You have prob­a­bly heard of the case when McDonald’s was sued by an elderly lady for suf­fer­ing a scald­ing burn from cof­fee bought at McDon­alds. She won and was awarded a total of $640,000 in dam­ages. It seems that McDon­alds gets hun­dreds of these kinds of com­plaints every year, some involv­ing children.

Now, a law­suit has recently been filed against a Texas restau­rant, alleg­ing that it is liable for burns suf­fered by nine-month-old baby boy Gabriel, who was vist­ing the restau­rant together with his fam­ily. A wait­ress placed a scald­ing hot cup of cof­fee directly in front of the child, who grabbed it and spilled it on him­self. Gabriel was rushed to the burn unit at a local hos­pi­tal for treatment.

I do warn you that the pic­ture of his injuries which are pub­lished on the page behind the link is no pretty sight — but a stark and graphic reminder how dan­ger­ous hot bev­er­ages are to chil­dren. No mat­ter where they are served. More on scald injuries here.

First and fore­most, I hope baby Gabriel will recover as soon as possible.

Sec­ondly — see­ing some­thing like this takes me back to my core dri­ver of my Mum­my­Mug project: to save chil­dren from the risk of scalds from hot drinks. No mat­ter if it hap­pens at home or in a restaurant.

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