By the way, one does have a legal
obligation to help, including at some personal inconvenience and risk, in various
emergency situations, including those involving strangers.
Actually, under common law, no. A very few jurisdictions are contemplating or perhaps have passed such "good samaritan" laws, but they always exclude situations in which you may put yourself at risk. Under the common law, and in most jurisdictions, if someone is drowning a few feet from shore and you have a life jacket lying on the shore right beside you and you are healthy and there is no risk at all to you to throw the life jacket to the person, you are legally entitled to just watch them drown and do nothing. Indeed, if you do choose to throw the life jacket, and you bonk them on the head and knock them unconscious and they drown just before rescue boat arrives, you could be held liable for wrongful assistance. Once you start to assist someone, you are liable for errors you make, whereas if you don't assist at all, you have no risk of liability.
Weird, but that's the common law, and still the law of most jurisdictions. |
