Family Sues Apple Over Wreck Caused by FaceTime

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While this is an extremely tragic story, and I feel for the family that lost a child, I don't see how Apple is at fault in this case. Sure, the company has a patent for disabling a phone while driving and FaceTime does lack warnings but does that make them liable for someone misusing their products? What do you guys think?

The driver who hit the family told police he was on the FaceTime application at the time of the wreck. Officers found FaceTime was still live when they arrived at the scene, according to the complaint. The Modisette family said Apple’s failure to either program a shutoff into the FaceTime program or give strong warning about using the app while driving is particularly egregious given the app fully engages visual components rather than audio ones as with regular cellphone usage.

 
The driver just happened to be using FaceTime. What if it was YouTube, Netflix, or some other app that is "distracting" from the road? This family is grasping at straws on winning this lawsuit.

It's getting annoying that people keep blaming companies who make the technologies and not the person who is at fault i.e. Driver of the vehicle who hit you because he wasn't paying attention to driving his car.
 
What a BS lawsuit. It should get immediately tossed, as it's the fault of the other driver. This is the distracted driving equivalent of blaming the spoon for making you fat.

And the "disable it while driving" thing is dumb too, since it has no way to know if it's the driver of the vehicle or a passenger.
 
"The family seeks economic damages related to the injuries suffered in the crash, along with punitive damages."

They're not even doing it right; they're supposed to pretend that the lawsuit is about "sending a message to others" or "making Apple implement change" or something.
 
Here's an idea: Don't be a fucking moron when driving. Apple is not at fault. The fault lies 100% with the retarded douchebag driving. How often are we flooded with ads these days telling people to put down their phones when driving? How stupid do you have to be to use something like Facetime when driving? And fuck the family for blaming anyone but the driver.
 
And not a shred of personal responsibility is part of the equation these days. That is how life works. You reap what you sow. Do stupid things and suffer the stupid consequences.
 
I have co-workers who facetime while on duty. They aren't even talking to the people they're facetiming with, just doing their job one handed while holding their phone at face level. I don't understand it at all.
 
So they've exhausted the actual law about no phones while driving and sue the driver then? That's a pretty good win there. I think that the driver must be poor as fuck so they're going after the money instead of justice.
 
Case should get tossed out, in a rare turn of events I'm on Apples side here. Honestly Apple should countersue these idiots for bringing such an obviously frivolous lawsuit against them.
 
Idiotic.

There are some things that are just obvious, do we really need a disclaimer, warning, or some other sort to tell us not to do the obvious?

Don't stare directly into the sun. Fire is hot. Ice is cold. Don't attempt to breath underwater. Don't poke bears with sticks.

In this case, sue the driver for his poor lack of judgement and failure to drive and use tech responsibly. Don't sue the company because somebody decided to misuse their tech in a manner it obviously wasn't intended for, especially since it already breaks laws that are already in place telling people to not drive distracted (at least we have them in my state).
 
Furthermore, from the way they explain the patent, Facetime would not work for anyone in the car, including passengers. This is most likely why Apple hasn't implemented it yet since it doesn't distinguish driver from passenger. That means you can't Facetime on anything that moves, be it a train, car, bus, boat, or even plane.

I've had family members Facetime me as passengers in a vehicle, I see nothing wrong with that.
 
VirtualMirage said:
Idiotic.

There are some things that are just obvious, do we really need a disclaimer, warning, or some other sort to tell us not to do the obvious?

Don't stare directly into the sun. Fire is hot. Ice is cold. Don't attempt to breath underwater. Don't poke bears with sticks.

In this case, sue the driver for his poor lack of judgement and failure to drive and use tech responsibly. Don't sue the company because somebody decided to misuse their tech in a manner it obviously wasn't intended for, especially since it already breaks laws that are already in place telling people to not drive distracted (at least we have them in my state).
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The windshield shade I have for my car has a warning on it to not drive with the shade on the windshield.
 
In relation to this topic, I have no love for Apple or its products, but I hope they win this one and counter-sue these clowns for every penny they will ever make in their damn lives. Companies try their best to idiot-proof things, and someone else just comes along and builds a better idiot.

Yesterday on the way to the grocery store, a guy was driving down the middle of the two-lane road I was on. Dead center down the double yellow line on a hilly winding road. I had just happened to see him barreling down as I came up over the hill. The speed limit on this road is 55 mph, so I can only assume we were both doing it. I had just enough time to slam the brakes, veer right, and pray that I wouldn't go too far right and into the ditch. He apparently heard me skidding because I was close enough to see his "oh shit" face as he started veering back into his lane and we wound up missing each other by inches. I'm honestly amazed our mirrors didn't high five.

I don't know what in the hell he was doing but he was clearly not aware of what the hell was going on. And if he was on his damn phone by the powers that be, I want him banned from ever owning one ever again!
 
