Posted on 08/26/2006 10:48:53 AM PDT by bwteim
NEW ORLEANS A New Orleans man may have thought he'd get a thank-you for rescuing more than 200 people from Hurricane Katrina floodwaters.
Instead, he got a lawsuit.
John Lyons Junior is suing Mark Morice (mohr-EES') for taking his boat without permission and not returning it. Lyons' lawyer says Morice made no attempt to return the boat.
Morice says he left it for other rescuers to use. Lyons' 18-foot boat was one of three Morice said he commandeered after water started rising. Morice said one of the other boat owners told him he was glad he'd been able to hot-wire the boat, and the other boat owner apparently hasn't complained.
I don't see why that's relevant to whether the boat's owner deserves to lose money. This isn't about the perp.
Second of all..you establish precedence in this situation, nobody will ever again do anything for anybody anywhere under such circumstance.
Think harder about it. What kind of person is going to say, "I value these people's lives so much that I'll risk my own life to save them, but not if I run a theoretical risk of financial liability."...?
"What kind of person is going to say, "I value these people's lives so much that I'll risk my own life to save them, but not if I run a theoretical risk of financial liability."...?"
Evidently enough to warrant Good Samaritan laws already.."
"Good Samaritan laws in the United States and Canada are laws protecting from blame those who choose to aid others who are injured or ill"....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_Law
Only if the generator was already at the scene of the disaster, and if the use of said generator would be of immediate use to actually save lives, and the neighbor to whom it belongs to were unavailable, and the generator was accessable.
But I take it that the generator in question was not in NO, nor was it used to save lives???
It was somebody else's post-flood generator. What life, by the way, was actually saved by this particular boat commandeerer? Making someone comfortable is not saving their life, and taking someone else's property to make others more comfortable is theft.
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According to the article(s) on the subject, he "rescued" some 200 people...
Now, I don't have any way of knowing if this saved lives or what... that is what the write-ups tend to imply.
Thank goodness, I thought I was the only one after reading the first few posts. He left it for others to use, plus it was an emergency. People were dying!
Let me get this straight.
A guy steals a boat, picks up his buddies in a flood (they are called surviors or stranded), hauls all the goodies out of the stores and does not return the boat.
And he is a hero and not a thief?
Is this what happened?
What does that mean? He used the boat because it was Necessary, so he has to pay?
That's nice.
Well this time, it was the good samaritan lawyer who was sued.
"Emotional damages"?????
LOL!
He has 200 "buddies"? And where did it say he looted?
"And where did it say he looted?"
Where did it say that the only thing he did was rescue?
Stolen boat, not borrowed because he did not return it...
what else did he perloin?
In any case, "necessity" as a term of law is an affirmative defense.
Say I tie my boat to your dock (trespassing) seeking safety from an approaching storm (I have no other reasonable alternative). During the course of the storm, my boat damages your dock. You may sue me for damages, but I can use "necessity" as a defense. It's then up to the jury.
Who should bear the econonic loss for the boat?
Who was in immediate danger of death that was rescued? Were the waters rising or falling at the time the boat was "commandeered"?
Who was in immediate danger of death that was rescued? Were the waters rising or falling at the time the boat was "commandeered"?
If you have determined from more information than is available here, that what was done was commandeering necessitated by the immediate danger to life, in that case who should bear the cost of the loss -- the loss or damage to the boat that was taken from it's owner? Why?
That's a pretty strong statement. If they fellow were simply trying to save lives, he did an honorable thing. The city is responsible, sue the city. BTW, I wouldn't go around telling everyone that in a natural disaster, anyone commandeering my boat, car, etc. would be "dead". You would be shot first, and then your stuff commandeered anyway.
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