50-year-old Mary Kay Beckman has filed a $10 million lawsuit against dating site Match.com, placing blame on them for a 2011 incident that left her nearly dead.
In September of 2010, Beckman met her “match” on the site, 53-year-old Wade Ridley. But after just eight days, she decided to break it off. Four months later, he broke into her house and stabbed her 10 times with a butcher knife. So hard that according to reports, the knife broke.
Ridley later committed suicide in jail awaiting trial.
Beckman is suing, claiming that Match.com doesn’t do enough to warn people of the risks they take when pursuing an online “match.”
Match.com has responded to the lawsuit, calling the situation “horrible” but the lawsuit itself “absurd”:
What happened to Mary Kay Beckman is horrible but this lawsuit is absurd. The many millions of people who have found love on Match.com and other online dating sites know how fulfilling it is. And while that doesn’t make what happened in this case any less awful, this is about a sick, twisted individual with no prior criminal record, not an entire community of men and women looking to meet each other.
Match.com’s terms of use does tackle the issue of “interactions with other members,” saying that they are not responsible for them, and that they currently don’t conduct criminal background checks. “Match.com makes no representations or warranties as to the conduct of members or their compatibility with any current of future member,” they state.
“IN NO EVENT SHALL MATCH.COM BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, WHETHER DIRECT, INDIRECT, GENERAL, SPECIAL, COMPENSATORY, CONSEQUENTIAL, AND/OR INCIDENTAL, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE CONDUCT OF YOU OR ANYONE ELSE IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OF THE SERVICE,” says the site in big, bold, capital letters.
But it’s not as if terms of use are always airtight and courts can’t rule against a company in spite of them. What do you think? Is match.com in any way liable for violence that occurred based on one of their suggestions? Or is this lawsuit, like they put it, absurd?