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 Daemonhammer wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Well, in the US, you are not required to render aid, as a private citizen. You could, in the US, watch said baby drown. What the Samaritan law does, though, is protect you if, in diving in to save that baby, you break its arm or something. You cannot be held liable for that injury if it is incurred in the course of saving its life.

I think your Samaritan law is different from the European one. Under European Law, if you see someone in danger you have a legal obligation to try and save them, otherwise you could be charged with an offence.


Basically it is a Duty to Rescue.

Really? I never heard of this. What if saving someone's life would endanger you?

Could you tell me where i could read more about this?

Luckily for you I was reading an article on it this evening.

http://www.daneurope.org/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=c09228f3-a745-480b-9549-d9fc8bbbd535&groupId=10103

The French law does state that you can only be fined for failure to act if there was no danger in you acting. So no need to run across main roads in order to save someone.

 welshhoppo wrote:
I think your Samaritan law is different from the European one. Under European Law, if you see someone in danger you have a legal obligation to try and save them, otherwise you could be charged with an offence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically it is a Duty to Rescue.

yeah I can attest to this.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Under European Law, if you see someone in danger you have a legal obligation to try and save them, otherwise you could be charged with an offence. .

The idea that such a law was apparently seen as a necessary thing is kind of depressing, frankly.

 insaniak wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Under European Law, if you see someone in danger you have a legal obligation to try and save them, otherwise you could be charged with an offence. .

The idea that such a law was apparently seen as a necessary thing is kind of depressing, frankly.

It's from the Napoleonic Era, as Napoleon conquered most of Europe the legal systems tagged along with him. I suppose that people were far less willing to save people's lives back then for whatever reason. But laws do tend to stick around long after they are deemed useless (it is technically an offence to eat mince pies on Christmas day, they never repealed the law so it is still valid to this day.)

It's quite different from British law, which is the opposite. A court case from the late 18th Century / early 19th Century does say that if twelve men are next to a pond which a drowning infant, they are guilty of being cowards but they are definitely not guilty of murder.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Or do like the Russians and have dash cams everywhere.

And in China and Vietnam, seen some funny dash cam fraud fail videos, (It is sad that those cams are needed but some of the video's are hilarious)
Also because these cams we see a lot of car crash videos.

 Haight wrote:
I think you're referring to the fact that it was not ruled until 1927 that illegally obtained income had to be declared on taxes…

No, I think you're assuming a vast deal more knowledge of the technicalities of Capone's conviction than I actually have. Thanks for the detail, though, that made for interesting reading.

I’m referring to the fact that in other countries the basic logic of ‘the state has substantiated your lifestyle and estimated it's cost, now you prove to us that you are somehow able to live like that on your delcared income, or else we’ll just assume there is some level of undeclared income’ is considered a breach of the presumption of innocence. As such, it becomes clear that in at least one way, the US actually has a weaker presumption of innocence than in other countries.

Now, I’m not saying this as saying the presumption of innocence in the US is too weak. I actually like the assumption of wealth laws, as you say they were a potent weapon against organised crime, and from my own accounting POV they make a really nice kind of sense . I just wanted to point out what I saw as a few flaws in how people understood the presumption of innocence – that it is actually an issue of how complete a presumption you make (not simply that you either have it or you don’t), and the US is not actually unique in having the presumption, nor is the presumption particularly strong in the US compared to elsewhere in the world.

 Daemonhammer wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Well, in the US, you are not required to render aid, as a private citizen. You could, in the US, watch said baby drown. What the Samaritan law does, though, is protect you if, in diving in to save that baby, you break its arm or something. You cannot be held liable for that injury if it is incurred in the course of saving its life.

I think your Samaritan law is different from the European one. Under European Law, if you see someone in danger you have a legal obligation to try and save them, otherwise you could be charged with an offence.


Basically it is a Duty to Rescue.

Really? I never heard of this. What if saving someone's life would endanger you?

Could you tell me where i could read more about this?

Here's a situation: You're in a Nuclear Bomb Bunker. You see someone still outside. The bomb is about to land; you can't save him. Does that mean that if I don't die I get stuffed in jail?

There are no stupid people, just stupid examples.

 welshhoppo wrote:
(it is technically an offence to eat mince pies on Christmas day, they never repealed the law so it is still valid to this day.)

That's not actually true. Oliver Cromwell did ban Mince pies, but the law went quite quickly when British democracy asserted itself in its more lethal form.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17610820

Any tale about a law that starts "technically an offense" generally means its not a law at all.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
(it is technically an offence to eat mince pies on Christmas day, they never repealed the law so it is still valid to this day.)

That's not actually true. Oliver Cromwell did ban Mince pies, but the law went quite quickly when British democracy asserted itself in its more lethal form.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17610820

Any tale about a law that starts "technically an offense" generally means its not a law at all.

Yes, "technically" means not really.