LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – A Starbucks customer has lost her tea-was-too-hot lawsuit, ruling a clumsy mishap in her chair was more to blame for the spill than any alleged defect in the cup.
The California Court of Appeal’s second district sided with Starbucks on Aug. 18, affirming a Los Angeles trial court’s summary judgment decision. Tina Shih argued Starbucks should have served her a cup with a sleeve on it rather than putting the cup with tea inside an empty cup to protect her hand from the heat.
“But neither the failure to use a cup sleeve nor the level to which a coffeehouse employee fills a hot drink ‘generally increase(s) the risk’ a customer will accidentally lose his or her balance while attempting to execute the kind of unorthodox drinking maneuver Shih performed here,” Justice John Segal wrote.
Shih removed the lid from her drink then tried to bend forward and take a sip. When she simultaneously tried to move her chair, it went farther than she anticipated. She grabbed the table for balance and spilled the tea on herself.
A drink placed in an empty cup is a manufacturing defect, Shih argued in her lawsuit. She claimed she would not have attempted to drink a cooler beverage like the tea because she wouldn’t have had to bend forward.
If she wouldn’t have had to bend forward, the chair wouldn’t have shot out from under her, she said. If she wouldn’t have grabbed the table, she wouldn’t have knocked the cup off the table, she said.
“But that’s a lot of ‘would not haves,’” Segal wrote.