LONDON Irate British customers plan to sue U.S. fast-food chain McDonald's over allegations that they were scalded by drinks served at excessively high temperatures, the customers' lawyers said on Wednesday.
"Hot coffee, hot tea and hot water are at the center of this case. We are alleging that they are too hot," Malcolm Johnson, a solicitor at London law firm Steel and Shamash, told Reuters.
"They are served at a temperature which we consider to be dangerous." Johnson said a group of 26 customers alleges that McDonald's serves its drinks at dangerously high temperatures and that some of them suffered third-degree burns as a result.
Another of the claimants' lawyers, Adrienne De Vos of Slater Heelis Solicitors in Manchester, was completing a document outlining the allegations before presenting it to the High Court there.
Once the document had been handed in and stamped by the court it would be served on Mcdonald's, Johnson said.
The British case follows similar ones in the United States.
In one case in 1994, a woman was awarded punitive damages of $2.7 million, later reduced by a judge to $480,000, for burns she received from a cup of Mcdonald's coffee that spilled on her lap.
(Reuter)