Episode: 4216
Title: HPR4216: Down the rabbit hole.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4216/hpr4216.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:33:46

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4216 from Monday the 30th of September 2024.
Today's show is entitled Down the Rabbit Hole.
It is hosted by some guy on the internet and is about 31 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Scotty talks about good Samaritan laws, good heavens.
Welcome back you hackers and slackers.
My name is some guy on the internet, Scotty for short.
And today I'm bringing it to you down the rabbit hole that we've all been down the rabbit
hole before.
We know what that means.
So I'm not going to spend any additional time on that, but I'll tell you what brought
me down the rabbit hole today.
Superman.
I was thinking about a modern day Superman, right?
You know the guy, Spandex, flying around with the red cape.
Yeah, if there were a real thing, just imagine being Superman and getting sued for helping
someone.
You imagine Superman being brought to court and having to defend himself on good Samaritan
laws.
What would Superman's legal team look like?
You know what I mean?
So that's what eventually took me down this rabbit hole.
So I started off with the good Samaritan laws and not the laws themselves.
We're on Wikipedia because I thought a good place to start is Wikipedia.
You're going to get some CCP YSA tags, but there are other restrictions that apply.
You can check the show notes for links.
But here's the thing about the good Samaritan law and I'm going to be focusing on the United
States of America because that's where I'm from, depending on where you're from in the
world, every jurisdiction has its own language and enforcement.
So do your own research, should you be curious about it?
And I'd like to hear from you if you've done research on this and you know about your
jurisdiction where you are in the world, share with us what you found, it'd be interesting.
So while going down this rabbit hole, I've heard of good Samaritan law, but I didn't know
if there was a federal law.
So in the United States, we're 50 states or 50 individual laboratories of law all compiled
together by one big old blanket called federal law.
So for your programmers out there, federals like that global where everything else would
automatically be defined as local.
All right, enough impersonating programmers here.
I don't want you guys to think I have real skills or anything.
So what we're talking about with good Samaritan law, for lack of a better term, this is considered
to be a legal defense for a rescuer.
And now that does not mean that you work as a rescuer, like such as a EMT emergency medical
technician or anything, but we're just defining the person coming to the rescue or giving
aid to another who is in distress or peril is a term that they use.
So when a rescuer voluntarily gives aid or assistance to a victim in distress, there's
a hinge.
And again, we're talking about the United States of America and there is no one good Samaritan
law.
That's just a reminder.
The hinge is reasonable assistance.
Now part of the reason that brought part of reason, although this became so interesting
is because in the past, we've had situations occur where bystanders did not give aid to
someone that was in peril, a situation that I can recall.
There were some teenagers videoing a man that was drowning in like a drainage pond.
I don't recall all of the details about it, but the man that ultimately drowned climbed
into the pond, wearing all of his clothes and when his clothes got, you know, waterlogged,
it became difficult to stay afloat.
So the individual began crying out for assistance.
And the three, I think it was three, I would just say the bystanders used their phones
to video the individual crying for help in the drainage pond.
And of course, their comments and everything drew a lot of attention because they were
laughing and other things in the video.
Meanwhile, you could clearly hear the individual in the background actively crying out for
assistance.
So this sparked a little bit of national outrage if you want to call it that, but people
were saying that, let me take that back.
The people I was around, I'm not going to talk about Twitter and all that crap because
I don't care about Twitter or what they said there, but the people I was around who also
witnessed this video, most came down on the side of they did nothing wrong, the bystanders.
However, they could have used the phone to just call 911, right?
Like it would have been a decent thing to do.
However, they've done nothing wrong.
There were a few others that tried to argue, perhaps, you know, saving the man, but that
was immediately tossed out.
If you don't have medical training or if you're not trained as a rescuer and you attempt
to save someone who is drowning, now there's going to be more than one person drowned.
You know, the person panicking out in that water will ultimately drown you because not
intentionally, of course, because they're panicking.
So that was argued out of the way pretty quickly.
But to think about that situation, if you witness a person in peril and refuse to help,
what is known as a duty to rescue?
Like that's a real thing that I discovered.
I heard something about that.
