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California View: Can <i>Pok'mon Go</i> Players Hold Game Developer Liable?
Within the first week of its release, the enhanced-reality game Pok'mon Go garnered 21 million users in the United States alone. The location-based game received praise for getting people out of the house and harsh criticism as a nuisance and for its role in accidents. Among the litany of legal issues the game raises is whether players can hold the game developers at Niantic liable if they walk off cliffs, crash their cars, illegally cross the border or happen upon a land mine.
Niantic, the game's California-based developer, has potential liability for designing a game where it is foreseeable that players may injure themselves as a result of pursuing Pok'mon. In the California Supreme Court case of Weirum v. RKO General , 15 Cal. 3d 40 (1975) (http://bit.ly/2buW5XE), the state high court held that a radio station with a large teen audience was not freed from liability for designing a contest that required participants to drive about in search of one of the disc jockeys. The court found the station liable where, in the course of one such contest, a minor participant negligently forced another car off the road, killing the car's occupant.
The Weirum court determined that it was foreseeable that the contest would lead to injury or death. In addition, in the California case of Strange v. Entercom (Super. Ct., Sacramento Cty.), a jury found a radio station liable for wrongful death where, in an ill-conceived contest, people were encouraged to drink huge amounts of water in order to win a Nintendo Wii, resulting in the death of contestant Jennifer Strange. Notably, Strange was not found comparatively negligent for having voluntarily participated in the contest.
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