And does it matter if A is a Yankees fan?

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Sep 222005
 

A, while driving B, a child of three, in a sleigh, is pursued by a pack of wolves which are rapidly closing upon him. To gain time A throws B to the wolves. The time consumed by the wolves in devouring B enables A to reach shelter a few seconds before the pack can reach him. A is subject to liability under a wrongful death statute for the death of B.

Do you agree that A should be held liable? What are the damages in the wolf case if there is a liabilty? Should the wolf example be decided differently if A’s action were taken to save the lives of seven others as well as his own?

 Posted by JHW at 11:58 am
  • J.

    Wait. You really are in law school. Your mom must be psyched.

  • http://www.en-dash.com Jake

    Yeah, but isn’t that an interesting hypothetical? What do you think about it?

  • http://laustintexas.blogspot.com Fletch

    Man, and I thought that discussing ‘what is “information”‘ was kind of lame.

  • http://www.en-dash.com Jake

    I thought that was very interesting! There’s a great discussion of the Google Print situation over at Lessig’s blog. You should read it!

  • J.

    I think you’re the one in law school, so you would know better than I…my training is from a decidedly different tack. My thoughts include the complication of it being, like, wolves. If it were more like Ryan, Trey and Marissa…

    To be serious, from my point of view (think the Western canon and hallowed CU halls), of course A would be liable, because all members of society have a right to protection of themselves and their property. And in keeping with that line of reasoning, which I admit has its flaws, A would still be liable even if he saved a bunch of other people. Or wolves. Or whatever.

    Sadly, a good person to punch on this would be my dad. He just became, like, Grandmaster of Ethics for the American Psychiatric Association. I’m just going to end the post right now.

  • http://blognac.blogspot.com/ Noah

    If A was truly forced to choose between B’s life and his own, I don’t think there is any reason to hold A liable. One of a person’s most fundamental rights (maybe the most fundamental right) is to protect his life. However, if A left B for dead merely to increase his own chances of survival (but not to save his own life from an imminent threat), then A does have some liability for B’s death. A person cannot take the life of another just to increase his odds of living another day. Based on these facts, it sounds like we are closer to the latter situation here (since A tossed B overboard “to gain time”), so A should be liable. I think that in order to have a liability-free killing, a situation needs to exist where someone is forced to make a direct and immiediate choice between someone else’s life and his own.

  • http://www.en-dash.com Jake

    Well, “[t]he time consumed by the wolves in devouring B enables A to reach shelter a few seconds before the pack can reach him.” So, I dunno. Seems like he saved his life with that maneuver. But I guess it makes sense for him to be liable, nonetheless. The law is pretty crazy.

  • J.

    “I think that in order to have a liability-free killing, a situation needs to exist where someone is forced to make a direct and immiediate choice between someone else’s life and his own.”

    That is why I’m saying that if the only way to stop your boyfriend from getting lobotomized by a telephone was to shoot somebody, the world would be a much easier place to understand! Maybe instead of learning law, you should learn how you can adapt real-life situations to episodes of the O.C., which always have a clear moral black and white.

   
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