14 DAY TRIAL // About a year ago, an interesting case, if only through its sheer absurdness, showed up of a woman suing Google for being hit while crossing a busy highway with no crosswalks or sidewalks, based on directions she got from Google Maps. It may sound ridiculous, but in the lawsuit-happy United States, people have won cases based on much less.
Thankfully though, the court applied a bit of common sense, something that the woman in case perhaps should have done as well, found Google not liable for this and dismissed the lawsuit.
The court assessed the case and decided to not allow it to go any further, arguing that Google can't be expected to warn about all of the risks of walking down a street.
Google defended itself by saying that it has a First Amendment right to publish information freely, without fear of reprisals. But court didn't even reached this stage, it dismissed the case outright based on the fact that Google did not owe the woman a duty, in other words, Google did not have to guarantee her safety just by providing her with the walking directions.
What's more, not only is it not Google's duty to account for all external factors, in this case, it was the woman's duty to take care when crossing the road, something she failed to do.
"It is clear that Google was not required to anticipate that a user of the Google Maps service would cross the road without looking for cars... and that, absent negligence on the user's part, an injury while crossing the road would be unlikely," the court wrote in its decision.
Further, the court argued that Google's service is too valuable to society for it to be burdened with this type of responsibility and allowing the lawsuit to go forward would open Google to "nearly unlimited liability," making it impossible for the company to run the service. [via Eric Goldman]