Like I think I heard that France or some other nation has laws where you have to help
someone that's in trouble, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a moment.
But I thought that was very interesting, a duty to rescue.
To me, that sounds like a nightmare here in the United States, because let's face it,
every reasonable individual around here is well aware of the hassle of getting dragged
through the court system because you stuck your neck out for someone else.
Everybody wants to sue for something.
And the hinge on the good to marathon law that legal defense would be reasonable assistance.
Now let's stop and think about reasonable assistance just for a minute.
How would the person suing you?
How would they attack your defense of reasonable assistance?
So you gave medical aid to someone or tried to and sure that person lived, but they were
injured further because of your inexperience at providing medical aid, right?
They didn't sue you because now they have to go get all these additional surgeries and
other things to recover.
And you have to defend yourself.
You understand?
You can't just go.
Oh no, they'll obviously give me good Samaritan because I have no.
You understand?
Part of what you need to keep in mind is the good Samaritan laws assist you.
The good Samaritan from being successfully sued for wrongdoing.
So now that means you're still going to be sued.
So you're still going to court and you're still going to have to defend yourself.
But you'll at least have some chance of, you know, not having your entire life ruined
for offering to help someone that was in trouble, right?
It'll possibly cut down on a few of the legal bills, but not really.
I don't know.
I've never been sued for for this kind of thing.
So I don't know, however, I would not want to be either.
You know, I don't want the experience to then come back and either confirm or a, you
know, and further down argument, they talk about some of the other things to consider
whenever being a good Samaritan.
So there's things like consent.
Consent is not funny, but we're talking about just you're choking.
You know, you're you're eating the cheeseburger from the well-known restaurant that has red
in its color palette.
Everyone will recognize it immediately if I were to say a name, but I'm not, or not you,
but someone else is eating there.
And John Doe arrives, my name, their own business.
And in the individual eating the cheeseburger, let's say Bill, Bill begins to choke.
John Doe looks overseas, Bill choking, and attempts what he thinks is a rescuing maneuver.
In the process, maybe he slips and falls and accidentally bring Bill down to the floor
with him.
So it dislodges the food from Bill, but Bill got hurt in the process, right?
And now let's say, say Bill was holding his hands out, like, give me a minute.
I got it.
You know, give me a minute.
Let me try to, let me try to cough it up on my own.
But John Doe is like, no, not, you don't want to die.
Let me just help you out here.
So John Doe, you know, on the movies, you see one individual comes behind another individual,
you're supposed to do the, I wouldn't call it a chess compression, but I guess a belly
compression or something like that where you, you should know the maneuver I'm talking
about to help dislodge the food.
So John's behind Bill, and he can't quite reach around Bill's waist properly.
So it looks strange the way he's grabbing Bill by the sides and, and thrusting on to
Bill to try and dislodge.
So Bill's trying to fight to get away from John and that's how they end up on the floor.
So yes, Bill survived.
And John helped, but Bill did not want that help.
And now there's a video of a peculiar incident occurring in this well known fast food restaurant.
Now I just made all that up.
I don't know.
There might actually be a video like that, but I just made that up as an example.
So there's consent to consider.
There's also right to refuse treatment.
I know about those things whenever you deal with a metal coal, anything, there's something
called an NDR, there's something called a DNR.
Do not resuscitate that people can sign for if they were in peril and the attempts to
rescue them go beyond X amount of attempts, they they would have a do not resuscitate
after three attempts or something like that, right?
Because each attempt to rescue causes injury, let's say.
So there's there's a look at it, but I don't want to go any further into it, but look
it up if you're curious about that.
So now going back to that whole hinge of what's re what's considered reasonable assistance
when defining the the actions of a good Samaritan.
So when you're being attacked in court for, you know, not providing quote reasonable,
close quote assistance, I imagine it's going to be something along the line of you're
not a medical professional, you should not have attempted that or you're not a you're
not a rescue worker, you should not have attempted it or any example that I give Bill was telling
John no by holding a hand out trying to block or you know, keep John away, but John realized
that Bill was in trouble and assisted further, you know, assisted anyways.
So I imagine that's going to be a heart that that's a tough pill to swallow.
