Posted on 02/11/2014 6:23:50 PM PST by rickmichaels
MONTREAL - A Tim Hortons store is liable for over $69,000 after hot soup caused a "personal tsunami" of pain in a Montreal woman's mouth, a judge has ruled.
The judge agreed with Lucie Laflamme's claim that the cream of potato and bacon soup was "excessively hot" and caused "severe burning" and "years of pain and loss of taste."
On Aug. 14, 1998, the city engineering technician entered the restaurant and ordered soup while nursing a sore throat, said Superior Court judge Mark G. Peacock in his ruling, which came down last week.
He described what he calls Laflamme's "fateful choice" to take the first spoonful.
"She ... testified that it was 'like eating fire,'" judge Peacock ruled. "She testified that she had never eaten anything so hot. Ms. Laflamme also testified that this one soup-spoonful was her own personal 'tsunami' which completely changed her life."
She said she visited an emergency room, a clinic and even a dentist's office but the pain wouldn't go away.
Laflamme said she never returned to her job, went on permanent disability and was laid off in 2006.
She claimed the Tim's "knew or should have known" that the soup was excessively hot.
The company contends the soup was served "at about 170 (degrees) Fahrenheit," which they said was an industry standard.
But the judge pointed to the defendants' own admission that their soup was, in fact, heated to a level that could have caused "serious" mouth burns.
Furthermore, Peacock said the restaurant's bowls did not include warnings to that effect.
He awarded Laflamme $69,454.59 in damages.
Heck, in the US she’d be good for $2M+.
I suppose she would know.
She should have gotten the box of 20 Timbits instead.
Lucie Laflamme, hot soup. Parody?
Having been to Tim Horton’s a lot during visits in Canada....I can vouch their soup is hot. Not 69K hot. Soup is supposed to be hot
“the city engineering technician entered the restaurant ...”
Setup. Just another govt. worker looking for a payday and free ride.
Any certification for any title with the word ‘engineering’ in it should require a basic knowledge of thermodynamics.
that’s what crackers and parmesan is for.
Soup is supposed to be hot
Well not all soup .... a lot of French soup sucked by the elite is served cold.
Only an idiot shovels a spoonful of steaming soup into their mouth without blowing on it or letting it cool off first. We shouldn’t be paying people just because they act like idiots.
If we are, I’d like to claim my check!
Tim Horton’s take-out coffee is poured way too hot. I suppose the idea is it’ll still be hot, when you get to the rink. However, it is hot enough to scald, thus following Murphy’s Law, you will be scalded eventually (it has scalded the inside of my mouth). It’s not so bad, when eating in, because the thick ceramic mug absorbs a lot of the excess heat. I don’t know what they’re thinking; but, if this lawsuit causes them to dial down the temperatures a bit, then it’s a good thing.
what normal adult doesn't first take the tinyest sip of a hot drink or hot fluid to test it?....haven't we been doing that since we were kids?...
That’s what soup spoons are for. You check out the first spoonful very carefully, before you put it in your mouth.
This certainly sounds bogus to me.
Civil engineers don’t have to take Heat Transfer, “Real” Fluid Dynamics, or “Real” Thermodynamics. That’s why they design targets... while the Mechanicals design weapons.
I have had the pizza-cheese burns roof of mouth experience more than once (yeah I was hungry) and not once has it, nor will it ever, occur to me to sue the pizza place because I was too greedy to wait.
That’s just abuse of the judicial system and outright theft.
I look forward to Karma serving a heapping plate of bitch slap when she is proven a fraud collecting disability and doing things she supposedly can’t do.
You’re supposed to blow on it, lady.
what a Laflamming azzhole... and the judge too
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