That would be akin to forcing US Cellular to foot the bill everytime someone calls 911 for some bogus problem....
US cellular is not charging for any false alarm calls to 911. Spot is charging for them. That changes everything and because it indicates they are aware of the problem and the fact they have attempted to prevent being effected by it by levying their own fines makes them responsible for it under due diligence requirements.
Not only that, by deciding to determine for themselves after the call has been made whether the call was abuse or negligence, and charging a fee if it was they have assumed responsibility for the validity of the call.
This also brings in the idea that they knowingly are creating a public nuisance.
The legalese in their contract to avoid liability only serves to show the problem was forseeable and that they themselves considered it forseeable.
Ben, this is not about morality or reasonableness. It is about American justice and who gets to pay to play.
Here is an excerpt from a Judges comments regarding the attempt to sue ICI for supplying the fertilizer used by the Oklahoma City bomber.
The lawsuit failed but not for the reasons you might expect.
Oklahoma has looked to the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 448 for assistance in determining whether the intentional actions of a third party constitute a supervening cause of harm. See Lay v. Dworman, 732 P.2d 455, 458-59 (Okla. 1987). Section 448 states:
The act of a third person in committing an intentional tort or crime is a superseding cause of harm to another resulting therefrom, although the actor's negligent conduct created a situation which afforded an opportunity to the third person to commit such a tort or crime, unless the actor at the time of his negligent conduct realized or should have realized the likelihood that such a situation might be created, and that a third person might avail himself of the opportunity to commit such a tort or crime.
Comment b to § 448 provides further guidance in the case before us. It states:
There are certain situations which are commonly recognized as affording temptations to which a recognizable percentage of humanity is likely to yield. So too, there are situations which create temptations to which no considerable percentage of ordinary mankind is likely to yield but which, if they are created at a place where persons of peculiarly vicious type are likely to be, should be recognized as likely to lead to the commission of fairly definite types of crime. If the situation which the actor should realize that his negligent conduct might create is of either of these two sorts, an intentionally criminal or tortious act of the third person is not a superseding cause which relieves the actor from liability.(2)
Thus, under comment b, the criminal acts of a third party may be foreseeable if (1) the situation provides a temptation to which a "recognizable percentage" of persons would yield, or (2) the temptation is created at a place where "persons of a peculiarly vicious type are likely to be."
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