Using your name as your makers mark

james terrio said:
Legalese aside, McDonald's was sued and settled because a whole team of dipsticks on both sides agreed it would be much cheaper for them to write a quick check than to waste time disputing this sort of nonsense. Now every coffee in the country costs $.002 more to pay for the warning sticker saying "BE CAREFUL! it's hot."

Upon further review, I think your lawyer is either jerking your chain or doesn't know his elbow from a violin bow. It's a knife, of course it cuts things! Then again, I could be wrong... please don't sue me :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You do realize that they lost because they had already been required by judgement to reduce the temperature of their coffee, right? They purposely served it as near to boiling as possible so that customers couldn't drink it until they were too far away to turn around and return it. Why would they do that? Because it was cheaper than buying decent tasting coffee. It was also cheaper to just keep ignoring judgements against them, so a judge decided to teach them a lesson.
 
No, I didn't realize that. And that's what I get for commenting on legal issues. What the hell, I don't even like coffee.
 
I was a corporate manager for McDonald's back in the 70's. In can actually speak informatively on this subject. (Ray Kroc even bought me a drink once)

The reason for the higher temperature was two-fold.
First, to extract more from the coffee ,and thus reduce the amount of coffee required to make a pot.....and thus save money.
The other reason was to keep it hot longer, and decrease the complaints of cold coffee. They found that the average person drinks the coffee ten minutes after buying it.

The coffee guild's recommended temperature to serve coffee at is 155-175F. McDonald's''s brewed at 185-190F, and served its coffee at 180-185F. Most commercial sellers brew at 165F and serve at 160F.

The reason for this was economical and not nefarious. However, the company had indeed been told by the courts before that the coffee was dangerously hot. Since they knew of the situation, the judgment and award went from compensatory to punitive. The real winners were the attorneys on both sides.

Now, as far as the claims that McDonald's coffee is "twice as Hot" as everybody else's coffee, or that the woman was, "Injured for Life", and that the award was "Hundreds of millions",....they are as false as the Claims about Obama's birth. Just because some people repeat what they read or heard won't make it so. McD's coffee wasn't 320F, Though severely burned - the woman healed up, the total award was 2.76 million, ....and Obama is from Hawaii....and I am sure there are those reading this post who will want to debate some of this...which should be posted in a new thread in the political arena.

As far as the taste of McD's coffee back then (I don't know about recent surveys), it was rated as one of the most popular because of the higher coffee flavor. That was long before the baristas existed. McDonald's already had a warning on the cups, but now has a larger warning. They still serve their coffee at 175-195F....and have had no recent suits. Many, still say they prefer the coffee at McD's because it is hot.

The real kicker was that the company refused the original request for $20,000 to cover the medical bills. Then lawyers entered the scene, and the offer was $500,000, which McDonald's turned down again. At trial, the jury awarded her $200,000, and assigned her 20% fault, thus reducing her award to $160,000. They awarded $2.6M in punitive damages, mainly because McDonald's had been so resistive to admitting fault.
You are correct that the company really doesn't absorb the cost of settlements.... and that the consumer ultimately pays the cost.
 
The question is not whether signing your work incurs risk. The real question is whether that risk is great enough to warrant avoidance. I think it's been established that the concensus is that the risk is low enough that you should not worry about it. Fundamentally, you cannot run a business without risk. Pretty much ANY business decision is a risk call of one sort or another. If by putting your name on your product and standing behind that product you create customer confidence, which results in greater sales, the reward far outweighs the risk that same brainless Birther nutbag will lop off a digit and claim it was your fault. That risk definitely exists, but you have to weigh it against the potential and expected reward.

All business decisions are like that.
 
"Any use of this knife/tool that results in any unwanted injury or damage indicates misuse by the user and is the sole responsibility of the user." *

Include this in your literature, web sites, receipts, etc, and that aughta take care of everything. ;-)

- Paul Meske (Not to be confused with any individual by that name, and who is not responsible for whatever you may decide to do or not do.) ;-)

* "Any use of this advice that results in any unwanted injury or damage indicates misuse by the user and is the sole responsibility of the user."
 
I don't think it makes any difference whether your makers mark is your name or anything else. The question, should it come up, is "Did you make the knife?" There sure have been a lot of knives sold and a lot of cut fingers without any lawsuits. It seems like the question should already have been answered.
 
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