Photograph by Ron Miguel
A Brooklyn appeals court has cleared a female driver over a fatal crash in 2008, after she caused a crash by briefly taking her hands off the steering wheel after a backseat passenger untied her bikini top.
Brittany Lahm was driving a group of friends back to Rockland County from the Jersey Shore, when one of her friends, Brandon Berman, allegedly pulled the strings on her bikini top, briefly distracting Lahm and causing a fatal car crash. Berman was killed in the accident.
The Brooklyn Appellate Division upheld the ruling of a previous Rockland jury, which found that Lahm’s bikini top being untied by a third party constituted “a sudden and unforeseen emergency not of her own making”, and Lahm therefore not culpable for the crash.
