Should Addictive Tech Come With a Health Warning?

holy_calamity writes "Academics researching how technology addiction affects businesses and employees say 'habit-forming' gadgets like Blackberries should be dispensed along with warnings about the effect they can have on your life. 'We don't want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies.'"

Re:Absolutely Not

[KublaiKhan]

There's already government-mandated 'correct' usage of spraypaint. Read a can of any aerosol sometime: it's a federal offense to use it in a manner other than indicated on the packaging.

It's to give 'em something to prosecute 'huffers' on, o'course, but it's still a government-mandated 'approved' use, meaning that, yes, your canned-air-flamethrower made from a lighter strapped to a canned air or hairspray can that you've been using to toast mosquitoes is illegal.

Re:Heh

[adminstring]

That warning only appears on the special anti-viral Kleenex. [drugstore.com] The idea is that you should only use it to blow your nose, rather than eating the Kleenex in an attempt to fight off a viral infection, which wouldn't work and might be harmful.

If you look at the active ingredients (Citric Acid (7.51%) and Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (2.02%)) you'll notice that the average bottle of shampoo contains the exact same active ingredients.

So basically they're telling you not to eat soap, and that there is a Federal law out there somewhere that says "don't eat soap!"

Hopefully there isn't a law that says "don't eat paste or crayons" otherwise a good percentage of preschoolers are in violation.

Mmm, paste!

Re:You have it all twisted

[neochubbz]

FYI, That woman was a 79 year old woman who suffered third degree burns, and was only originally suing to cover her medical costs. Keep it in perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_coffee_case [wikipedia.org]

Re:You have it all twisted

[OverflowingBitBucket]

Warning labels exist not because a woman was stupid and burned her lap with hot coffee. She was stupid. Everyone knows that. They exist because she decided to sue and wasn't laughed out of court. She wasn't laughed out of court because everyone likes to attack the big companies. Because if yer on a jury with this poor burned woman on one side, and a megacorporation on the other, yer going to make the coorporation pay just because it's the liberal-ish thing to do. And so now companies have to protect themselves. I would too, if some person could sue me for a hundred billion gajillion USD. I'd put warning labels on every single thing I made.

I see people post this same misinformation over and over. Frivolous lawsuits and stupid warning labels have been around much longer than the McDonald's coffee case.

To save you future embarrassment, I'd suggest reading into a little into it. Here are some starting points:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_coffee_case [wikipedia.org]
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm [lectlaw.com]
http://www.centerjd.org/free/mythbusters-free/MB_mcdonalds.htm [centerjd.org]

And more:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mcdonalds+coffee+case&btnG=Google+Search&meta= [google.com]

This case is not the poster child of frivolous lawsuits that many people think it is.

Re:You have it all twisted

[darkfire5252]

Sigh. I get tired of people using the McDonalds coffee lawsuit as an example. Yes, there are lots of frivolous law suits and suing these days, but this case wasn't one of them. A quick google for "mcdonalds coffee sue" turns up a page with the actual facts as the first result. From http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-11.htm [commondreams.org] :

• 79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn.
• There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. [Cases implying actual civil claims, not complaints]
• Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees.
• The jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million, but the judge cut it in half.
• McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.

So, the woman sued because she suffered severe burns. The jury awarded damages based on the damage she suffered, and then awarded punitive damages because it was clear that McDonalds knewe there was a problem, had seen the consequences of this problem and been warned before, and still did not take the relatively simple corrective measure that would prevent severe burns from their product.

Company knowingly does potentially harmful act. Act harms woman. Woman sues company. Company is penalized and corrects their behavior. Isn't that exactly how the system is supposed to work?

Re:You have it all twisted

[Theaetetus]

Warning labels exist not because a woman was stupid and burned her lap with hot coffee. She was stupid. Everyone knows that. They exist because she decided to sue and wasn't laughed out of court. She wasn't laughed out of court because everyone likes to attack the big companies. Because if yer on a jury with this poor burned woman on one side, and a megacorporation on the other, yer going to make the coorporation pay just because it's the liberal-ish thing to do. And so now companies have to protect themselves. I would too, if some person could sue me for a hundred billion gajillion USD. I'd put warning labels on every single thing I made.

You've probably heard about this stupid greedy woman who was driving in her sports car and decided to spill coffee all over herself, resulting in her eyes lighting up in dollar signs and suing for several million dollars, right?
Well, allow me to introduce you to facts. Facts, meet Bane.

McDonalds served their coffee at 190 degrees Fahrenheit, 50 degrees more than home coffee is served, and 40 degrees more than is recommended by the National Association of Coffee Manufacturers. McDonald's own expert witness testified at the trial that 190 degree coffee is undrinkable, that it would result in severe napalm-like burns to the throat, and that it could cause scalding on unprotected skin in 6 seconds.

Now, along comes this grandmother, who wasn't driving. She was in the passenger seat of her nephew's car. She gets a cup of coffee and they pull over and park. I repeat, the car was at a complete stop. The car has no cup holders, so she holds it between her legs and pops the top off. The flimsy cup they were using back then collapsed, and the coffee spilled onto her sweatpants, which wicked the 190 degree coffee to her legs and held it there. She got 3rd-degree burns - those are the ones where the skin chars and dies, all the way to the bone - and spent weeks in the hospital while they pulled dead skin off with tweezers. Seriously.

Did she sue? No, not originally. She went to McDonalds and asked for help paying her $20,000 medical bills. They refused. That's when she sued. And she didn't sue for millions, she asked for medical bills and costs.

So, the jury heard the case and found that she was partly at fault. They awarded her medical bills and court costs and legal fees, about $200k, and then the judge reduced the award due to her contributory negligence.

So, where did the millions come in? The jury was so horrified at McDonalds own testimony, including their leaked internal memos where they said, "we'll have to pay about a hundred thousand a year in settlements to burned people, but we'll sell several million more in coffee, so keep it at 190 degrees, even though it's unsafe to drink." At the time of the trial, they had settled 200 prior burn cases, including one person who died, and knew about hundreds more. And yet, rather than reduce their coffee temperature, they figured they could just settle cheaply. So the jury awarded $2.3M in damages, two days' profits on coffee.

Know what else you haven't heard? The judge reduced the punitive damages to $600k, and McDonalds didn't even pay that: they threatened to appeal, and rather than go through another trial, the woman agreed to a lower settlement. No one knows how much, but odds are it was around the original $200k.

So, cut the bullshiat about this "greedy stupid woman". Slashdotters are supposed to be more shrewd and more cynical than to blindly listen to what a corporation tells them to believe.