The woman who claims faulty walking directions on Google Maps caused her to be hit by a car is trying to salvage her case with the novel argument that Google is liable for negligent publication because it provided her with “individual advice.”

The highway where Lauren Rosenberg was hit by a car

The First Amendment protections enjoyed by publishers apply only when “the information at issue was published to the public at large,” Lauren Rosenberg says in a brief. Since Google provided her with “customized” walking directions in a “one-on-one communication,” it is no different than surveyors or real estate agents, who “have routinely been held liable for negligent misrepresentation.”

Rosenberg sued Google in May 2010 after 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.

But Google says the case should be dismissed under the First Amendment, arguing that Rosenberg has “presented no plausible rationale for treating Google like an expert advisor ... rather than a publisher.” It has also made the startling allegation that she “stepped in front of a car in the dark at 6 in the morning, apparently after drinking all night.”

“[I]t is not reasonably foreseeable that someone who obtains a suggested walking route from Google Maps will abandon common sense and walk in front of oncoming traffic while inebriated,” defense lawyer Blaine J. Benard wrote in a brief.

The case appears to be the first to allege that an online publisher is liable for defective content. Rosenberg 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.

“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,” she said in her lawsuit.

In a motion to dismiss, Google said the First Amendment protects publishers from being held strictly liable for the accuracy of the information they publish and because “'it is simply impossible to attain perfection in the publishing business,' a contrary rule would mean the risk of unlimited liability for publishers.”

Rosenberg argues that Google did not “publish” the route she followed through Park City. “Google's provision of walking directions through its web site was no different than if Plaintiff had called Google and orally asked a Google employee for walking directions,” she says, and even though Google uses the Internet to deliver information, “that does not change the nature of the communication.”

“Travel agents, stock brokers, surveyors, etc., are all held accountable if the advice they give is negligent and the proximate cause of an injury,” her brief opposing dismissal, written by attorney Tyler S. Young, says.

That argument, though, fails to recognize that providing information from an online database does not amount to providing “individual advice.”

While Rosenberg theorizes that she was the only person whom Google Maps directed from point A to point B in Park City, Google says,

[T]here is no limitation on the number of people who could obtain precisely the same information from Google Maps. That is because Google makes available a large and “comprehensive index of web sites and other online content” — including a vast amount of geographic data in Google Maps — to an unlimited audience of users.

By Matthew Heller
2/28/11