so undrinkably hot. Just putting your lips to the shit was enough to let you know it would burn you.
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Apparently, it was served so hot in order to cover up the truly shitty quality of the coffee itself.
 
Voice of God said:
CarbonCopy said:
I remember McDonald's coffee back in the day before the lawsuit. Man that shit was hot. You had to blow on it and let it cool with the cap off just to be able to take one sip larger than a drop. I could never figure out why they always served it so undrinkably hot. Just putting your lips to the shit was enough to let you know it would burn you.
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Apparently, it was served so hot in order to cover up the truly shitty quality of the coffee itself.
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:lol: I'm not sure where you got that from, but in retrospect that could be the only reason, since once it cooled it was awful. I only ordered it when I "had to have coffee".
 
It's probably brewed and kept at such a high temperature to get as much as possible out of the cheap, low-grade, grounds and as many uses as possible.
 
Trekker4747 said:
It's probably brewed and kept at such a high temperature to get as much as possible out of the cheap, low-grade, grounds and as many uses as possible.
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Yeah. I don't know where I read it, but it was in one of the many lengthy treatises written on the subject that McD's was using very poor quality coffee and the extreme heat was meant to mask it. If it's so hot you can't taste it, you can't tell it's shit, right?
 
Yeah. IIRC if you have a bunch of coffee beans the higher quality of those beans, after roasting, are sold as whole beans to premium retailers. The lesser quality beans are sold as medium-grade beans. The lowest quality beans are ground up and sold as coffee grounds/"instant coffee." In all of these processes you get some dust and run-off from grinding, shaking and just general flaked off crud. This stuff is bagged up in giant 50-pound sacks and sold to places that make large amounts of coffee and sell it a cheap price. Then there's the stuff that gets caught in the gears and augers of grinders, settles around machinery and mixes in with simple dust. That's the stuff that's bagged up and sold to McDonald's.
 
i get that there are some trailers that are misleading, but i'd say they are in the minority. certainly not something to sue over. get a refund for your ticket and be on your way.

at what point do we just tell people, "Stop being stupid!" a friend of mine worked at a blockbuster and a lady returned "28 days later" upset that it was not the sequel to "28 days"... how much longer will it be until people can sue for a mistake like that?
 
The trailer to "The Village" was misleading. So much so that it attracted the horror film buffs who were completely disappointed with the movie and it kept away the people actually would enjoy the film.
 
Wanna bet someone is going to sue "The Avengers" because it's not about John Steed and Emma Peel?

"I was sure Scarlet Johannsen was playing Emma--especially in that outfit. But she was some Russian spy I've never heard of!"
 
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