this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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IANAL, and it depends on the countries law. My understanding is in the US 99.999% of the time, as a passerby, you cannot have liability for inaction. Remember the last episode of Seinfeld and the lawyer saying you don't have to help anybody.
However actions you take are always potentially legally liable. And taking an action to cause someone to die always puts you on the hook potentially for manslaughter. Defense of others might be a mitigation, but that is usually like shooting an active shooter. In this case I think that's not what's happening.
Sadly, I think the safe thing for you to do legally is to keep walking and forget you ever saw the lever.
False. In the US, while you are typically under no legal obligation to help, if you do decide to help you are legaly protected by good samaratan laws. Those laws basically boil down to as long as you are making your best effort to help someone and you are acting within the bounds of your training then you can't be held responsible for any damage you may cause. The key point is that you're acting within the bounds of your training. If you see someone choking and stab a pen into their neck like you saw on TV one time then you're still 100% liable for that. However in situations such as moving someone with a spinal injury out of the road you are still covered; yes you made the wrong choice and likely paralized the person, but you were trying to help someone in danger and doing it in the only way you knew how.
That's not to say that someone can't try to sue you. That does happen, but in those situations they are just trying to scare you into settling out of court because odds are the case would be thrown out before it actually got to court anyways.
Shit, in the US the police arenβt even required to intervene.
It's actually kind of funny you mention that. Police dont have a duty to act but medical professionals do so my state just started requiring all police to have an EMR (aka first responder training). That means that they're now "medical professionals" and have a legal duty to render aid whenever they are dispatched to a scene. I'm not sure how duty to act overlaps with qualified immunity but now there is at the very least a case to be made whenever they fail to render aid.
There were a lot of really salty cops in my last EMR class so I got to hear all about it.
Nope. Not if you have any heart at all at least. The us has good samaritan laws in all 50 states, with minor variation. Sure, it's technically possible you might be opening yourself to legal consequences if you help out, but the law as written protects you from being sued for it unless you do something incredibly fucking dumb. (moving a man with a broken spine out of a car is bad, unless the car is on fire).
In china, the opposite is true; everything you do other than inaction can very easily open you up to legal consequences. This is why you can see someone who drove an elderly couple to the er get sued by that couple, or a baby get run over by a truck with a good dozen people walking past without helping (same website).
There is the vague chance in the usa that helping might get you in trouble, but it is most certainly not the best choice to walk past them if something obviously bad that you can help with is going on.
Yes, but I mean the trolly problem specifically. You are specifically changing a trains path to run over a person. I just doubt you would avoid some problem with intentionally killing someone even to try and save others.
Wow, I never knew China was messed up like that. The article you cite is a little old now (2011) do you know if there has been an update to it in the last few years? I would look myself but I have no idea what I would be searching for!
From what I have heard, China has gotten their own version of good Samaratan laws since then however Chinese citizens aren't used to having those laws yet so things haven't really changed even with the new laws on the books.
I agree it'd be heartless to prosecute or sue a switch-thrower who was acting in good faith, but the family of someone killed often don't have a ton of sympathy.
http://www.cprinstructor.com/DC-GS.htm
Using DC as an example, I don't think that tampering with railroad equipment counts as "in good faith, rendering emergency medical care or assistance at the scene of an accident or other emergency" and it only covers against civil damages: basically it reduces private claims of negligence or liability when you did your best to stabilize an injured person. It gets into shaky ground when the person is not yet injured, and they become injured because of your actions. It also doesn't prevent the government from trying you for manslaughter.
It's definitely a messed up situation though, ideally we'd have further laws reducing the bystander effect and encouraging people to do whatever's possible to help. Often we see that people already do, though, and fortunately(?) the situations are often far less clear cut and diabolical than the Trolley Problem.