I'll wager that at home, you're not serving it in a styrofoam cup to someone in a relatively cramped enclosure, with restricted movement. In other words, if you spill it in your lap, you can jump to your feet and pull the material away from your skin; if necessary, you can whip your pants down around your ankles. This is not possible for someone sitting in a car.

Whether the trial lawyers are biased or not is irrelevant. Is the account accurate? If you feel the facts, as stated in the article mamabear quoted, are incorrect, then please state which facts are wrong. If the facts are right, then they're right, and it's irrelevant who points them out.

I can speak somewhat from personal experience. Last summer, I was visiting my brother and made a pot of tea to take out to the patio. I didn't know that the handle on the ceramic teapot had broken some years before, and my brother had fixed it with superglue. This had never caused a problem, as he had never filled it more than half full; this time, however, I made a full pot, with the result that the handle separated, the pot smashed, and splashed boiling hot tea over my right foot. (I was wearing socks but no shoes.)

I immediately stripped off the sock, ran inside, and began running cold water over my foot. Even so, I sustained a rather painful first degree burn. Had this happened when I was seated inside a car, even one that was parked (as was the case in the McDonald's lawsuit), I might well have sustained second- or even third-degree burns.

You may feel that it's acceptable for a business to simply accept that a certain percentage of its customers will be injured, hospitalized, or even killed by one of its products, in order to increase its profits. mamabear and I simply pointed out the facts of the case; it's up to each of us individually to decide if McDonald's had a right to endanger its customers, even to a minimal extent, in order to make money.