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Take-Two Interactive and Sony Sued Over GTA
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man. I remember reading about the killing incident a few weeks ago, but this is the first I've read about an actual lawsuit. The part that I found most interesting was that Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console." Update: 09/18 16:27 GMT by M : The Independent has moved/deleted the story on their site, breaking our link. We've already mentioned this story anyway.
This sounds very similar if not identical to Kids Kill, Victim Sues Game Maker.
From the article:
"Mr Hamel, a nurse, was killed while driving home to Knoxville, Tennessee. Miss Bede, who was travelling in another car with her boyfriend, was seriously injured and has eight fragments of shrapnel in her pelvis."
"Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit. Take-Two owns Rockstar Games, which is based in Edinburgh and designed the first version of the game in 1997. Sony will also be named in the lawsuit, because Grand Theft Auto was made exclusively for its Play- Station consoles. Sony declined to comment on the case."
Referring to The Manchurian Candidate, a 1962 film in which American soldiers are brainwashed into becoming fighting machines in the Korean war, Mr Thompson said: "We have got a nation of Manchurian Candidates who are training on these video games."
Next on the list of plantiffs -- the Bicycle Playing Card Company.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The $100m legal action involves Joshua Buckner, 14, and his stepbrother William, 16, from Newport, Tennessee, who shot dead Aaron Hamel, 45, and seriously injured Kimberly Bede, 19, on 25 June..
...Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit.
So this is the same old story.
I guess the NRA can now add video games to their ever expanding list of things that kill people (guns and god excluded).
totally out of proportion to the actual damage done (e.g. the McDonalds coffee lawsuit)
Ah, this myth again...this was not a frivolous lawsuit. Perhaps you should check out the facts.
A few years ago, the mother of a child who was killed by one of his friends sued Midway, saying the friend was inspired by Mortal Kombat. She lost. An article I found about it said...
:)
U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton found that the lawsuit brought by the victim's mother failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Thirteen-year-old Noah Wilson died in November 1997 when his friend, identified in court papers as Yancy S., stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife. Noah's mother, Andrea Wilson, sued Midway Games Inc., claiming that Yancy S. was addicted to "Mortal Kombat" video games and that he was so obsessed with the game that he actually believed he was the character "Cyrax." Wilson argued that Yancy S. was mimicking Cyrax's combat moves at the time he stabbed her son.
But Judge Arterton held that the video game is protected by the First Amendment. While Wilson had argued that "Mortal Kombat" differed from books and motion pictures by virtue of its "interactivity," Judge Arterton said the plaintiff failed to offer a persuasive reason for distinguishing the technological advances that led to the game's creation from developments at the turn of the 20th century that ushered in the motion picture.
You can read the entire article here. Part of me is seriously hoping that the defense can use this in the trial, but then IANAL, so I don't know for certain either way.
Just my $.02...