Maynard v. Snapchat, Inc.

870 S.E.2d 739 (2022)

Purchase the Printed Copy at bsmsphd.com

Nature of the Case

To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.

Facts

P alleged that, around 10:15 p.m. on September 10, 2015, McGee crashed her car into the back of Wentworth's vehicle while driving 107 miles per hour. According to the P, McGee told her three passengers right before the crash that she was “just trying to get the car to 100 m.p.h. to post it on Snapchat” using Snapchat's Speed Filter. P asserted a negligence claim and a derivative loss-of-consortium claim against McGee and D, seeking damages, punitive damages, and litigation expenses. Ps alleged that D had negligently designed the Speed Filter feature of the Snapchat application. P alleged that D “owed a duty to use ordinary care in designing … its products, including but not limited to Snapchat's Speed Filter.” “D breached that duty, because (1) Snap “did not remove, abolish, restrict access to, or otherwise use reasonable care to address the danger created by D's Speed Filter and other products,” (2) D's “design decisions regarding its Speed Filter and other products [were] unreasonable and negligent,” and (3) D's “disclaimers [and warnings were] also inadequate, unreasonable, and knowingly ineffective.” D had designed its products to “encourage” dangerous behaviors and could “reasonably foresee[ ]” that the “Speed Filter was motivating, incentivizing, or otherwise encouraging its users to drive at excessive, dangerous speeds in violation of traffic and safety laws.” D answered the complaint, attaching copies of its Terms of Use and a “pop-up warning” that, “a user first accessing the D ‘speed filter’ would see.” The Terms of Use stated that the user agreed not to use D “for any illegal or unauthorized purpose,” and the warning stated, “Please, DO NOT Snap and drive.” D then moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim or, in the alternative, for judgment on the pleadings. The court concluded that D owed no legal duty to P because D did not owe a duty as a manufacturer to design its product to prevent McGee from driving dangerously or to control McGee's conduct. Second, the court concluded that P could not establish proximate causation because (a) a driver's inattention, not a mobile phone application, causes a driver to wreck a car, and (b) McGee's criminal and negligent driving, as reflected in her May 17, 2018 plea of no contest to serious injury by vehicle, constituted a superseding and intervening cause that broke the causal chain. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court. P appealed.