Star Advertiser editorial on travel guide liability bill

The Star Advertiser came out today against the house bill that would assign liability to "[t]he author and publisher of a visitor guide website or visitor guide publication whose visitor guide website or publication encourages, invites, attracts, or causes its readers to commit an offense under section 708-814 on privately owned land, and injury or death occurs as a result of the reader's reliance upon the visitor guide website or guide publication's statements in entering the privately owned land." (§708-814 is the statute that defines criminal trespass in the second degree and makes it a petty misdemeanor). The paper states, in part

First, the bill is an extreme departure from constitutional law and would not stand up in court. Since a landmark First Amendment case in 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have strongly protected publications from lawsuits resulting from injuries blamed on what people have read.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction in Hawaii, rejected in 1991 a lawsuit brought by two mushroom enthusiasts against the publisher of "The Encyclopedia of Mushrooms." They had become critically ill and required liver transplants because mushrooms they had eaten were deemed in the book to be safe to eat. A year later, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that Fodor's Travel Publications could not be blamed for the injury of a Texas honeymooner by failing to warn him about dangerous conditions for bodysurfing at Kauai's Kekaha Beach.