Cop sues for $750k over burns from free Starbucks coffee

RALEIGH, N.C. — A Raleigh police officer who got a free cup of Starbucks coffee is suing the company for $750,000 after he spilled it and got burned.

WRAL-TV reports attorneys said in court Monday that Matthew Kohr should be compensated for burns, blisters and emotional damage caused after the officer spilled a cup of coffee in his lap in 2012.

Kohr says in the lawsuit the lid popped off a cup of coffee he ordered at a Raleigh Starbucks and the cup collapsed. Kohr claims the incident caused such severe stress it activated his Crohn’s disease which resulted in surgery to remove part of his intestine. “I didn’t know it was that hot,” Kohr, a police lieutenant, said during his cross examination, ABC News reported.

The incident has meant he has lost his confidence as a leader. “I didn’t have those same feelings as I had in the past.” The lawsuit also claims Kohr’s wife, Melanie, lost a “source of emotional support, her social companion and her intimate partner.”

“It was hard to put a price on what my wife had to go through, what my kids had to go through,” Kohr said, ABC reported “What's a year and a half, two years of your life worth? I thought it was worth $10 million.”

Source.

Give this man $10 million, imo.

Gotta laugh at these type of suits.

Where can I sue to get reparations for having to hear his BS whiny-lame lawsuit? I mean, we're just making crap up now - so that's got to be worth a few million right there.

I will never understand these lawsuits. He spilled the cup out of his own negligence and he wants to hold the company who sold it to him accountable for it?

That's about absurd as suing the local grocery chain because my plastic bag ripped and spilt my gallon of milk all over the ground as I was walking to my car. The emotional trauma I endured while this bag ripped cannot be compensated, however, I will still sue for $8 million dollars because it activated my pre-existing anger management issue and I need to be paid for that pain and suffering. Seems legit, sure.

So if we want some "leaders" to lose their confidence and get the hell out all we have to do is throw hot coffee at their genitalia? Got it.

Also it reads kinda creepily that his wife lost her intimate partner and then mention what his kids had to go through...do I want to know?

Must of been black coffee.

Buuurneed!

activated his Crohns disease.................LOL

...and get this....all of this is over a FREE cup of Starbucks coffee. He didn't even pay for it.

Man I love people and their logic a times.

I'm sorry, if the cop didn't know the coffee he got for free was hot...Do you really want him walking around and protect you?
Clearly not the model of supreme intelligence.

Gangbangers everywhere will abandon firearms and instead replace their arsenals with fire hoses filled with hot coffee.

It doesn't say how hot the coffee was, does it? I didn't see that anywhere... It does seem like a silly case, but if the coffee was served at an infernal temperature then they were in the wrong for giving out coffee that hot, wouldn't you say?

That guy sounds like a total pussy. Why the hell is he a cop.

LOL

Starbucks coffee cups have a warning label for the heat at the bottom. Dude has 0 chance of winning, this isn't like the McDonald's hot coffee case.

Just don't try throwing hot coffee on Thea Queen... but I'll say no more about that, you Europeans have to wait until Season 3 comes out on DVD/Netflix to watch it, right? And I don't want to spoil too much.

@whipassmt: Don't even mention Arrow...was watching Flash the other day and they just stuck a crossover episode there out of the blue with stuff I haven't watched in Arrow yet >_<

@korvus: Okay. I'm right though about you guys in Europe having to wait a bit for the episodes, I think you've said that, and on one of my twitter accounts (Merlyn_alSaher), I was chatting with a Felicity Smoak account and an Oliver Queen account (and that guy is from London I think), and Felicity said something to about something that happened on Season 3 and Oliver said he hasn't gotten that far in the show yet. And people on OT like to say that America is behind Europe.

You finished Season 2, though?

@whipassmt: Yeah, it takes longer for them to get here (although there's plenty of ways to watch them the day after they air in the US). Also, quite surprising that an American show airs in the US first, huh? XD

News articles tend to downplay how severe injuries are in these cases. I remember hearing somewhere that the lady who sued mcdonalds for the same thing actually needed skin grafts.

