Reasonableness of Strangers
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Service: LEXSEE � Citation: 1991 Wis. L. Rev. 867 1991 Wis. L. Rev. 867, * Copyright (c) 1991 Wisconsin Law Review. University of Wisconsin September, 1991 / October, 1991 1991 Wis. L. Rev. 867 LENGTH: 42227 words ARTICLE: RELYING UPON THE REASONABLENESS OF STRANGERS: SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE OF COMMON LAW AFFIRMATIVE DUTIES TO AID OR PROTECT OTHERS. JOHN M. ADLER * - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco School of Law. A.B., 1968, Harvard College; J.D., 1976, University of New Mexico School of Law. I wish to thank my research assistant, Jean Afterman, for her hard work and good spirits. I also wish to thank my colleagues, Professor Jeffrey Brand, Trina Grillo, Joshua Rosenberg and Stephanie Wildman not only for reading and commenting on earlier drafts, but also for their encouragement and support. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SUMMARY: ... Most proposals for change in the law have urged that the bystander should have an obligation to protect the child from serious harm, at least when protection could be offered without serious inconvenience or risk. ... Because the misfeasance-nonfeasance distinction often fails to reflect social policy or to parallel any intuitive distinction between behavior that ought to be actionable and behavior that ought not, courts have generated substantial exceptions to the rule that nonfeasance means non-liability. ... Other than the special relationship exception to the no-duty rule, the major common law exceptions -- those based upon undertakings to rescue and those based upon a defendant's initial creation of the risk -- are really variations on the nonfeasance-misfeasance distinction that makes the exceptions necessary in the first place. ... More importantly, there is a strong, pre-Restatement common law tradition in California and other jurisdictions for analyzing duty questions without regard either to misfeasance- nonfeasance distinction or to the sorts of relationships considered by the Restatement's authors. ... It is argued that where there is a failure to rescue, the potential rescuer has in no way increased the risk of harm to the victim and therefore cannot be culpable. ... In this Article, Professor Adler addresses a question that has confounded legal scholars for decades: Why is there no legal obligation to rescue another from impending peril when such protection could be rendered with minimal risk to, or effort by, the would-be rescuer? He begins by describing the traditional no-duty- to-rescue rules, and continues by explaining why they should be discarded. He
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