Does Being the Victim Absolve You of Responsibility?

[BPSCG]

On the thread "Report clears U.S. in [Italian] friendly fire incident", I asked AUP:

Do you believe the Italians had any responsibility at all in this situation? In particular, did they have the responsibility to pre-clear their travel, in order to ensure their own safety?

Or did all the responsibility lie with the soldiers at the checkpoint, to make a correct life-or-death decision in an ambiguous situation in four seconds or less?

His response was to chide me for straying from the topic of the OP:

The OP is what is being debated, isn't it? The issue of whether or not the Italians are responsible is a related but different issue.

I frankly thought he was being overly nit-picky, since his thread was degenerating into disputes over minutia like what color the warning lights at the checkpoint were, whether they were flashing or glaring, etc.

And since the dispute seemed to be largely about whther or not the U.S. was to blame for the shooting, it seemed to me that if you absolve one party in a friendly-fire incident, it automatically raises the question of who, then was to blame. So I didn't think my question was at all off-topic.

But it was AUP's thread, so here we are.

Did the Italians have any responsibility at all in this situation? In particular, did they have the responsibility to pre-clear their travel, in order to ensure their own safety?

 

[President Bush]

Did the Italians have any responsibility at all in this situation?

Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter.

 

[webfusion]

sorry, I thought this was about corrie

Never mind...

(I'm now returning to that thread about some people will sue anyone}

 

[corplinx]

I'm glad to see AUP isn't afraid to try sock puppets. Of course he made it perfectly obvious by posting as the only response for two days to one of his own threads so I guess its not against policy.

 

[Bjorn]

it seemed to me that if you absolve one party in a friendly-fire incident, it automatically ....

.... blames the other party?

In particular, did they have the responsibility to pre-clear their travel, in order to ensure their own safety?

I would. Did they?

 

[BPSCG]

Re: Re: Does Being the Victim Absolve You of Responsibility?

.... blames the other party?

I would. Did they?

Everything I've read says they (the Italians) did not.

 

[Bjorn]

Re: Re: Re: Does Being the Victim Absolve You of Responsibility?

Everything I've read says they (the Italians) did not.

Well, not everything I've read. I have no idea if it's true, but at least the Guardian has written:

The Italians deny the speeding, saying the car was doing 40-50kph. They say the US Army authorized the journey and the driver did not get a stop warning.

 

[BPSCG]

Got a link? The speed sounds about right, since it's consistent with the math that was done here elsewhere.

Regarding having cleared the travel, this is the first I've heard that claim made, which is why I'd like the cite.

 

[Bjorn]

Got a link? The speed sounds about right, since it's consistent with the math that was done here elsewhere.

Regarding having cleared the travel, this is the first I've heard that claim made, which is why I'd like the cite.

Here's one that works for me:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1460135,00.html

 

[Tricky]

This may seem a bit off-topic, but I recall the time I was on a jury for a personal injury case. It was a traffic accident where a woman had run into a man who was crossing at a corner.

We determined from police reports that the man had jogged out from behind a hedge and was actually crossing against the signal. It also showed that that the woman was not speeding and she stopped to render aid and did, in my opinion, everything that could be done, but he still sued.

What the jury was assigned to do was to find what percentage of fault lay with the pedestrian and what percent with the driver. I argued vociferously that the driver had zero fault, but I was voted down by my fellow jurists. They thought, and perhaps with some justification, that she should have been ready to stop for absolutely anything, so they assigned her 10% fault. Rules of the court said that this was not enough to award the sue-er rat anything, but it reflects that under some legal systems, everybody has some responsibility when things go wrong.

 

[crimresearch]

"This may seem a bit off-topic, but I recall the time I was on a jury for a personal injury case. It was a traffic accident where a woman had run into a man who was crossing at a corner."


Sounds perfectly on topic to me.

As I said in the other thread, when someone makes a bad decision, and then calls the results an 'accident', I'm sometimes skeptical.

And the OP question fits quite well with your anecdote...
Whether or not your jogger should have been absolved of any responsibility because he got hurt and the driver didn't...
Sounds like the jury came to the conclusion that his receiving the most harm did NOT absolve him of responsibility.

 

[Tricky]

Sounds perfectly on topic to me.

As I said in the other thread, when someone makes a bad decision, and then calls the results an 'accident', I'm sometimes skeptical.

And the OP question fits quite well with your anecdote...
Whether or not your jogger should have been absolved of any responsibility because he got hurt and the driver didn't...
Sounds like the jury came to the conclusion that his receiving the most harm did NOT absolve him of responsibility.

Thanks.

I guess I just thought it was off-topic because it didn't discuss the international incident.

But my point is that there is not necessarily a single point of responsibility (at least according to the Texas courts). You can always claim that no matter how seemingly innocent a person or party is, if you examine it closely, you can find where they could have avoided the "accident" if they had done something more carefully. Certainly this is true of the both the US and the Italians in the friendly fire accident. My feeling is that both groups should receive punishment in relation to how much they were at fault, just like in the civil courts. Obviously, you can't punish the casualties worse than they already have been, but neither should you absolve the US of all responsibility simply because it was not completely their fault.

 

[Skeptic]

Tricky:

Perhaps they were thinking that, as a driver, one must "expect the unexpected" and not assume that, because you have the right of way, that nobody is coming or crossing--especially at an intersection. You are not, after all, given a free pass to hit whomever crosses the street just because they crossed illegally.

