A family is suing a US ski resort claiming the hot chocolate it sold them scarred their five-year-old daughter.
The lawsuit in California says that when Brittany Burns and Joshua Moran Burns took a mid-morning break from skiing with their child, they stopped for a drink at a cafe at Heavenly Mountain Resort.
The suit alleges that after spraying whipped cream on top of the beverage, the server slid the drink “directly to the minor” without a lid.
When the child tried to drink it, the “excessively and unnecessarily hot” liquid spilled inside her ski suit, scalding her chest and abdomen.
The complaint, which seeks damages for medical expenses, loss of past and future income and “loss of enjoyment in life”, claims the resort and its staff were negligent.
They “knew and should have known that such hot beverages posed a great hazard of causing just this type of incident and injuries”.
Roger Dreyer, a personal injury attorney in Sacramento who is representing the Burns family, said the child has been left with permanent scars from the incident, which happened two years ago.
He said while people going to ski resorts assume a level of risk because of the sport, this case was different.
“You’re not assuming they’ll cook the hot chocolate to a temperature that’s not consumable to a human being,” he said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
A spokesperson for Vail Resorts, the company that owns Heavenly Mountain, told AFP they were unable to comment on pending litigation.
Lawsuits that claim hot drinks are too hot are not uncommon in the U S.
Last year, Starbucks was ordered to pay a customer $50m for an injury related to a cup of tea.
That ruling was followed by at least two lawsuits lodged against the company claiming drivers had suffered injuries when drinks had slopped into their laps.
A landmark legal ruling against McDonald’s in New Mexico in 1994 established something of a precedent for Americans suing fast-food companies when 79-year-old Stella Liebeck was awarded more than $2.8m after spilling hot coffee on herself.
