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Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality?
e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."
I didn't have to read very far to find out that no, the law is not a reality. Thanks, slashdot!
XML causes global warming.
"Good Samaritan" laws in the sense of Seinfeld already exist in many jurisdictions. It is called a "duty to rescue" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue. Good Samaritan laws also exist, but in legal parlance that means something different, namely protection from liability of people trying to rescue or assist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law. The California law is a variant duty to rescue. This isn't anything new. Seinfeld didn't do their research and apparently neither did the submitter of this post or the editors.
Just because it is the case that the bystander effect is normal doesn't mean it ought to be the case that it is normal. This is a very common logical fallacy in moral philosophy called the is-ought problem as it was well articulated by David Hume. The gist of it is that you cannot take descriptive statements as premises and come to a prescriptive conclusion.
The reason why there are such laws is because we feel that we should have a moral responsibility to help those who are in immediate life-threatening danger when we are in a position to help them without (too much) personal sacrifice.
Uhm, what do you think governments are for then?
1) Defend the borders & provide for basic public saftey.
2) Deliver the mail
3) Build the roads
4) _Maybe_ provide public education
5) Collect enough tax renevue to do ONLY the above.
And thats it.
In Australia we have a shield law for good samaritans. There are three caveats required to invoke the shield law:
1. You must be acting reasonably (although this is to be interpreted in the favor of the good samaritan if in doubt).
2. You must not act without permission, although you may assume you have permission if the victim is unable to give it.
3. You must not be performing something for which you are professionally trained and the act you are seeking shielding from is something for which you could be held liable for under that training (eg. doctor committing mal-practice).
The first test came when a good samaritan ripped a lady's top off to be able to perform CPR (she had had a heart attack and collapsed on the street, and her bra was impeding his effort). She sued him for exposing her in public, and the shield law meant the case couldn't even be heard. IANAL but I understand from my first aid instructor that you are legally shielded against all possible consequences; criminal, civil, procedural, and anything else you can think of.
I understand we also have specific crimes along the lines of "Indifference" and "Aggravated Indifference" which mean you can be held criminally liable for not helping, but a paramedic I know tells me that this is based on your level of training: an average person is expected to call 000 (our 911 equivalent), while a doctor is expected to stop and lend full medical assistance, and a soldier would be expected to intervene physically if the odds meant his own safety wouldn't be compromised. He (the paramedic) said that he was unofficially instructed to GTFO if he ever witnesses an accident, because legally he MUST stop and render medical assistance, but he could be held liable for screwing up first aid and his professional indemnity insurance wouldn't cover him (as the incident wasn't "on the job"). IOW it's better if he was just "never there".
This is a bad idea. In emergency response training we had a lengthy discussion about this. When people witness a crime or even a heart attack they often don't respond because they expect someone else to have already called 911 or that someone else will be able to help the person better. You can have a man choking in a restaurant and 10 CPR/Heimlich trained people who all stand around doing nothing. If you don't realize that this is a natural reaction then you can't counter it if the time comes.
On the other side of the coin, if you do render assistance and you are not trained you can be sued. For example, if you assist in a car accident and drag someone from the wreckage who is later diagnosed with spinal injuries you could be sued for causing those injuries unless you can prove that they were in imminent danger and you are trained to move someone with spinal injuries.
Good Samaritan laws are meant to protect first responders, but against a good lawyer you can still lose.
Its intent is obviously to criminalize witnesses who do not intervene... and a poorly-thought-out law it is.
No, not at all. It's intent is to criminalize failure to report crimes you witness, not failure to intervene in crimes you witness.
There's a very large difference.
(My intent is not to defend the proposed law, only to correct your misinformation.)