Posted on 07/04/2012 3:58:33 PM PDT by dayglored
Six Florida lifeguards have lost their jobs for backing a coworker's decision to save a man struggling in the surf but outside their jurisdiction.
Tomas Lopez , 21, was fired Monday for vacating his lifeguarding zone to save a man drowning in unprotected waters 1,500 feet south of his post on Hallandale Beach, Fla.
"I knew I broke the rules," said Lopez, who ran past the buoy marking the boundary of his patrol zone to help the man. "I told the manager, I'm fired aren't I?"
Lopez said he jumped into the water and "I double underhooked him…I was worried about the guy and his health. He was blue."
Six of Lopez's coworkers said they would have done the same thing. And now, they've been fired too.
....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Unfortunately, that rule wouldn't hold up either, at least insofar as lawyers are human beings -- you'd have to save them regardless.
Reminds me of the old joke about the biology research lab that switched from using rats for their experiments, to lawyers. When asked why they were using lawyers instead of rats, the researcher replied, "Because there are some things that a rat just won't do."
Someday, somewhere a tort lawyer will be drowning...
Don’t forget the rest of that joke, specifically that investigators do not get attached to lawyers, and that there are many more lawyers than purebred lab arts.
I also wondered if that were an option. Unless there was some provision that prohibited the hiring of a previously terminated lifeguard.
ROFLMAO!! I didn't know the rest of it, but that's GREAT!!! Thanks, now I can tell it right!
It's Florida - there's won't be a pat on the back ...
“The company did what their lawyers told them to do.”
The same lawyers that will sue them when they fail to go outside the zone to save one of their family...live by the sword die by the sword.
If I was in position to control the contract they would never get it the second time.
With six lifeguards, another lifeguard could cover while the first lifeguard saved the drowning person. Imagine the news headlines and the astute CNN reporters who would have crucified the lifeguard for letting the person drown. The company that fired the lifeguards is no better than the pimps and prostitutes at MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc.
I don't know (and the article doesn't say) how many lifeguards are at a given station. I assume they're distributed along some length of shoreline, one lifeguard to a station. But that's an assumption.
Precisely. And therein lies the reason the lawyers required the restriction, and set up the moral dilemma for the lifeguard.
And the moral dilemma was precisely why I quit practicing law and took up software engineering nearly twenty years ago now. I began with grandiose ideas of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way," and even managed to hold on to them through law school.
I always revered the "Rule of Law" and the Constitution. But I left the practice and the bench when I found myself grieving their demise while these scum-suckers bled every "deep pocket" dry and freed so many that shouldn't soil our society, and there wasn't much left that I could do about it.
We lost this one a long time ago.
Funny how you get punished for going “above and beyond” by the same type of people that exhort you to do just that, eh? It’s all liberal “liability” lawsuits that put both companies and their employees in this bureaucratic mire—it’s known as “lawfare” on some levels.
It wasn't "Juice." This is a perfect analogy of why Obozocare/tax will die under it's own weight. With insurance you are betting that you will get sick and the company is betting you won't. The same with that fire company. The members of the community contracted as individuals to purchase the services of the fire company. Some chose not to betting that their house would never catch on fire.
The fire company hires and pays it's employees based on the number of contracts they have versus their expected expenses.
Now with Obozocare/tax, people will wait until they are terminally ill (Their house is on fire.) to pay the premium. They go 10, 15, 30 years with out paying into the system while other people do pay in and then expect to just use the services that others have been using.
I’m sorry but if you support the company on this, IMO you are wrong. This is nothing more than union mentality run amok.
I don't support the company on this, but my initial statement was unclear. I don't think the company was "right" in any moral sense. I only meant that they did what they were legally required to do by their lawyers and the signed contract. As a company they are required to adhere to the contract. I should not have used the word "right" for that action.
However, the lifeguard did the morally right thing, and the other lifeguards rightly supported him. The company fired the lifeguards for doing the morally right thing, because the contract required it.
If the company wanted to be morally correct, they'd hire the lifeguards back, all of them, immediately.
But most important, that immoral contract would be thrown out immediately also. Along with the lawyer(s) who drafted and required it.
Good luck finding replacement lifeguards once the word is out about their "let 'em drown if they're one zone down" policy!
I don’t know how it works down there, but on the beaches nearest to us on the Jersey Shore lifeguards work in pairs. The lifeguard stands are equipped with walkie-talkies. If assistance is required, coverage of each section is still there.
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