The dumbest thing about this is that this is news.......dumb lawsuits get filed all the time (go look at some askreddit threads), this is just another dumb one in a million

but I guess with the holiday season, there's not much else to publish on websites...
 
And we need to sue the owners of the peachoid and the county and congressman for not putting up guard rails.

house%20of%20cards.jpg
 
What you expect when kids these are told they are special snow flakes. Where they are cuddled and not held responsible for any of their actions cause it is always some one else's fault.
 
Steve said:
Sure, the company has a patent for disabling a phone while driving and FaceTime does lack warnings but does that make them liable for someone misusing their products? What do you guys think?
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They have what? Not only is this an obvious idea that shouldn't in a million years be patentable, but it's downright evil to try patenting such a safety feature. It's like trying to patent the seat belt. So now other phone manufacturers won't use that feature, even if it might save lives, to avoid paying (or being sued by) Apple. Seriously, screw them. While Apple isn't at fault for the accident, I have no sympathy for them given their history of questionable lawsuits. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
 
I'm glad McDonalds didn't fork over a ton of money and have to put warning labels on hot coffee to say it's hot. Oh wait, they did. Welcome to the American legal system.
 
BadAim said:
I'm glad McDonalds didn't fork over a ton of money and have to put warning labels on hot coffee to say it's hot. Oh wait, they did. Welcome to the American legal system.
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Being fair McDonalds lost that case for very specific reasons. You should look it up sometime. I used to cite that one as well, but in that specific case McD's was absolutely in the wrong. That said the lady was still a moron, but that didn't change the fact that McD's was in serious violation of several things.
 
BadAim said:
I'm glad McDonalds didn't fork over a ton of money and have to put warning labels on hot coffee to say it's hot. Oh wait, they did. Welcome to the American legal system.
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In effort to cut down on cost and speed up service times, McDonalds brewed their coffee at a significantly higher temperature than 197F which is most common. This caused the burns to be more severe than necessary. That said they were likely 1st degree and healed with time. I've dumped fresh hot coffee on myself several times. And while it makes it tender and red, it doesn't scar, especially if you run cold water over it as you are supposed to do. It wasn't worth a lawsuit.
 
BadAim said:
I'm glad McDonalds didn't fork over a ton of money and have to put warning labels on hot coffee to say it's hot. Oh wait, they did. Welcome to the American legal system.
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McD lost the case because their coffee was scalding hot and would cause 3rd degree burns with-in 20 seconds. They lost because McD lawyers seemed like assholes to the jury defending that their coffee was not meant to immediate consumption and yet we know the coffee is dangerously hot and we don't care to change that. Plus that something like they've settled similar suits nearly 700 times in the past, yet they chose not to settle when dealing with an 80 old lady who burned herself sitting in the passenger side seat when the old lady tried to settle for cost of skin grafts.
Merc1138 said:
What a BS lawsuit. It should get immediately tossed, as it's the fault of the other driver. This is the distracted driving equivalent of blaming the spoon for making you fat.

And the "disable it while driving" thing is dumb too, since it has no way to know if it's the driver of the vehicle or a passenger.
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Crash occurred in Texas, filed in california state court. California state laws include the fact if you have to type a number into a cellphone you're unsafe driving. Although funny enough irrc Texas has no state laws pertaining to cellphone usage while driving.
 
Can I sue the family instead for making my brain hurt as to how stupid this is? For the emotional suffering I have to go through knowing no matter what happens people good or bad are stupid? The fact that everything is wrong, everyone gets away with murder, there is no justice in the world, etc etc.
 
I feel bad for the family's loss but the fault does not lie with Apple in any respect, or the car maker, or basically anywhere else for that matter. Everyone with even half a brain (I hope) knows where the fault lies, and we certainly don't need an app to tell us. ;)
 
I'm with Tiberian ... feel for the family but damn, their lawyer must have been thinking ... 'who has the biggest insurance policy to target? Random schmoe with likely $100k/300k/100k of coverage or ... let's see ... Apple.' and we know who he decided to go after at that point.

If guy in car hits you, it's the guy in the car's fault. Not McDonalds or Apple or Samsung or the guy / girl on the other end of the phone. The dumbass made the conscious decision to drive while talking / texting / face-timing on the phone. If not for him, face-time or no, there would not have been an accident.
 
Using a phone while driving can be considered distracted driving. Apple didn't make him use Face Time.
 
This is just an opportunistic ambulance chaser working the case for free. All he has to do is social engineer a jury and he's got a lottery payout.

I'd lay money that he/she initiated contact with the family, not the other way around, nor was it the family's idea to sue.
 
I would say if they are looking for others to pull into a lawsuit their best shot would be the driver and the person he was facetimeing.

I think new york has a law on the books to that effect when texting, I mean if you know someone is driving and are texting or calling them then you should be held responsible as well if there is an accident.
 
