In what may be the first “defective content” lawsuit against an online publisher, a California woman has sued Google for providing her with faulty directions on Google Maps that resulted in her being hit by a car.

The highway where Lauren Rosenberg was hit by a car

Lauren Rosenberg has included claims for negligent publication and failure to warn in her suit over an accident last January in which a driver allegedly struck her as she was walking across a highway in Park City, Utah. She says she chose her route after consulting Google Maps on her Blackberry.

Pedestrian directions provided by Google Maps carry the warning, “Use caution — This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.” But Rosenberg insists there was no such warning on her Blackberry.

Google undertook a “duty to exercise reasonable care in providing reasonably safe directions,” she says in a complaint filed last week in Utah, and,

As a direct and proximate cause of Defendant Google's careless, reckless and negligent providing of unsafe directions, Plaintiff Lauren Rosenberg was led onto a dangerous highway, and was thereby stricken [sic] by a motor vehicle.

Rosenberg doesn't specify what injuries she suffered in the Jan. 19 accident but she is seeking at least $100,000 in damages from Google and Patrick Harwood, the alleged driver of the vehicle that hit her on Deer Valley Road, also known as State Route 224.

While the case appears to break new legal ground, Rosenberg will probably not be able to overcome the protections that have shielded old media publishers from liability for defective content. In a seminal case, the Hawaii Supreme Court found a publisher of travel guides was not liable for publishing inaccurate information that allegedly resulted in a man being injured while body-surfing. Birmingham v. Fodor’s Travel Publications, 833 P.2d 70 (1992).

“Generally, courts do not impose liability for negligence on publishers, finding either that the publisher owes no duty to the reader, or that the First Amendment prevents imposition of civil liability,” notes the author of an article in the Washburn Law Journal.

An exception to the general no-duty rule arises when a publisher expressly guarantees that its content is accurate. Applying that exception, a California appeals court said Good Housekeeping magazine could be sued for defective content because it had given its “Consumers' Guaranty Seal” to the “slip-proof” shoes that a woman was wearing when she fell. Hanberry v. Hearst Corp., 276 Cal. App. 2d 680 (1969).

One legal commentary has suggested that a publisher of a map software program could be liable for defective content if the “program was marketed with the claim written on the box that the maps are 'up to date' and with the promise that the program will provide safe routes through strange cities.”

But Google doesn't make any express guarantee or promise for its map service. In fact, Rosenberg alleges only that “The Defendant Google expects users of the walking map site to rely on the accuracy of the walking directions given”  — which is a far cry from alleging it induces users to rely on its walking directions by promising they are accurate.

Nor is Google comparable to publishers of aeronautical charts, who must exercise due care in the publication of “vital information” because of the danger involved when that information proves defective.

“Aeronautical charts are highly technical tools,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in Winter v. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 938 F.2d 1033 (1991). “They are graphic depictions of technical, mechanical data. The best analogy to an aeronautical chart is a compass.”

Rosenberg never finished her two-mile walk through Park City. It looks like her legal journey won't get very far either.

By Matthew Heller
6/3/10