Jaunted

To see why you have to understand the history of cases like Keller's. USA Today notes at frankly astonishing length that the incident echoes the famous McDonald's coffee lawsuit from the early 1990's, where a 79 year old woman sued the fast food company after she spilled a cup of hot McDonald's coffee on herself. The woman, Stella Liebeck, was awarded $160,000 and promptly became the poster-girl for frivolous lawsuits.

Some people have written that her lawsuit wasn't frivolous at all - yes coffee is supposed to be hot, but probably not so hot that Liebeck should have suffered third-degree burns through her clothing - but nonetheless many states passed tort reform legislation by pointing to her story. One of those reforms was recently passed in Tennessee, which is the state that... ta da ... Keller is suing Southwest.

Which brings us back to the travel geekery. Lawsuits like Keller's and Liebeck's turn on the idea of negligence. Who should have done something differently, so that whatever happened wouldn't have happened. Keller says it was negligent of Southwest to serve boiling water capable of giving second-degree burns to a woman in an airplane seat without a tray. Southwest, doing the airline's best I am rubber, you are glue impression, says it was actually negligent of Keller to choose a seat without a tray and then order hot tea.

Ummm...

Maybe the reporter has the explanation wrong. But unless we're very much misreading this, Southwest is saying that there are seats on their airplanes - seats they sell to customers - where as a matter of law travelers are endangering their physical safety by ordering hot water. If that is what they're actually saying, then two quick comments:

1. We're not sure that's a smart thing to say

2. How long will it take Ryanair to put out an ad bragging that they also have unsafe seats where you can severely injure yourself, because the airline is just so darn frugal?

[Photo: jeremyfoo / Flickr]