- Lawsuit of the Day: Partner Booted From Three Firms Sues ‘Em All! [Legal Blog Watch]
- Drawing wrong lessons from the Rutgers suicide [Greenfield and more (proposed “Tyler’s Law”), John Schwartz/NYT (quoting Orin Kerr), Volokh and more, Above the Law]
- John Sullivan leaving after 15 years at helm of Civil Justice Association of California [L.A. Times]
- Maybe consumers don’t feel so victimized by overdraft “protection” after all [Bank Lawyer’s Blog]
- Yes, it’s another dust-up pitting all sensible Supreme Court commentators against Dahlia Lithwick, if you like that sort of thing [Kerr, Bodie/Prawfs, Ponnuru, Frank; bonus, Richard Epstein on Erwin Chemerinsky and Hans Bader on a prize flight of Lithwick fancy]
- Blog post relatively sympathetic to Righthaven copyright trollery draws many responses [Robert Zelnick, Patently-O]
- “Should they have let the guy’s house burn down?” [Tyler Cowen; Firey, Cato]
- “Drunken man passes out, wins $850K from police” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Filed under: banks, bullying, Dahlia Lithwick, fire departments, online speech, RightHaven, Supreme Court
5 Comments
“flying fishing”?
I’ve read the fire department letting the homeowner’s house burn down, and the question I have is did he regularly purchase the coverage but just forgot or missed the payment slip? It’s a small issue, I realize, but if this guy regularly paid his dues and was running a few weeks late, then it’s different than the individual who has never paid then groused that he didn’t get help.
Saying that, it doesn’t absolve his actions either. If we were talking car insurance and he was driving around without it, caused an accident totalling his car, would anyone have a lot of sympathy for him and say an insurance company should cover it?
I believe the homeowner was quoted as saying he thought the fire department would put out the fire even if he didn’t pay.
What happened to the basic rule that one has no legal duty to save a person in danger (“Danger invites rescue,” as I recall it being called), but if you do undertake rescue, you expose yourself to damages if the rescue was done negligently (Using an inadequate ladder, defective rope, etc.)? The fire company had no legal duty to attempt to rescue the house, but if it did, it would be liable to a claim of negligence for the way it fought the fire. If the homeowner had paid the fee, there would have been a legal obligation to attempt to rescue the home.
Given our litigious society, it would seem prudent to some for the fire company not to get involved in the circumstances.
The suicide of Tyler Clementi was certainly a tragedy, but one lesson NOT be drawn is that college campuses are somehow hotbeds of anti-gay prejudice. There aren’t many places that are MORE friendly to homosexuality. That said, I don’t think the suicide would have happened if it had been a heterosexual encounter that was broadcast. I think what we’re dealing with is the residual discomfort our society has with homosexuality, which I do not think needs to be scrubbed away. It is in fact deviant. Mild discomfort with it is a sign of social health.