You're there thinking you're helping a person and now you're in court and they're going
what you've done, you know, the lawyers anyway, the lawyers are arguing that your actions
were not reasonable.
And now let's say for instance, you are a rescue worker or a medical professional or something
like that, right?
You do have skill and knowledge and you work as a professional making a living, helping
others better and peril.
Now if a person were to sustain additional injury because the situation became really
bad and you just did what was necessary to get them out of the bad situation as quickly
as possible just because if you did not, both of you would have would have perished.
So now you're in court arguing that it was necessary to do these things, you're a good
Samaritan and the attorney, their attorney is attacking you saying that you have all
of this training.
There were other things you could have done.
You knew better yet you did not do better.
Wouldn't it be a terrible thing in the beginning when I brought up Superman?
I thought about it.
Imagine Superman taking a day off, right?
You imagine being Superman and taking man, I admit, I constantly have to fly around
the entire planet or whatever and I'm always helping people.
I deserve some time off.
I'm going to take a week off and you take a week off.
The bad guys found out that, hey, Superman's off in the Bahamas kicked back with a shirt
off, relax it, right?
So the bad guys go crazy, Superman's taking a week off, let's go, let's head out there
and commit all of the crime, right?
They're children with candy, let's steal it all.
You imagine the people, especially here in America, that are going to sue the pants off
as Superman, when he comes back, can you imagine them saying this guy moves faster than
a speeding bullet, right?
He could have stopped this crime in a blink of an eye.
It was nothing to him, yet he refused to do it.
And I'm not talking about crime like all around the world, but imagine on the same beach
that Superman's relaxing on, there's someone yelling, help, I'm being assaulted, right?
This individual is a photo bombing in myself, you know, and Superman's like, obviously,
I'm using the very light circumstance there, but you get it, something bad is happening
and Superman's just like, nope, nope, not today.
If I don't set boundaries, I'm never going to get a break, so he's just going to sit
right there and ignore it and get some, you don't get some shut eye on the beach in
the sun.
That person then sews, you know, it wouldn't have cost anything to help, you're Superman,
you can fly, you can move fast, you can do all of the things and you did nothing.
Now imagine if the beach he was on was in a country that had that duty to rescue.
So that means now if Superman wants to go on vacation, he asked to do it in a country
that does not include a duty to rescue.
Just because he's more capable, he has to consider that wherever he goes, right?
So just because you have the skill and the ability, you are required to use it.
And again, I'm not a lawyer.
If you know more about these laws, especially in your jurisdiction, do a show, bring it
up, you know, I don't mind being corrected.
Now one of the things that was interesting about that duty to rescue or duty to assist
however you it's worded wherever you are, some of what I understand about that is they
limit it down to something called tort.
So if you if you've done something that negatively impacts another human being and it places
that human being in a bad situation now where they could be injured or they were injured
and now face peril, you have a duty to assist that person because you created the situation
that placed them in peril.
That's the way I understand some of it, right?
The little that I've jumped into as far as that duty to rescue or duty to assist.
And just like with all things, there are these caveats, right?
Let's just say asterix.
We got a couple of asterix in here.
So first instance, if the person's bleeding on the ground, you didn't clean off the sidewalk
in front of your home.
So when they were riding their electronic skateboard at 30 miles an hour on the sidewalk,
they bumped, they hit a pebble on the sidewalk in front of your home.
And now they're claiming you did that to them, right?
So now that they're on the ground with the worst scraped knee in the history of man, you're
going to have to go out there and help them now because you should have swept off that
area of sidewalk.
And I know there's a few people out there going to say things like, oh, but the sidewalk
is public property, you know, well, there are certain states in the United States.
I think New York is one of them where there are exceptions to that.
For instance, when it snows, you are required to shovel the snow on the sidewalk in front
of your property.
Now I doubt many people are going to get sued for not doing it, you know, especially
if you're elderly or something like that, I seriously doubt they're going to bother you
about it.
But I found that out the hard way.
Yeah.
And by the hard way, I meant I lost an argument, not that anybody tried to sue me.
So in this new, this new scenario, John Doe is now on the ground with the worst scraped
knee in the history of man.
