Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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“A woman who texted her boyfriend while he was driving cannot be held liable for a car crash he caused while responding, seriously injuring a motorcycling couple, a judge ruled Friday in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the country.” [AP/USA Today, earlier]
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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s press spokesman describes as “inaccurate” Reuters’ report that his boss endorses a Congressionally enacted national across-the-board ban on cellphone use. (The Newspaper; our earlier posts here and here; Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg View).
More from The Newspaper:
At the same time that the US Department of Transportation is pushing laws to ban in-car cell phone use, it is promoting the “511″ government program that encourages drivers to dial 511 for information on traffic conditions instead of tuning in to a traffic reports on AM radio.
Related: “Communities start to fine for texting and walking” [USA Today]
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A judge in Morris County, N.J. is expected to rule soon whether to dismiss Shannon Colonna as a defendant in a lawsuit over a car crash. Colonna was far from the scene at the time, but plaintiffs said she had sent a text message to the driver whose inattention caused the accident, and thus aided and abetted his negligence. [The Record; AP; NJLRA] Update: judge dismisses claims against Colonna.
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I’ve got an op-ed in Saturday’s Orange County Register taking exception to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s call for Congressional legislation to ban “talking on a cellphone or texting while driving any type of vehicle on any road in the country.” Something you might not have known: the feds blame a crash on distraction if a cellphone is so much as “in the presence of the driver at the time of the crash.” (Distracted Driving Summit Press kit (PDF), “Traffic Safety Facts” p. 2, h/t Investor’s Business Daily; earlier here, here, etc.) More: Rob Port, SayAnythingBlog. Update: LaHood spokesman says Reuters overstated his boss’s position.
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I’m quoted in this Carolina Journal article by Karen McMahan. “Chapel Hill became the first municipality in the nation to issue such a far-reaching ban when the town council enacted the measure March 26 by a 5-4 vote. The law goes into effect June 1.” Earlier on distracted driving here, etc.
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The class action firm of Robbins Geller, representing some client or other, is demanding damages from Apple on behalf of a class of people disappointed by the iPhone 4S voice-activated assistant, Siri. Reviewers have complained that the program often fails to comprehend users’ speech, returns illogical answers, and when asked “Play some Coltrane,” has been known to respond that it doesn’t know any “coal train.” [Mat Honan, Gizmodo; Jason Gilbert/Huffington Post] “When asked her whether her makers exaggerated her worth, Siri told Law Blog, ‘We were talking about you, not me.’” [Joe Palazzolo/WSJ Law Blog]
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Belated and unsatisfactory lawsuit “relief”? Nothing especially Applelicious about that; it’s more a matter of joining the class-action crowd. [Rebecca Greenfield, Atlantic Wire] More: Ted Frank, Point of Law (who represents objector Marie Gryphon in the case).
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Toronto lawyer Michael Deverett thinks a bad guy must have followed him home from the Apple Store; at least someone smashed his hatchback car window when he stepped away for a couple of minutes and made off with what he said was a well concealed bag of new electronics purchases worth C$2,200. The company — which gave him a store credit plus a small extra for legal fees — is also facing criticism from theft victims who say it should do more to help owners retrieve stolen cellphones. [Toronto Star](& welcome Elie Mystal, Above the Law readers)
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Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who has made “distracted driving” his “signature safety issue,” is putting distance between himself and the NTSB’s call for a sweeping ban. [Reuters, Tina Korbe/Hot Air, earlier here and here]
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Might it be time to abolish the National Transportation Safety Board? It’s supposed to serve as an authoritative source on the causes of accidents, but last week its chief, calling for a nationwide ban on cellphone use by drivers, was not just non-authoritative but actively misleading. I explain in a new post at Cato at Liberty (& Instapundit, Balko, Stoll, Adler).
More on misleading government public health advisories here.
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As Washington launches a new crusade against “cognitive distraction” behind the wheel, it no longer seems to matter whether your eyes and hands are in correct driving position. I explain in a new Cato post.
More: Glenn Reynolds (NTSB “distracted” by its own pre-existing agenda and oversimplifying causes of Missouri accident) and more, Chapman, Marc Scribner/CEI (even bans on texting don’t seem to have worked as intended), Amy Alkon, (two years back) Radley Balko, and Ira Stoll (per IIHS, quoted on NPR, “states with cellphone bans have seen no real decrease in accident rates”). And: drivers’ use of portable GPS and MP3 devices to be included in contemplated ban? [NMA]
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A pretty graphic depicting a not-so-pretty situation [Design Language News; more, FlowingData] Related: “When Patents Attack,” NPR; Will Wilkinson, “Patents Against Prosperity”, The Economist; “Good Defensive Patents Are Bad Patents,” Julian Sanchez.
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A novel lawsuit theory that obtained more-than-respectful coverage in the New York Times did not succeed in convincing the Oklahoma courts, notes Russell Jackson. “The Court of Civil Appeals’ decision in Doyle is a strong demonstration that trying to use civil legal duties to make the US a Nanny State is simply wrongheaded.”
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