Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Skiing injuries are relatively commonplace, but one generally expects the danger to be contained to the slopes. However, one family is suing a California ski resort for an injury inflicted in a resort’s cafe – by a cup of hot chocolate.
The lawsuit, obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, was filed in El Dorado County Superior Court. In it, Brittany Burns and Joshua Moran Burns allege that negligence on the part of a service worker at Heavenly Mountain Resort in South Lake Tahoe led to their young daughter being scalded with the aforementioned hot beverage.
The incident occurred two years ago, when Brittany Burns was skiing at the Vail-owned resort with her five-year-old daughter. On a break between runs, they visited the resort’s Sky Deck cafe. There, the suit alleges that a server slid a hot chocolate directly to the daughter without a lid, and when she took a drink, the “excessively and unnecessarily hot” liquid spilled inside her ski suit.
“She suffered bad burns down her chest and abdomen,” said Roger Dreyer, a personal injury attorney representing the Burns family. “Now she has permanent scars.”
The Burns family is seeking damages for medical expenses, “past and future income and/or earning capacity loss,” “past and future physical and mental suffering,” and “loss of enjoyment in life.”
This is not the first time a lawsuit has been filed to seek damages for injuries sustained due to a hot drink. Perhaps the most famous example is the 1994 lawsuit Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, in which 79-year-old Stella Liebeck was awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages after a jury found McDonald’s liable for injuries she sustained after spilling hot coffee on herself.
