Girl Sued For Her Boyfriend's Texting-While-Driving Accident

[hermes]

Classic scapegoating... Everyone is to blame, but me.

For once, she has no way of knowing he was driving. Also, he has no obligation to answer at that moment. Third, pulling over is a simple maneuver that anyone with basic skills should be able to perform. Finally, he is the one that got distracted while reading and replying the message.

 

[burningdragoon]

First a question, is there any indication that she knew he was driving?

If no > then this is stupid.

If yes > then she's at least more than 0% at fault, but it's still stupid.

 

[silver wolf009]

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

If she was so derp then she wouldn't have dropped it.

She was around seventy I think, in a car, with it in between her lap. And besides, the fact that she spilled it in her lap isn't why she sued.

From what I understand about the case, her reasoning was mostly that she felt McDonalds was being negligent by keeping the coffee at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Because they kept it so hot, it caused incredible damage, I think nerve damage actually, and she wanted to punish them for making a situation where someone could, and in her case, did get hurt.

And she wasn't money grabbing either; I think it was around 97% percent of the punitive damages she gave back to the burn ward that had treated her.

Anyway, back onto the topic at hand:

I really don't think this one will hold water. Unless they can prove that it wasn't anything he did, but that it was only her text, and her text alone, that caused the accident.

Noun: Failure to take proper care in doing something: "some of these accidents are due to negligence".

It's clear in this case she was negligent. She was wearing extremely absorbent sweat pants and decided to put hot coffee between them while driving a car, what did she think would happen?

Would you punish a gun shop because someone shot themselves?

She wasn't driving the car. It was stopped, parked, and she was in the passenger seat. And regardless of the clothes she was wearing, she'd never foresee that spilling it would cause third degree burns and nerve damage. And it should never be that if you spill something you ordered from a restaurant on yourself that you'd get nerve damage.

Furthermore, they'd gotten complaints and cases of burns from previous cases like this, but had done nothing about the problem. They had more than ample warning this could hurt someone, and they kept keeping it at almost 200 degrees.

I would punish a gun shop owner if they kept their guns loaded and suspended from the ceiling with string.

Retailers have most always had a higher responsibility to their customers than other parties would in different cases. It's why a lot of drug companies get slammed with strict liability suits. As a society, Americans tend to feel they should do everything humanly within their power to prevent situations where harm could occur.

 

[Private Custard]

Yeah your reading it right and its not illegal where I live so yes I can do it. I don't read more than a sentence of text and I do it when I'm at a stop light or in slow traffic. I also don't type looking down, I use T9word on my keypad (yes an actual keypad). I'm not saying I'm a safe text driver (as there is no such thing), but I'm a safer driver. My only accident was when I was at a dead stop and a drug addict plowed into me going 55.

Honestly I think its the smart phones. Texting deaths really didn't go up till they came out. I can see why, you can't feel the buttons and people can send much larger texts. I think my 5 year old (dumb?) phone is fine.

Not to say we all don't do distracting things while driving, but I'm afraid no matter what you say there isn't much of a way to make it something that's "okay" enough to be worth defending here.

To be fair, if he's anything like me, he's probably a far better driver, even taking into account his texting, than a lot of the idiots on the road, even if said idiots are paying complete attention to the road.

It's people that are shitty drivers AND text that are the biggest problem.

And everyone's a great driver......right up to the point they're staring out of their mangled wreck of a car, across the road to another car full of dead people that weren't fucking texting while driving.

Sure it might not be illegal where he is, but is he really so retarded that he needs a law to be made before he can use some fucking common sense??

I'm a biker. All we do on our bikes is concentrate on riding. Being surrounded by cagers that would seemingly rather be doing anything but driving, while driving, can be pretty worrying!

 

[2clueless]

Gut reaction: His decision to text while driving, his fault. Clueless girlfriend is innocent.

Reading a little and thinking about it: Need more context.

Assumption (she knew he was driving) and habit (is driving at the same time everyday) aside, if his state of drving was discussed and conversation continued then there may be a case for distraction from the girlfriend.

Guy - I'm driving.
Girl - Don't care, what are you thinking about?

However, fault would be negated by:

Guy - I'm driving.
Girl - Oh, sorry, I'll let you drive.
Guy - Don't worry, I am fine. What are you wearing?

So three possibilites:

1) The state of driving was not discussed = No fault for the girl.
2) State of driving was discussed, girl tried to end conversation = No fault.
3) State of driving was discussed, girl kept conversation going = Possible fault.