And Bill is rushing out there to go assist because Bill understands, man, I really should
have swept off that sidewalk.
Bill realizes, man, this scraped knee has blood on it.
I don't, I'm not wearing gloves or anything.
It's really not a good idea for me to go touching anything happening here because, you
know, bloodborne path of genes and things of that nature.
So in the, in a scenario like that, Bill would be, Bill would use his defense, well, I couldn't
help him because there was blood.
Now, I don't have gloves or anything.
You know, I don't want to go touch the blood instead.
Bill would then have the obligation to call for help.
Bill, Bill would have to go get on his 10 speed, put on his helmet and, and gear and ride
the 10 speed down to John Doe's house and get his mother.
He's obligated to do that.
Another thing I saw down in here that was pretty interesting is there's something like
the obligation to remain.
So when a person is in trouble and you arrive to a system or whatever, you have to stay
there until the rescuers get there with, with, with the supplies, not everywhere, obviously.
So I thought that was pretty interesting as well.
So imagine this.
If you're on your way to work and somebody gets hurt, you're like, I am going to be a hero
or super late for work.
I know you're injured, but I have to call my employer, right?
Because paying bills is a thing too, you know.
Now all, all, all jokes aside, that was supposed to be funny.
That's my attempt at humor.
I understand it.
It may not translate well on the internet.
So I have to be a little clear about my humor at times.
But I imagine realistically, anyways, situations where you're giving CPR and you can't just
go, you know what?
Maybe I shouldn't have put my mouth on this complete stranger.
I mean, once you start, that's it.
You have to keep going now.
You have to keep going.
Now there is a point where if help does not arrive within a certain amount of time, fatigue
will set in.
And at that point, you cannot be held liable because obviously you're not a robot, you're not
a machine.
Like every other human being, you will fail at some point.
So that's where they introduce something called good faith.
I learned long ago, working in public transportation for all the years that I did that.
I'm not putting my mouth on anybody, all right, we, you know, working in public transportation,
you got a bunch of good people that are decent.
And then you also have a bunch of just different people, I will say, and by different, I mean,
they're the kind of people, it's, it's 8 a.m. and they stagger onto the unit, wasted,
completely just hammered drunk, stink up the place, smell like a brewery, then a vomiting
and passing out, you know, or urinating on themselves or some such thing, like, no,
I'm not.
If if you need to rescue, it will be from a medical trained medical technician that has
all the proper equipment, you know, they have that thing that they could put on your face
and pump the bottle to push air into your lungs versus trying to put your mouth on, no,
I'm not doing that crap.
And our employer used to try and push in our heads.
That's why we pay to get you to training and you're supposed to know that we have these,
they had some sort of, I'll call it a gasket, right, in a medical kits that we had.
And apparently you're supposed to put that over them and that'll provide protection against
your mouth, actually touching, no, you high, no, I'll tell you what, I'll look at you
while I called 911 and I will tell them what I see.
If that ain't good enough for you, then I don't know what it is, all right.
You better hope traffic's great that day.
And then let's also talk about eminent peril.
Now eminent peril, if a person is in a situation where there is eminent peril, I'm just thinking
about myself.
There is no logic that says I'm going to go save them.
What happens to in my brain is I'm going to go die with them.
And now I understand all over the world it's different and every human being has their
own way of thinking about these things.
If you think differently, kindly do a show and let me know, let all of us know a different
perspective here, right, because this is just one individual's perspective on the subject.
I'm thinking about my abilities, how fast can I move?
Can I go in and, you know, I'm thinking a full grown man or adult, whatever, in trouble.
Can I get over there, get them up and out of that situation?
And the situation is eminent peril.
If I can't really see what caused them to be incapacitated, I'm thinking of something like
electricity or something, right, something I can't actively see.
Now, obviously, if it's a, if it's a live wire right there, arcane all kinds of crap,
then clearly I can't go over there, right?
That's eminent peril for everyone in the, in the vicinity at that point.
But I mean, if I can't identify what put them down, I'm not going over there.
What are the other things about calling for help?
And again, this, this comes from years of having to do it in public transportation.
