1. The court that decided the case Nadel vs. Burger King was The Court of Appeals of Ohio, First District, Hamilton County.

2. Summary judgment is a way to avoid unnecessary trial, and a party must establish two things. First there should be no genuine issue of material facts, and second the party who makes the motion must be entitled to judgment as a matter of law, and that it can be noted from the evidence that when viewed from a perspective that is strongly in favor of the nonmoving party that it can reasonably come to one conclusion which is adverse to the nonmoving party. The summary judgment was granted because the injuries were a result of causes attributable to Paul and Evelyn rather than Burger King.

3. The facts of this case are that Paul Nadal was driving his son Christopher and his two daughters to school. Paul’s mother Evelyn was in the passenger seat, while Christopher sat in the front between Evelyn and Paul. On the way to school they visited the drive-through window of a Burger King owned by Emil. One of the orders was two cups of coffee, which were served with fitted lids and served through the car window. Evelyn claims to have tasted one cup of coffee and found it to be too hot and that the lid jiggled a bit causing some coffee to spill and burn her leg. She closed the coffee lid’s flap and either placed the tray of coffee on the floor or on the dashboard. As Paul was driving away and made a left turn Christopher exclaimed that his foot was burned at which point it was noted that a cup of coffee had spilled onto Christopher’s right foot which was then treated for second-degree burns.

4. This was not a case of negligent infliction of emotional distress as there was not strong evidence for any emotional distress from the incident. The statement found the grandmother to be worried and that the father had this incident occur during his treatment for depression, but did not require him to seek counseling. It is also to be noted that it was not burger king that spilled the coffee or had any action in this incident.

5. The court approved a punitive damages tort, the Nadel’s proved that they were entitled to compensatory damages due to either a design defect or for lack of warning about the coffee being so hot.

6. There were two product liability claims that were made, the design defect that the coffee was excessively hot and failure to warn of the dangers with handling hot coffee. The design-defect claim in Ohio is such that a design is defective if a foreseeable risk with the product exceeds the benefits, and that it is more dangerous than would be expected for a consumer. This was supported as Nadel found the coffee to be served at 175 degrees. This changes the idea from Nadel expecting the coffee to be hot, to a question of just how hot the coffee is expected to be, and that this was unreasonably and excessively hot. In addition to being excessively hot, there was no warning about the temperature of the coffee and the dangers of handling such a hot liquid. This was no t approved for a few reasons. It is argued that this danger of spilling hot coffee and the associated consequences is a basis of common knowledge. It was found that a “product is not defective due to lack of warning as a result of the failure to warn abut an open and obvious risk.”

7. I agree that it is to some degree of common knowledge that coffee is a hot liquid and should be handled with care. Similarly it is common knowledge that keeping a tray of coffee either on the floor of the car or the dashboard while driving could result in the coffee moving and spilling. So I agree that these are not claims that should stand against Burger King or Emil. It can even be further argued that Evelyn had tried the coffee and recognized that it was hot, so should have been careful with how she was holding the coffee in a moving vehicle. Nonetheless coffee hot enough to result in a second degree burn is most likely something unusual but I feel that Burger King or Emil would have to invest in retraining their staff and ensuring their coffee is brewed at an appropriate temperature.