A Missouri appeals court dealt a major defeat to ride-sharing app Lyft earlier this month, setting up potentially “billions of dollars in damages” if similar cases are brought against other tech companies, says attorney Dave Roland.
“If the creators of these sites or apps could reasonably anticipate ways that their products might be misused, to the harm of their users,” he noted, “then they could be on the hook.”
On March 3, the Missouri Court of Appeals unanimously reversed an earlier court decision in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the mother of Andrew Ameer, who was killed in a 2020 carjacking. The people who killed him used the app to set up a carjacking and ambush, a plan that ended in the deaths of Ameer and a 16-year-old.
Although the Lyft app was a key component in the events that ended in Ameer’s death, St. Louis Circuit Judge Joseph Whyte dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that Lyft wasn’t a product that was being misused. The appeals court has reversed that decision — finding that Lyft is in fact a product and therefore subject to liability.
“The potential implications of this decision are massive, even though, at this moment, this particular decision was fairly narrow,” Roland said on Tuesday’s Legal Roundtable edition of St. Louis on the Air.
While currently limited to a single court case, the decision should worry other tech companies, said former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce. She argued that Lyft’s app-based business model is similar to those that allow people to query AI services like ChatGPT.
She raised the possibility of a similar lawsuit being brought if someone misuses AI to commit a crime or do harm. “It will be interesting to see how this unfolds in the next few years, with the AI development going so fast,” she said.
Along with Jennifer Joyce and Dave Roland, Tuesday’s Legal Roundtable featured Eric Banks, an attorney and mediator at Banks Law. The group of legal experts also discussed recent criminal charges against former presidential candidate Jill Stein, a 10-year battle over open records and an effort to raise the pay of juries.
To hear the full discussion and analysis, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcast or by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Roshae Hemmings is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
