What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?

  • MusicSoulEdu@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    That the granny who sued McDonald’s was just upset that her coffee was too hot.

    She suffered from either third or fourth degree burns, on her lap.

    Parts of her were fused together.

    She just wanted McDonald’s to cover the medical bill, but they dragged her name through the mud.

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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      1 hour ago

      People are really bad with misretelling court cases. The amount of times I’ve read “this guy was arrested for wearing a silly hat!” Only to look deeper and find out he was threatening to stab people or something.

    • Wilco@lemmy.zip
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      13 hours ago

      This misconception was well paid for. McDonalds and a large group of fortune 500 companies started a slander ad campaign against lawsuits. They literally paid people to write and run stories about “stupid and unjust” lawsuits, claiming the lawsuits wee a waste and of course bringing up this one.

      It worked.

    • elfharm@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Yep, also they had previously been warned about serving coffee that hot, but studies had shown that serving it that hot meant that people drank less of it. And that “crazy” judgement (2.5 million?) wasn’t a random number. That’s how much they make off coffee in one day.

      • lifeinlarkhall@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        Yeah we actually learned very quickly about that in legal studies (high school) way back in 2000s and it was presented like a silly Americans (Australian here) kind of thing, just a quick silly case in a small box in the textbook. Wasn’t til I got older I learned the full story!

        We had an Aussie silly case too, not just picking on the US 😅 ours was about some drink in an opaque bottle and someone drank it all before they could see there was some kind of bug or even a snail in the bottle? Something like that so they sued the drink company 🤢 can’t remember enough about that one to find anything on it!

    • Tiral@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I saw that, yeah McDonald’s really tried to blast her as a sue happy bitch. All she asked for was medical bill costs initially which is reasonable.