Whenever you have to call for help, all the obligations of you now have to identify yourself
because if this person does perish and you get dragged into a whole thing like it, it's a thing.
Suddenly lawyers arrive and all of that kind of crap.
And they're saying that somebody had wrongdoing here and you were one of the people there.
So you're a witness to the wrongdoing or maybe you participate.
You give it to me. It's a problem.
It makes you not want to help.
But most decent people are going to just pick up the phone, right?
You're just going to pick up the phone.
Make a call there now helps on the way.
But calling, they want your number.
They want your name, right?
They got to be able to get in contact with you.
They need you to pull over and remain at the seat all of the crap that's happening.
And it's like, look, I don't want to be bothered.
I just called for help.
I'm passing by for all I know, especially in here's the thing with me.
I'm going to say this and I understand that some people may take it the wrong way.
I am not suggesting and I'll try to make sure I narrow the scope on this statement.
So it's not to, you know, it's normally when you speak too broadly,
you end up causing a problem.
So I'll try to narrow the scope around here.
Where I live, usually when I see a group of young men,
you know, the kind that are probably not working,
they usually not participating in a school activity or anything.
But they just seem to be out and about a group of young men.
I stay away from them.
They used to be this thing that was headed back when I was a kid.
They said idle hands, do the devil's work or some silly thing like that, right?
There was also another saying of, how did it go?
The hand of one is the hand of all.
That was a legal saying back when I was growing up.
So that meant when you and all your friends were hanging out,
if one of them did something bad,
that was the exact same thing as all of you doing something bad.
And you're young, right?
You're just hanging out.
One person gets a bad idea and does something stupid.
Well, you're all going to take the hit for that.
So I stay away from young people.
If there are no adults around,
somebody that can provide guidance for these young people, especially young men,
I give wide birth.
Now there have been situations I have seen like witnessed in person
of young men savaging each other.
There is literally no way I'm getting involved.
I won't even call for help where I can be seen doing so.
You understand?
Paral around some of these individuals, it's hard to define.
You understand?
Paral is everywhere around some of these individuals.
I'm not going to give any examples or anything.
I'm sure we've all seen a situation where you just felt like,
let me just distance myself from this and then I'll take action.
So yeah, that's another reason why I'm glad to not have that
duty to rescue or duty to assist.
Just because you never know who you're dealing with out there.
Individual finds themselves lying on the floor.
And it was due to the direct actions of another individual.
Well, I feel like if I am seen undoing the aggressor's work,
maybe they become aggravated with me.
Now I might find myself on the floor needing someone to intervene, right?
So there's problems all around.
That I didn't mean don't help.
It just means go somewhere safe and then call and then find out how anonymous you really are
when you just try to call really quickly and give the information and they still know that it's you.
Suddenly the police show up and you're like, I didn't give my name or anything.
I just called Trayette like, you know, I thought this was supposed to be anonymous.
Like, no, it's not anonymous.
You called for help.
You saw something.
We need to know what you saw.
But for those of you that live in a jurisdiction where you are under the duty to rescue
doctrines or whatever tort law, tell us about that.
How does that work or maybe even if you're not under those jurisdictions,
if you feel differently than I do because obviously I'd like not having that kind of duty.
I like being able to escape a problem.
But if you feel differently, if you feel like there should be a duty
to rescue or duty to assist, tell us about it.
And how would you handle, because I'm talking about the United States here,
how would you handle the lawsuits that arrive from it?
Because we all know where duty to rescue could take you in the long run.
Remember that whole reasonable actions or whatever, or reasonable assistance?
All right, so that's it from me today folks.
I've brought you down the rabbit hole.
I've rambled about Superman and good Samaritans and a duty to rescue,
as well as a couple of other things I don't quite understand.
Try to inflict my humor upon you while talking about some of these difficult things.
And now I have a duty to ask you, what's your opinion on it?
Give us a show. Tell us what you think.
And I'm out of here. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Take it easy.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio.
That Hacker Public Radio does work.
Today's show was contributed by a HBO listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording podcasts,
you click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by
an onsthost.com, the internet archive and our sings.net.
On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.
