Duty to Rescue

People with little close acquaintance with the law are sometimes surprised to learn that there is at common law, and in most statutory jurisdictions in the English-speaking world, no general duty to render aid to individuals who are in trouble. (Rosenbaum, . 247-248)

Indeed, to a layperson reading the relevant case law, it almost seems that the courts sometimes try to make this principle seem as shocking as possible. In one decision that is often cited, a unanimous state supreme court held that, not only did an eight year old boy have no right to be rescued by the defendant from having his hand caught in a machine in the defendant's factory, but he (the boy, as a trespasser) would even have been liable for damages to the defendant in this case had his hand, in being ground up by the defendant's machine, damaged the machine. (Rosenbaum, . 247-248)

It is easy to make judgements like these sound very counterintuitive, as I hope I just have. Yet despite this fact, and despite the fact that the traditional common law rule on this issue has been eroded in the recent decades, the position of the courts on this subject is still surprisingly rigorous. Indeed, most of the so-called exceptions to the doctrine do not really seem to be exceptions at all.

In one group of "exceptions," individuals have an obligation to rescue people from risky situations which they, the potential rescuers, have caused, even if the act that caused the hazard was involuntary. Thus the drivers of two trucks that had, as a result of apparently unavoidable accident, blocked a highway were held liable for injuries when a woman's car crashed into the trucks. The reason was that they probably could have prevented the accident by placing flares or a guard at a ...