A French court cleared a young couple today of committing a crime when they let a drunk friend get into his car and drive off, shortly before he killed four people and himself in a road accident.
The case would have set a legal precedent if Mr Jean-Sebastien and Ms Angelique Fraisse had been found guilty of not preventing a crime by the court in Nancy in eastern France.
They had risked up to five years in prison.
The case also attracted attention in France because Ms Fraisse has been wheelchair-bound since she was 16, when she was a victim of an accident involving a drunk driver.
The couple said they were unable to stop Frederic Colin (28) getting into his car and driving off after a night of heavy drinking at their home in eastern France in February 2000.
After missing a motorway exit, Mr Colin made a U-turn, drove up the wrong side of the motorway and crashed into a car. Mr Colin and four of the car's passengers, a young couple and two of their three children, died. Their third child survived.
The victims' family said the Fraisse couple should have alerted police that Colin was drunk at the wheel, but the court said their failure to do so was not a crime.
France has one of the worst road death tolls in Europe, but a government campaign has cut the toll by a fifth last year to 5,731 as speed traps were built beside motorways and the government urged courts to deal harshly with reckless driving.