 

[Danzaivar]

If some guy was sat at a crossing with a fog horn blaring at every car that went past and one of them crashed I'd say they're liable.

So I'm gonna say she should be sued.

 

[Cyberjester]

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

Except diners for a very long time overheated coffee since it was usually drunk by people passing through, so their coffee might sit next to them for fifteen or so minutes while they're driving. An age old tradition. It's still insane when you think about it, but it means you can have a thin cup and still have hot coffee for long periods of time. Sounds silly till you have people buy a coffee, sit down and eat, then ten minutes later complain because they went to take a sip of coffee and it's no longer boiling.

Should she have texted him while he was driving? No, but thats as far as it goes. He chose to text back while driving, thus he made the choice to endanger himself and others.

EDIT:

Well, it depends on the texts

Her: "wat u doin honey?"
Him: "imma drivin"
Her: "Oh, how did your day go"
Him: "herpa derp"
Him: "derpa herp"

Actually this here aswell, if she acknolledged the fact he was texting and driving it could make her liable since she was actively encouraging it.

Not really, it's like if you gave someone a beer, and later on they drove off. They shouldn't be able to sue you for their behaviour. In this case, he had the choice of pulling over to answer her texts. He ignored safe driving rules and continued to text while driving so regardless of her knowledge of his driving, she shouldn't be at fault.

I think the only law she could have broken was knowing a crime was in process and not reporting her boyfriend to the police.

 

[Powereaver]

If she wasnt in the car and was txting him.. he couldve been anywhere at that time he didnt have to be in the car at that exact moment. So i dont see how shes at fault because shes not a telepath who can tell where her bf is at all times, and also its his choice to read the text immediately he couldve pulled over the car to the side of the road to read it instead of doing it while driving like people do here if they get a call while driving.

 

[LetalisK]

If some guy was sat at a crossing with a fog horn blaring at every car that went past and one of them crashed I'd say they're liable.

So I'm gonna say she should be sued.

You're trying to compare an unpredictable and involuntary distraction with a predictable and voluntary distraction. Even if she texted him "TEXT ME WHILE DRIVING!", it's still ultimately solely his decision whether or not to do it and he's responsible for what consequences come from it. Not her.

 

[RJ 17]

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

*beep* Wrong! That was not a frivolous lawsuit. That was a case of coffee being kept way above what could possibly be considered a safe temperature for any human being. It wasn't just a case of some dumb american not realising coffee was hot. If you keep coffee just tetering on the brink of turning into plasma, you can't just pipe "You shoulda realized it was hot!" when someone gets scalded.

Wow, just completely ignore the actual topic and go after something the OP said in parenthesis, eh? That takes a special kind of jackass. My hat is off to you, good sir.

Captcha agrees: "You're Not Listening."

It is pretty OT if you mention it as an example. That means it is related to the topic, and if it's an error, it's a pretty big one. Better edit it out. Though I guess the way he went about informing it was rather douchebaggy.

My problem wasn't so much with the fact that he corrected me, but rather the fact that he utterly ignored commenting on the true meat of the topic, choosing instead to simply say I was mistaken about a side-example.

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/22/11797573-could-you-be-sued-for-texting-with-a-driver-experts-say-maybe?lite

Not sure what to make of this one, my fellow Escapists. A girl texts her boyfriend and while responding, he drifts into oncoming traffic and gets in a wreck, causing both passengers of the other car to "lose their legs" (as the article says).

The Plaintiff's lawyer is saying that the girl was essentially aiding her boyfriend in an illegal act: texting while driving (numerous states, New Jersey included, have officially made it illegal). That she surely knew her boyfriend was driving home from work at the time and knowingly distracted him.

The Defense is arguing that she has no control over her boyfriend or when he chooses to read/respond to the text. How is she liable because her boyfriend didn't do the responsible thing and wait till he got home before reading/responding to the text?

So whatcha think folks? Another frivolous lawsuit (i.e. hot coffee in the lap) or is there a genuine case here?

Personally, while I do HATE to see someone texting while driving, I think if this case goes through for the plaintiff it could set a dangerous precedent. All of a sudden you could be liable when your friend gets in a wreck because you sent him/her a text asking what he/she was doing that evening.

I know in the UK you are liable if you are on the phone with someone who you know is currently driving. Even if they do not crash as it is a crime to use your phone whilst driving. So some precedent is there.

