11 Comments

Does personal responsibility factor into anything anymore?

Re: ECM’s comment on PR.

Apparently not.

It’s so rare, it must be a superpower nowadays.

I know common sense is a super-power. Look.

http://packphour.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/common-sense.jpg (SFW link)

just a question – what does ‘personal responsibility’ have to do with this case?

i was comletely unaware that someone could die by drinking a lot of water in a contest like this.

“i was comletely unaware that someone could die by drinking a lot of water in a contest like this.”

You don’t have to be aware of the risk to assume personal responsibility. One only needs to know that everything has risk, and personal responsibility requires that you assume that risk regardless of whether you choose to learn more about it or not.
We rationally choose to be ignorant, or incompletely informed out of efficiency of time; sometimes that doesn’t work out so well. In this case, she thought she was going to get something for ‘free’. Nothing is ever free; sometimes the costs are worth it, though sometimes not.

My thought when reading of this case earlier was that if I were on the jury, I would find for the defendant. Then I heard the audio tape of the DJs egging her on and telling to ignore the hurt when she was starting to exhibit symptoms of water intoxication. That tape made me switch my hypothetcial vote to the plaintiff. That does not mean I find that $16.6m is anywhere close to a valid measure of damages, but I would have included punitives and might well have been skeptical of the P’s attorney claims concerning economic damages. However, my wife tells me that we would not have reached a verdict if she was on the same jury.

BFS, out of curiousity–are you saying your wife would have voted for the defendant, or had a much lower damage amount in favor of the plaintiff (and how much?)?

The trouble with bfs comment is its implicit assumption that the DJ’s knew of water intoxication. They showed some concern with her situation toward the end. Without some plausible awareness by the DJ’s of the risk of death no finding of negligence is logical. It was just an accident. Certainly there would be no case if the lady was hit by a car in her rush to get to the radio studio. This was an accident, and I feel sorrow for all involved. The poor lady who died just wanted to be a good mother. What a tragedy.

@William Nuesslein. It’s not implicit. an RN called and told them about the dangers of water intoxication, at which point the DJs brought up a case of a guy who had died from water intoxication in a hazing a few years earlier and laughed about it. It’s the radio station’s job to exercise due dilligence, but even ignoring that, they were warned of the dangers. It’s hard to imagine how they could have been more negligent.

@Ace of Sevens

Consider alcohol poisonings. There are several cases a year of people consuming more alcohol than can be detoxified by the liver. It is rare compared to the number of people getting drunk as a skunk. Vomiting saves us. We have not closed bars because of this risk.

Water Intoxication happens from time to time, but I could not find any rates for it – only case reports. It seems to be possible but exceeding rare. And in hazing, intake of water may have had a forced element to it.

Since the lady drank the water voluntarily and was aware of her own discomfort, I believe that it is asking too much for the DJ’s to rate the risk of death to be non-negligible, despite the warning from the RN.

Since the average lifetime earnings of a worker is about $2 million, the $16.6 number is way out of bounds.

Personal responsibility cuts both ways. Were the people at the radio station exercising personal responsibility when they encouraged listeners to drink huge quantities of water without urinating? Sounds incredibly irresponsible, to me. A reckless and stupid thing to do. Were the listeners who complied also reckless and stupid? Maybe so, but they were merely following instructions, not issuing them.