There are times when failure to perform an expected act can be declared negligence. Does that include failing to offer help to a stranger that has gotten into trouble?
Legal requirements on helping others:
You do not need to prevent an injury, unless your position saddled you with the obligation to do so. You have no legal duty to rescue someone in trouble, unless you yourself have caused the situation that put that specific individual in danger.
How might you get into a situation where you had the legal duty to rescue or help someone?
If you were driving an automobile and got into an accident, it would become your duty to seek medical assistance for any injured passengers. That is a situation that might apply to any member of the public. There are other special relationships that place a burden of care on a specific individual.
What are some examples of a special relationship?
Every parent has a special relationship with his or her child. It is the parent’s duty to keep the child as safe from danger as possible. At a school, members of the administration and staff must do their best to protect the students. Within any classroom, the teacher and students have a special relationship. The teacher should work to keep each student from becoming injured.
Someone that is driving a means of transport has the duty to protect the passengers. That rule applies to a car, a taxi, a bus, a train or a boat. Legally, it could be applied to any person that is operating some sort of ride. In other words, someone operating a ride at an amusement park could be expected to keep the riders safe-from-harm.
Personal Injury Lawyer in Mississauga know that an employer and an employee have a special relationship. If an employer did not offer employees access to worker’s compensation, in the event that one of them got injured on the job, then the injured employee would have the right to sue the employer.
A storeowner and a customer have a special relationship. The typical example of that relationship concerns the condition of the store’s floor, the space where the customer might walk. A caring storeowner makes a point of keeping that floor free of any wet or slippery spot.
One case has shown that a judge could extend the care for customers to those that have come into the store’s parking lot. One restaurant with a drive-in window got in trouble for not responding to a complaint that was issued by a customer at such a window. Recently, attention has been placed on the relation between social hosts and their guests. Hosts are expected to keep a guest from attempting to driver home while inebriated.