Although this case is insane. It is obviously insane. And any judge/jury would point out that this case is insane.

You apparently haven't seen much of the American legal system in action. Common Sense would dictate that the judge would just look at Skippy (the plaintiff's lawyer) and say ".........just get the fuck out of my court. Right now."

But there's plenty examples of "common sense being quite uncommon" in the legal system over here.

 

[silver wolf009]

She wasn't driving the car. It was stopped, parked, and she was in the passenger seat. And regardless of the clothes she was wearing, she'd never foresee that spilling it would cause third degree burns and nerve damage. And it should never be that if you spill something you ordered from a restaurant on yourself that you'd get nerve damage.

Furthermore, they'd gotten complaints and cases of burns from previous cases like this, but had done nothing about the problem. They had more than ample warning this could hurt someone, and they kept keeping it at almost 200 degrees.

I would punish a gun shop owner if they kept their guns loaded and suspended from the ceiling with string.

Retailers have most always had a higher responsibility to their customers than other parties would in different cases. It's why a lot of drug companies get slammed with strict liability suits. As a society, Americans tend to feel they should do everything humanly within their power to prevent situations where harm could occur.

"Liebeck placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap"

Reading this. Your gun analogy is bad, a more accurate one would be "buying a gun, loading it then shooting yourself in the process then suing the seller".

She fucked up, the coffee shouldn't have been that warm but the blame lies with her. Also, the clothes are very important in this case, like I said, they were extremely absorbent which is why the burns were so bad as it was holding the coffee right to her skin unlike looser clothes which wouldn't have inflicted such damage.

"Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants; they absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks, and groin"

How is that gun analogy more apt? The coffee came in such a way it could cause harm, and she certainly didn't have intention to spill it on herself. it'd be like being given a loaded gun that you weren't told was loaded, and having it go off in your pocket to blow a hole in your foot; she was given something she didn't know could hurt her in such a way as it did, and wasn't armed with the information to protect herself.

The blame should fall on McDonalds, as the law requires that certain behaviors should be foreseen. I remember it once being put as, "Expect the stupidest person is going to use your product, and make sure they can't hurt themselves with it." Not to call Ms. Liebeck stupid, but companies are required to take some measures to keep people from getting hurt by their products. McDonalds didn't in this case, they did the opposite, kept it in a way that it could cause injury despite evidence and demands that it change, went to court after someone got horribly burned by their coffee, and lost two days worth of coffee sales.

If it was possible for you to reason that someone could get hurt from wearing cotton sweatpants so badly as to cause damage to the nerves, surely a multi billion dollar organization like McDonalds should have, and with so much on the line, they should have made sure that a predictable behavior wouldn't result in extreme amounts of harm.

 

[Wintermoot]

it,s not her fault her BF was stupid enough to text while driving.
people say that she IS responsible if she knew that he was driving but he could chose not to respond to his phone or call her on the hands free kit.

 

[Private Custard]

The fact there's even any suggestion that it's anything but the drivers fault leads me to believe that this place has finally lost the plot.

He was in the driving seat. He could have pulled over. He could have ignored the texts until it was safe to read/answer them. He didn't.

The. Fucking. End.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I've have read the first entry and this is all that comes to mind...

 

[LetalisK]

Except diners for a very long time overheated coffee since it was usually drunk by people passing through, so their coffee might sit next to them for fifteen or so minutes while they're driving. An age old tradition. It's still insane when you think about it, but it means you can have a thin cup and still have hot coffee for long periods of time. Sounds silly till you have people buy a coffee, sit down and eat, then ten minutes later complain because they went to take a sip of coffee and it's no longer boiling.

That's actually pretty similar to the argument McDonalds used in the case. They claimed they kept it so hot because people would go through the drive-thru, grab a cup of coffee, and then drink it once they got it to their office, which is why they needed to keep it so hot(and later on it was revealed they only half-believed this themselves). The court rejected this argument for a few reasons, however. First was the aforementioned several hundred complaints by people who had already been seriously burned by it and had already been bought off, so this wasn't a one time deal, but rather a recurring problem. Second, other establishments weren't having problems with coffee staying hot even though they heated it up to a lower temperature. In the end, public safety trumps any public convenience derived from unconsumably hot coffee as the situation of accidentally spilling it on yourself is neither rare nor unreasonable and McDonalds needed to take that into account so that further damage was not caused by their own business practices.