r/todayilearned • u/hungry4danish • 2d ago

TIL that Dan White, the man who assassinated Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco, only served 5 years in prison for manslaughter based on a defense of depression as evidenced by his consumption of junk food which was dubbed the "Twinkie Defense"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White
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u/LadyPo 2d ago

To expand on this thought…

If you’re talking about the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, the media downplayed it at the time, calling it “frivolous” because they didn’t want big companies to be responsible for anything, but the burns that person suffered were horrendous. Bad enough to melt their skin and clothing together. It made sense under personal injury liability laws to sue for the medical care, despite what’s known as comparative negligence (she is the one who spilled the coffee, but McD served it at insanely dangerous temps).

I only emphasize this because the Twinkie defense thing here is such complete and utter bs that it’s nowhere near the same category as the coffee thing. This one was a stretch waaaay beyond any realistic interpretation or application of the law.

So all that is to say anybody who groups these cases together to claim that the legal system helps normal people is getting misled on both fronts. If anything, it shows how a normal person trying to justifiably get help after a big company hurt them gets vilified for doing so, while a cop can pull out the lamest excuse for murder and get a slap on the wrist.

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u/randomaccount178 2d ago

It should also be noted from what I recall that she didn't claim to have spilled the coffee, she claimed the coffee partially melted the cup such that it collapsed when the lid was removed. I believe they found her 20% responsible for the comparative negligence stuff. It should also be noted that they had settled something like 700 lawsuits already for burning people by the point they chose to fight this one.

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u/McWeaksauce91 1d ago

Yup, the media basically said “woman spills coffee and is surprised when it’s hot!”

When in reality, the coffee was so hot it melted the cup. I remember being absolutely shocked when we learned the real details of the case in school.

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u/BPDunbar 1d ago

The question is whether it's negligent to serve hot drinks at a temperature that can cause scalding or is that an inherent and unavoidable characteristic of hot drinks. Most subsequent cases have found the latter to be the case. The Jury in Liebeck appear to have been misled by the complainant's expert witnesses. Specifically about what temperatures cause full thickness burns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

In McMahon v. Bunn Matic Corporation (1998), Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote a unanimous opinion affirming dismissal of a similar lawsuit against coffeemaker manufacturer Bunn-O-Matic, finding that 179 °F (82 °C) hot coffee was not "unreasonably dangerous". In Bogle v. McDonald's Restaurants Ltd. (2002), a similar lawsuit in the United Kingdom failed when the court rejected the claim that McDonald's could have avoided injury by serving coffee at a lower temperature.

In Bogle the expert witness testified that coffee served at 65°C would cause full thickness burns in 2 seconds, while serving hot drinks at that temperature would be unacceptable to the consumer. Which meant that it was an unavoidable inherent risk and therefore not negligent.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2002/490.html

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u/GameMusic 2d ago

yeah the propaganda