Legal Environment of Business 8th Edition by Henry Cheeseman

تمرين 4

Duty and Causation Michael Carneal was a 14-year-old freshman student at Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky. Carneal regularly played the violent interactive video and computer games "Doom," "Quake," "Castle Wolfenstein," "Rampage," "Nightmare Creatures," "Mech Warrior," "Resident Evil," and "Final Fantasy." These games involved the player shooting virtual opponents with computer guns and other weapons. Carneal also watched videotaped movies, including one called The Basketball Diaries, in which a high-school-student protagonist dreams of killing his teacher and several of his fellow classmates. Carneal took a.22-caliber pistol and five shotguns into the lobby of Heath High School and shot several of his fellow students, killing three and wounding many others. The three students killed were Jessica James, Kayce Steger, and Nicole Hadley.
The parents of the three dead children sued the producers and distributors of the violent video games and movies that Carneal had watched previous to the shooting. The parents sued to recover damages for wrongful death, alleging that the defendants were negligent in producing and distributing such games and movies to Carneal. Are the video and movie producers liable to the plaintiffs for selling and licensing violent video games and movies to Carneal, who killed the plaintiffs' three children? James v. Meow Media, Inc., 300 F.3d 683, Web 2002 U.S. App. Lexis 16185 (United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit)