Don Steele - Legal Case

Legal Case

Steele played a role in a tragic case which led to the California Supreme Court's decision in Weirum v. RKO General, Inc.,, a notable decision on the issue of proximate causation in tort law. In the summer of 1970, KHJ — which had "an extensive teenage audience" — had a promotion called "The Super Summer Spectacular." The promotion involved contests in which Steele would drive "a conspicuous red automobile" to a particular area and an announcer would state over the air that Steele was headed to that area. The first person who found Steele and fulfilled a specified condition would receive a cash prize and would be interviewed on the air by Steele. The conditions varied from answering a question correctly to having certain items of clothing. An example of an announcement of the contest was: "9:30 and The Real Don Steele is back on his feet again with some money and he is headed for the Valley. Thought I would give you a warning so that you can get your kids out of the street."

On July 16, 1970, two teenagers, who were following Steele in separate cars, drove at speeds up to 80 miles per hour so that they could be closest to Steele when the next contest was announced. One of the teenagers forced another motorist's car off the road, and the motorist — 32 year old Ronald Weirum — was killed when the car overturned.

Weirum's wife and children filed a wrongful death action against both teenagers, the manufacturer of Weirum's car, and RKO General, which was the owner of KHJ. One of the teenagers settled with the plaintiffs before trial. A jury subsequently found in favor of the manufacturer of the car, but found that the second teenager and RKO General were both liable for the accident. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $300,000 of damages. RKO General appealed.

The California Supreme Court affirmed the jury's verdict that RKO General was legally liable for the accident, holding that there was sufficient evidence to permit the jury to find that the contest's risk of harm to the public, including Weirum, had been "foreseeable." The court said:

These tragic events unfolded in the middle of a Los Angeles summer, a time when young people were free from the constraints of school and responsive to relief from vacation tedium. Seeking to attract new listeners, KHJ devised an "exciting" promotion. Money and a small measure of momentary notoriety awaited the swiftest response. It was foreseeable that defendant's youthful listeners, finding the prize had eluded them at one location, would race to arrive first at the next site and in their haste would disregard the demands of highway safety.

The court also said that KHJ had negligently created an undue risk to the public:

We need not belabor the grave danger inherent in the contest broadcast by defendant. The risk of a high speed automobile chase is the risk of death or serious injury. Obviously, neither the entertainment afforded by the contest nor its commercial rewards can justify the creation of such a grave risk. Defendant could have accomplished its objectives of entertaining its listeners and increasing advertising revenues by adopting a contest format which would have avoided danger to the motoring public.

The court rejected RKO General's contention that the contest was like an athletic department's sale of a limited number of tickets to a sporting event or a department store's holding of a "while-they-last" sale. It said:

The giveaway contest was no commonplace invitation to an attraction available on a limited basis. It was a competitive scramble in which the thrill of the chase to be the one and only victor was intensified by the live broadcasts which accompanied the pursuit. In the assertedly analogous situations described by defendant, any haste involved in the purchase of the commodity is an incidental and unavoidable result of the scarcity of the commodity itself. In such situations there is no attempt, as here, to generate a competitive pursuit on public streets, accelerated by repeated importuning by radio to be the very first to arrive at a particular destination. Manifestly the "spectacular" bears little resemblance to daily commercial activities.