You know you do it and even if you say you don’t, we know you have at some point. So last month, in a room filled with more than 50 legal administrators, accounting and IT professionals who run our area firms, both large and small, tears were shed. Most of us in that room were prepared to hear another great ALA educational session to help us better run our firms. What we heard instead was something entirely different. We heard the unavoidable truth that we continue to do something that puts not only our firms at risk of liability, but puts our lives—and our families’ lives—on the line every day. A quick glance at the phone to see who emailed, or shooting off a text as the light turns green—yes, we’ve all been at some point, a distracted driver.
From the employer perspective, we constantly run risk assessments on the liabilities we face. We have an obligation to protect our employees, but we also need to protect our bottom line. If you are wondering why ending distracted driving should become a priority for your firm, here to are just two, of many, reasons that come to mind. The first was the 2001 case of Jane Wagner, a lawyer with international law firm Cooley Godward, who struck and killed a 15-year-old girl in northern Virginia when she was driving home from work and conducting a business call on her cellphone. The jury awarded $30 million against Cooley Godward, although the firm ended up settling for an undisclosed amount. The second is the 2012 case in Texas in which the Coca-Cola company paid $24 million to a woman injured by a Coca-Cola sales employee driving a company car and using a hands-free device. The court held that even though Coca-Cola had a policy in place, that policy alone was insufficient as a defense and therefore Coca-Cola was negligent.
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