The fact that they said she only had 10% responsiblity and that she was not required to pay anything seems to suggest they were not saying she was 10% responsible in order to reward the plaintiff, but just as a token of this view.

 

[CBL4]

Accidents happen. When people are expecting suicide bombers they are likely to shoot a little too soon. When people are escaping from terrorists, they are likely to be driving too fast and be more concerned with where they were than where are they going. In other words, both are slightly at fault and neither are really responsible.

I think Tricky example is very instructive. Agian both people were at fault to some degree. It was coincidence that they happened to be at fault at the same time. For the jogger, it is a bummer but that does not make the driver legally culpable.

That is a problem in a society where people are safe. They cease to believe in accidents and always try to assign blame even when no one has done anything really wrong.

CBL

 

[crimresearch]

That is a problem in a society where people are safe. They cease to believe in accidents and always try to assign blame even when no one has done anything really wrong.

Belief in miracles, acts of God, accidents, or any other mysterious agency is considered insufficient on any other section of this skeptic's forum..why should it get a pass here?

Unintended but forseeable consequences is not the same as an accident.

 

[BPSCG]

That is a problem in a society where people are safe. They cease to believe in accidents and always try to assign blame even when no one has done anything really wrong.

As Dave Barry, points out, the Founding Fathers specifically said, right in the U.S. Constitution that "if anything bad ever happens to anyone, it's probably the fault of a big corporation with deep pockets, if you get our drift."

 

[gnome]

As Dave Barry, points out, the Founding Fathers specifically said, right in the U.S. Constitution that "if anything bad ever happens to anyone, it's probably the fault of a big corporation with deep pockets, if you get our drift."

There is another way of looking at it... it is my understanding that in a significant majority of civil cases, the actual wrongdoer is out of reach or indigent (or, as in the case of a genuine accident, there is no wrongdoer), and the case is not so much to assign blame as to determine which of two relatively innocent parties must bear the cost. (or how it should be shared)

 

[pgwenthold]

Tricky's example is a nice one, where the victim gets most of the blame. Shoot, in this case the only "blame" you can put on the driver is that she didn't go far enough out of her way to avoid causing problem.

OTOH, consider the other extreme, where the violator clearly does something wrong but doesn't have to go very far out of the way to do it?

For example, if you leave your doors unlocked and go away on vacation and your house is robbed, sure the robbers committed the crime but don't you bear some responsibility for being careless with your belongings?

A less harsh example: you leave a $20 bill laying on the passenger seat of the car and the car window open while you go into the bar for a drink. Notwithstanding the question of why you would leave $20 on the seat of your car when you go to the bar for a drink, but who should be considered responsible when your money is stolen? Legally, it is clear, but practically?

If you put yourself in a situation where you will be a victim 99% of the time, even if the action against you is illegal, are you still responsible?

 

[CBL4]

Belief in miracles, acts of God, accidents, or any other mysterious agency is considered insufficient on any other section of this skeptic's forum..why should it get a pass here?

Unintended but forseeable consequences is not the same as an accident.

I have never said any about supernatural occurences. There are some basically unavoidable accidents, medical mishaps or coincidences. Sometimes the fault is so low as to be ignorable. Other times people prefer things that are slightly more dangerous - e.g. I like my coffee scalding hot. Is it better to serve me very hot coffee or protect me from a spill?

There are also times when people get sued for not following the current safety standards even though the product was built years ago.

If everyone is held to a standard of perfection or risk a lawsuit, the legal cost to anything will exceed the actual costs.

CBL

 

[brodski]

[B
A less harsh example: you leave a $20 bill laying on the passenger seat of the car and the car window open while you go into the bar for a drink. Notwithstanding the question of why you would leave $20 on the seat of your car when you go to the bar for a drink, but who should be considered responsible when your money is stolen? Legally, it is clear, but practically?

If you put yourself in a situation where you will be a victim 99% of the time, even if the action against you is illegal, are you still responsible? [/B]

I think what you have to realise here is there is a difference between actions caused by people doing something which are legally permissible and people doing things which are not.

In other words would should the "victim" reasonably expect that the other party would be undertaking the actions which lead to the incident.

In a society of laws an individual can have a reasonable (as distinct from rational) expectation that they will not be robbed, regardless of the frequency in which robberies occur in their neighborhood. If you leave your door open, even if you put a sign on the door saying "gone away for a month, the cash is under the bed" you are not responsible for the burglary, as you would have a reasonable (if naive) expectation that you would not get burgled.

However if you sprint across the road without looking, and are hit by a car, you are responsible as you should have had a reasonable expectation that traffic would legally be traveling along the road. However if it was a residential area or a place where pedestrians could cross the road (depending on various traffic laws) the driver should have a reasonable expectation that people would be crossing there and that they should not hit them. If an accident occurred each party would be culpable, albeit to differing degrees depending on the actual circumstances of the incident.


If a pedestrian is hit whilst sprinting across a pedestrianized zone, and therefore has a reasonable expectation that there will be no traffic, they would not be responsible for the accident.


I also believe that to answer the OP directly, no, being a victim does not absolve you of guilt.
I believe that it is the actions which lead to eth consequences which should determine guilt, not the consequences of the actions.

ETA:
I am aware of prosecutions in the UK of employers and workers for breaches of health and safety legislation, which resulted in an accident, where the person who suffered ehe most horrific injuries (or indeed eth only person receiving injuries) have been prosecuted as they caused the accident. The guilt of the individual was decided independently of who had been harmed the most.