Boo - fucking - hoo.

after the Mcdonalds lawsuit, I'm pretty sure all coffee cups come with a warning

Hot coffee gave him chrones disease and caused him to lose some intestine? Wow man, I'm not sure what's worse...McDonald's food or this guy's story.

I spilled pot noodle on my balls once I did not have an emotional breakdown. This guys a cop ffs.

Yeah, I don't recommend searching for her injuries on Google Images lol.

People here don't know how to read...

Him being a cop is irrelevant and he does have a case.

It does say that the lid popped off and the cup collapsed. I don't know the details of how that happened, if it was the officer not knowing how to hold the cup, or if it was the result of Starbucks cheaping out and using shitty cups that have a tendency to fail. But without further information, it's entirely possible that the cup just plain collapsed on the dude. IF he can establish that to be the case, then it's not so absurd that he's wanting compensation.

who knew coffee could take so much....


what a tool.

ooo, now this is harsh... you might have a lawsuit on your hands!

@MuD3: Sadly they didn't drop the spoilers on my lap.

I dropped my ice cream cone. It was fucking cold and Im in emotional distress! --**** off. Seriously? It's hot coffee. This person is a jackass looking for a payday,

Wait, loco created a thread that WASN'T bashing college?!

The apocalypse is close...so...very...close...

D:

Starbuck's will probably settle since the risk of losing in court with the typical jury is too high.

And so the gang known as Starbucks was made, with their own dens popping up all over America and dealing their favored substance out for profit and enjoying how the addictiveness of it brings their customers back

Sue them all you want but at the end of the day, you ain't gonna win and all coffee brands have warning labels. So where's your proof Copper?

Exactly this.. After that McDonald's suit every single hot drink at all these places had warning labels posted on them..

I don´t know why some sort of law isn´t established to punish people when filing idiotic sues.

Hell, I don´t mean punishment like being hanged from the scrotum or something like that, but for example, 30 days with a sign hanging from your neck with a legend like " I´m stupid " or something similar.

They aren't going to lose. This thing happened years ago with McDonald's and every corporation caught wind of this and their legal team made steps in preventing this kind of law suit from ever being a problem again.. There are warning labels on all these products now, he has no ground to stand on.

I think it's gonna come down to whether or not the cups were defective. If they're defective, then warning customers that the coffee is hot is irrelevant.

But yeah...good luck establishing that the cups were defective. Even if the cup was defective (and it probably wasn't), chances are it's gonna be difficult to prove that the injury was caused by a defective cup. But that's the ONLY way for this guy to win.

Coffee is hot, who'd have thunk it. NO MONEY FOR YOU IMO. People shouldn't be able to sue over stuff like this. Coffee is hot, you spill it, it burns. You don't want to take that chance, don't order the coffee. On top of that, it was free. What a bama.

Black Lava, fire hot coffee, lol .. The only coffee i've ever had super hot, is from McDonalds, never Star Bucks ..

@gamerguru100: The moral of the story was, if he hadn't gone to college he'd know how to hold a cup of coffee...I think...

Mmkay, so, if a hardware store were to give me a free hammer, and in the parking lot I drop it on my foot like a dumbass and break my toe, it's the store's fault? Wait, that's not how it works? Huh, imagine that.

If that hammer had a defect caused by the store's negligence, like a crack in the handle, and you went to hit a nail with it and the head broke off and came flying up smashing you in the face...yeah maybe.

I don't know what the facts are in this case so no comment to the actual topic. I do know the original hot coffee case while widely mocked, actually had way more contributing factors and the case wasn't as ridiculous as people were led to believe.

I can't WAIT for the day I need to sign a two page disclaimer of liability to get gas, buy coffee, eat fast food, drive down the freeway, go online (for every web page), and for each of all the myriad of activities that might be harmful to me that I participate in every day. We don't have too many lawyers... no.... not at ALL!

Only one who is gonna win out of this is the lawyers.

True but she acting completely and positively irresponsible in the way she handled a hot beverage.

how so?