That McDonald's case is going to fuck them up. It's clear precedent for a largely similar case. The extreme publicity around it also means Starbucks can't claim ignorance of the danger of hot coffee via the drive thru as any sort of defense.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Black tea needs to be brewed pretty close to boiling, and even green tea is brewed at 185, the same temp as the McDonald's coffee incident. I don't know how you can brew tea to order and hand it to someone a moment later without it still being at almost the exact same temperature. Tea also needs 3-5 minutes to steep, and you can't hold up a drive through just to hand it over.
I'm not much for Starbucks, so don't take this as me defending them, but I think most honest people would have trouble articulating why this merits a $50mm lawsuit. Imagine a similar ruling coming down on your local cafe.
A reminder that for the McDonald's claim, she only wanted her medical bills covered, it was McDonald's that refused a much smaller claim of some tens of thousands and instead insisted on taking it to court. Plus they had been advised numerous times previously from customers about burns due to their decision to maintain the temp of their brewed coffee so high for so long after it was made, solely to minimize profit loss. They were scraping pennies and ignoring customer warnings.
“Starbucks offered $30m to settle but wanted confidentiality. We said we would settle for $30m without confidentiality and only if Starbucks agreed to publicly apologize and promise to change policy to prevent this from happening again,”
Starbucks offered the guy $30M with a confidentiality agreement. They were already clearly thinking it warranted an amount in that region, which would only be if they thought they could be liable for even more.
Black tea needs to be brewed pretty close to boiling, and even green tea is brewed at 185, the same temp as the McDonald's coffee incident
What the f- oh, American units
I was wondering what the heck kind of green tea needed that kind of treatment, lol
You can't physically get water to go over 100c in atmosphere without it being pressurized. What impossible feats where you thinking was going on when you saw the 185?
This is just straight up false. I regularly brew black and herbal teas at 70-75°C (158-167°F) if I'm in a rush. It steeps long before cooling to a drinkable temperature. I haven't tried brewing green tea this way but I doubt it's much different.
Sun tea is brewed barely above ambient temperature (although that of course takes hours to steep).
I get if you are doing something different personally, but its literally the recommendation on the box. When I was learning about coffee I found that water into the brew basket or pour over at 185 would produce a terrible sour flavor, and that is well known in specialty coffee. Tea seems to be more forgiving, but I still let my water hit a boil before I brew mine. First result on google for a tea shop states the same thing: https://artfultea.com/blogs/101/tea-brewing-temperature-guide
I'm all for ganging up on mega-corps and watching them squirm when a lawsuit comes around, but it may have been a bit extreme to call my statement false. If Starbucks did anything wrong here, to me it was the cup not being seated in the carrier, not the water temperature.
Also, what stops drive-thrus from serving the kind of tea that you can brew at slightly cooler temp?
It's up to the business to decide how and what they serve safely. If hot tea cannot be served safely, don't serve it. Or maybe invest that goddamn extra cent into a cup that does not spill.
I called the statement false, because it is. If it were true, sun tea would not be possible. Tea brewed at progressively lower temperatures has longer steeping time, but tea can indeed be brewed much lower than boiling point. I encourage you to test this yourself if you don't believe me.
Also, I emphasize again: I literally brew tea at 70°C all the time. So no, tea does not need to be brewed at 100°C.
It's not "straight up false". You're literally brewing your tee under the accepted norm. Most anyone who makes black tee knows the correct brewing temperature is around 205f. There's so many sources that it should be brewed over 195f there isn't even a valid argument you could try to make against this. Same temps for herbal teas.
White, yellow, and green teas get lower temps. Not black or herbal. Heck, just Google search "black leaf tea brewing temperature". I doubt you'll be able to find a single real source that states under 195f
Physics doesn't care about "accepted norms". Tea can steep well under boiling. Yes, even black tea. There are countless recipes online for sun tea that specify that the tea be steeped at ambient temperature. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a location where that gets far above 50°C.
So no, tea, even black tea, does not require near-100°C water.
Seems like a pretty solid "fuck Starbucks" decision. Good job jury.
The incident:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rmUichSTMfckx3NkZ4rcv-XxibJo2-o4/view
2nd Cup is at 2:30 and third immediately after.
Looks to me like she at least attempted to seat the cup firmly in the tray. So IDK?
As sad as this is for the driver, it seemed stable enough when she handed it over, but the driver unbalanced them.
EDIT:
On my 3rd review of the situation, it seems the 3rd cup looks taller in the tray. If they are supposed to be similar size cups, it is clearly not seated like the others.
Still I'd say the driver does carry some of the blame, he fumbled it after he had 100% control of the tray.
And although the driver can never be restored by any amount, $50m seems insane by the standards of "normal" countries.
Much like the insane judgements on copyright infringement, and death penalty to people who turn out to be innocent in USA.
Maybe ask yourself this: If the driver was drunk, and fumbled the tray, would that still be the fault of the server?
Now he probably wasn't drunk, but it was still him that fumbled the tray, maybe because he wasn't focused?
The issue with this is not likely to be the fault of whoever dropped the cup, but rather like the prior McDonald's case that the restaurant was maintaining the drink at far too high a temperature to be safe. Therefore guaranteeing injury if it is spilled on someone -- regardless of how it is spilled.
Expecting that drinks will never get spilled on anyone is completely unrealistic. Maintaining drink temperature at a reasonably non-injurious level for when (not if) one will be spilled is therefore mandatory.
This dude required skin grafts. That's not a case of, "Oops, it spilled and now your shirt's wet."
It's both in terms of fault. California is a comparative fault state. So if the guy's injuries are worth 50 mil and he and Starbucks are each found equally at fault, them for giving overheated water and him for negligently handling a cup of potentially dangerously hot liquid then they're each responsible for half the 50 mil. Or 70:30. Or 100:0. Whatever the jury decides.
he restaurant was maintaining the drink at far too high a temperature to be safe.
I think that's absolutely an issue, and I was wondering a bit about that, but that would also ruin the flavor of the coffee. I've never been to a Starbucks, but AFAIK Coffee is their main product.
Expecting that drinks will never get spilled on anyone is completely unrealistic.
Good point.
AFAIK a normal coffee machine heats the water to about 93° C, as a supposedly optimal temperature for the beans. I'd guess about 90° would be a pretty normal temperature for coffee.
But I also think that 60° would probably be hot enough to serve the coffee at.
Since our body temperature is about 37, the delta at 90 is 53, but the delta at 60 is only 23 which is way less than half, meaning that keeping it a bit colder would have an enormous impact on burn damage.
You know, there was a trial where they reviewed the footage in detail, probably more than 3 times, and both sides got to point these things out. Are you sure he "fumbled" before the 3rd drink got spilled? Or was it the drinks instability that caused him to fumble?
Just lucky he didn't put a balm on it.