Not at all an odd target.
This might be more of an emotional lawsuit than a logical one.
Which is a not unreasonable assumption. It doesn't take much before Google's cost outstrip the cost of settlement, and even if it were to prevail in court it probably wouldn't recover costs
> Without that happening, you are looking at years before getting a result, thousands of dollars of attorney fees and a high likelihood that if they lost they would appeal.
Yes, it will take time if the other side doesn't settle, that's rather the norm in lawsuits. But its reasonably likely there is a contingency fee arrangement in olace, meaning the lawyers get paid with and out of any settlement or judgement.
> This might be more of an emotional lawsuit than a logical one
That's always possible, but you haven't really done much to argue for it being likely.
Not sure about Google, but companies like Walmart never settle. For them it's better to have the lawyers tell you "Oh, you're going after Wally, well, that's going to be the next 10 years of your life wasted", then it is to worry about the per litigation costs.
This is simply false. While Walmart is aggressive, they do settle. What Walmart does which masks this is, where they have they have the leverage to do so, as they usually do with individual plaintiffs that actually are concerned about financial compensation, insist in strict confidentiality terms in settlements which makes them unlikely to be reported. But even that doesn't cover everything, and there are noteworthy publicly reported settlements.
https://www.millerandzois.com/wal-mart-injury-settlements.ht...
See also: Google settles account settings lawsuit less than one week after being filed [pdf] (ca.gov) 174 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 3 days ago
I've been named in a lawsuit before, where my contractor's employee was suing my contractor for non-payment on a job (not my job), but named me in the case anyway since my job was going on at the same time. I just went to court prepared to defend myself and the first thing the judge did was ask why I was named in the suit.
Then I was promptly dismissed from the suit but asked to stay as a witness.
But there are currently over 1200 articles on this, including national and international coverage, and that publicity is probably very helpful for the lawsuit.
To be clear, I think Google is not without blame, but the primary apportionment belongs to local road/bridge management, because fixing Google Maps alone would in no way be sufficiently safe, but fixing the physical infrastructure of the route would.
The family could also just be doing it on principle. If Google had made the updates, the man would probably be alive today because he wouldn't have known about this (non-)route, so they may feel like Google shares some blame. The lawsuit and/or bad PR could motivate Google to make some kind of change, like better training or better support in their problem reporting system for tracking and prioritizing corrections related to safety.
Steve Dallas lawsuit?