Trial News

In a case against Snapchat, the Georgia Supreme Court found that the social media company had a duty to design its Speed Filter—which allowed users to post “selfies” indicating their travelling speed—in a way that reduced reasonably foreseeable risks of harm. The plaintiff suffered a severe and permanent brain injury after another driver crashed into his car while using the Speed Filter. (Maynard v. Snapchat, Inc., 2022 WL 779733 (Ga. Mar. 15, 2022).)

Snapchat’s Speed Filter is a graphic overlay in Snapchat’s mobile phone application, and stamps users’ photos or videos with the speed at which the mobile device is travelling. In September 2015, Christal McGee was driving more than 100 mph and recording her speed using the Speed Filter on her mobile phone. She rear-ended Wentworth Maynard's car at 107 mph. Maynard sustained a permanent brain injury.

Maynard sued Snapchat in Georgia state court, alleging the company had negligently designed its Speed Filter. He argued that Snapchat failed to take reasonable care in designing the Speed Filter for foreseeable use, despite knowing that users posted pictures showing themselves driving at dangerous speeds. The trial court dismissed Maynard’s claim, and a divided panel of the Georgia Appellate Court affirmed. The appellate court based its decision on a finding that Snapchat did not owe a legal duty to Maynard and that a “manufacturer’s duty to design reasonably safe products does not extend to people injured by a third party’s intentional and tortious misuse of the manufacturer’s product.” Maynard appealed.

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed, finding that Maynard had “adequately alleged that Snapchat could reasonably foresee the particular risk of harm from the Speed Filter at issue.” The court explained that Georgia statutory law “imposes strict liability [on manufacturers] for defective products” and that under case law “a manufacturer has a duty to exercise reasonable care in ‘selecting from among alternative product designs’ to ‘reduce the [reasonably] foreseeable risks of harm.’”

The court then rejected the appellate court’s conclusion that “a manufacturer cannot ever owe a design duty to an injured person if the person was injured by a third party’s use of its product.” There is no “blanket exception to a manufacturer’s design duty in all cases of intentional or tortious third-party product misuse,” in Georgia case law, the court held.

The court also found that the appellate court erred in concluding that “a manufacturer can never have a duty to use reasonable care in designing its products if a third party used a product intentionally and tortiously.” It rejected Snapchat’s public policy argument that manufacturers would be subject to “‘limitless’ liability” if they owed a duty in intentional misuse cases because “‘almost any product capable of foreseeable, intentional misuse’ would subject manufacturers ‘to a jury trial under the risk-utility test.’” Rather, comparative negligence and apportionment will act to limit manufacturers’ liability in such cases to the degree of their fault, the court said.

The court remanded the case to the appellate court for a decision on proximate cause. Snapchat took down its Speed Filter in 2021.

AAJ signed on to a joint amicus brief with the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association in support of Maynard, arguing that the appellate court erred in finding Snapchat owed no duty to “guard against foreseeable product misuse.” The brief also cautioned of public policy concerns resulting from the appellate court’s “contrived distinction” between intentional and accidental product misuse.”

AAJ Parliamentarian N. John Bey, of Atlanta, said “the ruling is a step toward accountability” and hopes it “will make the world a safer place by holding Snapchat and its affiliate companies accountable to the citizens they market to—and ensuring that future products they create and allow on their application are made with user safety in mind.”

Atlanta attorney Naveen Ramachandrappa, who represents Maynard, said “the Georgia Supreme Court’s judgment thoroughly and persuasively rejects each of Snapchat’s many incorrect assertions. The court also agreed with the dissenting appellate court opinion that ‘[t]he novelty of the technology and the circumstances at issue should not distract us. There is nothing novel about the legal questions before us.’”

Ramachandrappa said that as the case returns to the appellate court for a determination on proximate cause, he “fully expects Maynard to prevail—the Georgia Supreme Court has already rejected many of Snapchat’s causation arguments.” Although Snapchat took down its Speed Filter in 2021, he said that “jurors will ultimately have to decide whether it was negligent for Snapchat to wait eight years to take down the Speed Filter, despite repeatedly being notified of the dangers and when many people were dying or being seriously injured.”

Ramachandrappa also represents the plaintiffs in another case involving Snapchat’s Speed Filter, Lemmon v. Snap, Inc., which after a favorable decision in the Ninth Circuit, was remanded and is now pending in California federal district court. That case involves two teens who were burned alive when the car they were traveling in crashed at 123 mph, as recorded on Snapchat. The Georgia Supreme Court cites Lemmon and “we now have two jurisdictions that have soundly rejected Snapchat’s attempt to avoid legal duty,” Ramachandrappa said.