DPI said:
This is just an opportunistic ambulance chaser working the case for free. All he has to do is social engineer a jury and he's got a lottery payout.
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Nail on the head :)
They are represented by Jeffrey Simon of Simon Greenstone Panatier Bartlett in Long Beach, California.
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http://www.sgpblaw.com/track-record.html All the ones they list are mesothelioma, guess they want some Apple goodness on that list.
While we are certainly proud of our firm’s trial verdicts, SGPB’s mission is the recovery of financial compensation for our clients from the companies or individuals responsible for their personal injuries and financial losses.
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hurleybird said:
It's like trying to patent the seat belt. So now other phone manufacturers won't use that feature, even if it might save lives, to avoid paying (or being sued by) Apple. Seriously, screw them.
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What are you talking about? There are numerous seat belt patents. Other companies can figure out how to turn cell phones off while driving they just can't do it the exact same way Apple detailed in their patent. No one has to pay Apple anything unless they want to use the same method Apple patented. How can you guys still be this lost on patent issues after dozens of us have explained it over the years?

dvsman said:
Random schmoe with likely $100k/300k/100k of coverage
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I agree they're going after the deepest pockets but I doubt random schmoes have that high coverage. I have it because I have a lease (and then increased it after family and property came into play) but my money is on most people carrying the minimum coverage, which is 30/60/25 in Texas.

azuza001 said:
I mean if you know someone is driving and are texting or calling them then you should be held responsible as well if there is an accident.
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WTF, I don't know when people are driving or whatever they are doing when I send a text to them.
 
BadAim said:
I'm glad McDonalds didn't fork over a ton of money and have to put warning labels on hot coffee to say it's hot. Oh wait, they did. Welcome to the American legal system.
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The lady sufferd 3RD DEGREE BURNS on her crotch. It required extensive skin grafts and left her disfigured for the rest of her life. On top of that she didn't even want to sue McDonalds in the first place. She tried to work with them to pay some of the medical bills and to change their policies on how hot the coffee should be. They basically told her to go fuck herself. They didn't even fork over a "ton of money". The jury awarded her $160k in damages for medical expenses and 2.7m in punitive damages. The judge reduced the total award to $640k and then both her and the lawyers agreed to a confidential sum before an appeal was decided. The claim of McDs paying out millions of dollars on a bogus lawsuit are complete bullshit, entirely fabricated by McDonald's and other big companies along with claims of hundreds of similar frivolous lawsuits being filed all the time in order to scare people away from actually suing companies.
 
play stupid games and you win stupid prizes, its ALL the fault of the driver
 
mope54 said:
What are you talking about? There are numerous seat belt patents. Other companies can figure out how to turn cell phones off while driving they just can't do it the exact same way Apple detailed in their patent. No one has to pay Apple anything unless they want to use the same method Apple patented. How can you guys still be this lost on patent issues after dozens of us have explained it over the years?
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Without even reading the patent I'm going to predict that it's based on on the obvious method of location tracking, or on accelerator data, or some combination. Or, maybe it's even worse and just amounts to a vague catch all, since that's been done before. A solution to a problem that I, or any other halfway intelligent person can come up with 30 seconds after hearing the problem should not be granted a patent. The likely difference between this and the hypothetical seat belt patents that you mentioned is that this basically blocks of the default, obvious way to do things. The alternatives are going to be needlessly complex, which in the end results in the defacto killing off of the possibility that other manufacturers will implement the safety feature. In other words, granting this kind of patent has the potential to do great amounts of social harm, whereas if a patent is ever granted it should be to benefit society by sharing the details of the invention.

Of course, those hypothetical seat belt patents, as well as the majority of patents in general, should not have been issued, but that's another matter altogether. The reason for patents originally was, and still should be, that the public can benefit from the knowledge contained in the patent, while a monopoly means that the patent holder doesn't need to try to hide the workings of his invention and rely on trade secrets. Nowadays though the purpose of patents is corporate protectionism and wealth redistribution towards those who are already rich, with very few exceptions.
 
Derangel said:
The lady sufferd 3RD DEGREE BURNS on her crotch. It required extensive skin grafts and left her disfigured for the rest of her life. On top of that she didn't even want to sue McDonalds in the first place. She tried to work with them to pay some of the medical bills and to change their policies on how hot the coffee should be. They basically told her to go fuck herself. They didn't even fork over a "ton of money". The jury awarded her $160k in damages for medical expenses and 2.7m in punitive damages. The judge reduced the total award to $640k and then both her and the lawyers agreed to a confidential sum before an appeal was decided. The claim of McDs paying out millions of dollars on a bogus lawsuit are complete bullshit, entirely fabricated by McDonald's and other big companies along with claims of hundreds of similar frivolous lawsuits being filed all the time in order to scare people away from actually suing companies.
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She should of got nothing, but oh well.
 
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