## Facts

- Officer Bill Davidson was killed when Ronald Howard shot him during a traffic stop.
- Howard was driving a stolen vehicle when Davidson pulled him over.
- At the time of the shooting, Howard was playing *2Pacalypse Now*, an album performed by Tupac Shakur and produced/distributed by a recording entity affiliated with Time Warner.
- The album contained profane, violent lyrics and anti-police themes.
- In Howard’s criminal case, he claimed the music influenced him to shoot Davidson; he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
- Davidson’s surviving family members sued Shakur and Time Warner for wrongful death, alleging the album was unprotected speech (obscenity, fighting words, or incitement) and that it caused the killing.

## Issues

1. Whether the album’s lyrics fell outside First Amendment protection as incitement to imminent lawless action, fighting words, or obscenity, permitting civil liability for the shooting.
2. Whether plaintiffs could establish duty, proximate cause, and foreseeability linking the creation/distribution of the album to Howard’s criminal act.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment and dismissed the wrongful-death claims.
- The court held the album was protected expression and did not meet the constitutional standard for incitement.
- The court rejected characterizing the music as obscenity or fighting words.
- The court concluded plaintiffs failed to show a sufficiently direct causal connection between the album and the murder to satisfy proximate-cause requirements.

## Legal Principles

- Speech is actionable as incitement only if it is directed to producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action.
- Violent or anti-police artistic expression, without a specific call for immediate unlawful action, remains protected speech.
- Obscenity doctrine targets sexual prurience and defined sexual depictions; violent content generally does not qualify as obscenity under constitutional standards.
- Fighting words require personally abusive, face-to-face epithets likely to provoke an immediate breach of the peace; mass-distributed lyrics not addressed to a specific person in a confrontation do not qualify.
- Tort liability for third-party crimes requires more than speculative influence; an intervening intentional criminal act typically breaks causation absent a close, foreseeable nexus.

## Conclusion

The court refused to impose wrongful-death liability on an artist and record distributor for a listener’s murder, holding that the album’s violent themes were constitutionally protected and that the alleged causal chain to the specific killing was too remote to support proximate cause.


Davidson v. Time Warner, Inc., No. V-94-006, 1997 WL 405907 (S.D. Tex. Mar. 31, 1997)