Negligent Radio Station + Nintendo Wii + Water Intoxication = $16.6m Jury Award

In an interview, the great Bruce Lee once expounded upon the amazing qualities of water. He viewed its properties as a guiding philosophy to be followed by martial artists looking to improve their fighting abilities. And he was right, water is pretty impressive. When it’s a torrent it can tear down a forest, as a stream it can gradually split a mountain, and at the same time we drink it to keep hydrated and stay alive. But apparently if you drink too much of it you can die from something called water intoxication, which is exactly what happened to a woman 2 years ago. Remember that case?

Well, the family of the deceased wife looking to win a Nintendo Wii for her kids sued. Now after two years of litigation, the jury has finally reached a verdict in favor of the aggrieved family and levied a damage award of $16.6 million to be paid by the radio station.

In case you guys have forgotten about this one (and I don’t blame you as I can barely remember whether or not I brushed my teeth this morning) the woman’s name was Jennifer Lea Strange. She was a 28-year-old mother of three children who entered into a radio contests in California to win the then very elusive Nintendo Wii (which, by the way, is no longer quite as elusive and cheaper to boot).

The contest required contestants to drink large amounts of water and then hold in their urine. The contestant who could drink the most water while resisting the urge to use the bathroom the longest would win the coveted video game system. Strange won the contest, but ultimately and unfortunately lost her life in the strange (no pun intended) process.

Now some of you may be wondering why in the hell would anyone subject themselves to this kind of suffer for what is essentially an electronic toy. Well, regardless of whether or not you have children, I think everyone (except probably my parents) can all understand the very pressing need to get a person we love that “perfect gift.”

More importantly, however, Strange’s case serves as a reminder to corporations, businesses, and people in general everywhere of why you should think twice before committing poorly thought out acts that can lead to serious harm or death. And that should you decide to go forward with said poorly thought out act, if you’re a radio station have enough sense to stop and heed the deluge of warnings from your listeners.

The sad truth is LegalMatch receives many wrongful death cases every year, cases that could have been easily prevented but for the negligent actions of another party. Wrongful death cases are not just incredibly costly from an economic standpoint (i.e. lawyers fees and the potential for incredibly large jury awards for compensatory, punitive, and emotional distress damages), but from a purely human perspective, cases of negligence resulting in serious injury or wrongful death means that a person has suffered deeply and permanently. And that the harm is not only limited to the immediately damaged party, but also that party’s family. The toll is emotional, physical, and financial.

So what’s the lesson here? It’s the same one that my dad has been telling me since I was born: Don’t be stupid.

Email – It’s Fast, Easy, And Now Unprotected From Unlawful Searches

It’s official – we’re now taking our legal cues on privacy from China and South Korea. Not literally of course; though like every American court we can still look to another country’s legal statutes and cases for inspiration… though that’s going away from the point of my post today.
You remember email, right? That thing you’ve been using as your main source of written communication since the last decade? The major form of correspondence that has surpassed old-fashioned snail mail and which is relied upon by everyone from business titans to celebrities, the president, and your aging grandmother (who floods your inbox with those funny grammatically incorrect cat pictures)? Yeah, that email – it’s no longer protected against searches from the police.
“No, that can’t be right! Right? Email? They are no different than letters you received in the mail; how can they not be afforded the same protection?” Well, apparently if you think like that you’ve been preempted by a federal judge, my friend.
Specifically, this ruling comes down from and Oregon Federal Judge Michael Mosman (I almost typed Michael Madsen; if he gave the ruling I might’ve been less outraged). Judge Mosman argues that unlike regular snail mail which is handled by postal employees, e-mail should not be afforded the same protection against unlawful searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment because when an email is sent, it goes through various Internet service providers. By traveling through these different providers, each email leaves a digital image of itself with each ISP. And apparently this fact is enough to distinguish email from regular land mail because by leaving a digital copy of itself, emails are in essence open to the ISP to read and monitor and therefore people who send emails cannot expect to have the same level of privacy as when one sends a regular piece of mail through the post office. Judge Mosman’s full opinion can be read here (please note that the link is to a PDF).
Sound mental? Yeah, well it should. Judge Mosman seems to hang his ruling on the notion that because emails aren’t sealed in envelopes like a written letters, people should expect it to be read. Now to be fair, police would still need a warrant to search through your email. However, they’ll just need to submit the warrant to an ISP that has your emails to get access to them, thereby completely bypassing you and giving you no notice before invading your private emails.
Now on one hand, Judge Mosman’s argument makes some sense. Junk mail in the form of post cards and brochures are almost never sealed and the courts have generally viewed these as forms of advertisement and therefore not protected under the Fourth Amendment since it’s argued that junk mail is meant to be seen by as many people as possible. However, this is also where Judge Mosman’s argument breaks down because private emails aren’t advertisements, but are actual private communications between parties.
“But Andrew, what about the whole issue of emails leaving digital copies of themselves on ISPs and not being sealed like normal letters?” Well let me answer that question, too, and thank you for asking so kindly. Though emails are not physical sealed, they are often digitally encrypted to prevent prying eyes from seeing its contents. Therefore, an analogy can be drawn between sealing and encryption since they both show the sender’s intent to keep their communication private. Furthermore, like postal workers who we trust not to open our mail, similarly we trust our ISPs not to read our emails.
Anyway, all my ranting is meaningless until someone challenges Judge Mosman’s ruling or the legislature passes a law that gives emails the same protection against unlawful searches and seizures that physical mail enjoys.
So get started people, write your senators and congressmen, just don’t email them – for now.