1y ago

Family sues Google after Maps allegedly directed father off collapsed bridge

www.theguardian.com Family sues Google after Maps allegedly directed father off collapsed bridge

Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago

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Lawyers for the Paxsons allege that several people have tried to flag the washed-out bridge to Google and have included email correspondence between a Hickory resident who tried to use the “suggest an edit” feature in 2020 to get the company to address the issue.
If Google were notified of this, and failed to act in a timely manner, they should face consequences. Obviously they're not the only people who dropped the ball, but they definitely failed this person.
- That's interesting but I don't think Google has a legal obligation to update all the roads in the world in a timely manner. Maybe if you could prove that they promote Google Maps as a '100% accurate, always up to date mapping solution' you could argue false advertising but I'm pretty sure they don't claim that. I'm pretty sure that instead they tell users not to trust the indications blindly and to always pay attention to the road.
  
  Not an obligation to proactively update the map, but if someone notifies them about a closure or other safety issue, in my view they have a duty of care to act.
  
  Absolutely. Don't know why Google is being absolved here. Yeah they're not the sole reason the car drove off the bridge but they are a contributing factor and have a duty of care.
  
  Interesting. How 'duty of care' is defined and established? Never heard of the term.
  
  It's a common legal term in the UK. Wikipedia had a pretty good overview.
  
  Ok, so we have:
  undefined
  
  the foreseeability of harm to the injured party; the degree of certainty he or she suffered injury; the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered; the moral blame attached to the defendant's conduct; the policy of preventing future harm; the extent of the burden to the defendant and the consequences to the community of imposing a duty of care with resulting liability for breach; and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.[25] the social utility of the defendant's conduct from which the injury arose
  You pretty much have to prove that Google knew that not updating the map info will cause death with some degree of certainty, that it's possible for them to process all update requests in a timely manner or that if it's not possible they should stop offering navigation because it's utility does not outweigh the dangers.
  I would say this is what we're discussing from the beginning and this brings nothing new to the case.

103 comments