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Originally Posted by xepherys
Also, as for something illegal or not... the premise of negligent homicide is that someone died due to your lack of action when action could've been taken to prevent it. Or from http://www.iejs.com/Law/Criminal_Law...nslaughter.htm, "negligent homicide, is the killing of another person through gross negligence or without malice". Yup, that pretty much fits the bill. And for your Medic/EMT friend, well, I agree that civil suits are a bit overdone these days, but part of working in that industry is understanding risks and being extremely thorough. I still believe that she should be tried for negligent homicide/manslaughter and definitely lose her job without recourse. Seniority my ass... |
Reading the rest of the article goes on to detail the types of negligent homicide/involuntary manslaughter (it uses the terms synominously). One of the terms that they use is "accidental killing", which I think is what we have here. It is
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Accidental killing on the other hand is in contrast to involuntary. It is defined as "an act which is lawful and lawfully done under a reasonable belief that no harm is possible"
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It seems pretty clear to me that this definition fits the circumstances. Accidental killings usually aren't prosecutable.
I have an example of a similar situation on a case that I was involved in. I wrote the liability insurance for a paper bailer (takes cardboard boxes, etc. and crushes them into a tight cube that tied up and loaded onto a truck for recycling). This particular model was very large and took two people to run it. The senior operator told the junior guy (who had only been on the job a couple of days) to clean out the crushing area and then started the ram as a joke. The kill switch malfunctioned and the machine wouldn't stop. There are other, more grusome details about what happened, but the point is that the senior operator was charged with voluntary manslaughter for the accident. He was acquited, although my insurance ended up paying out in the low 7 figures. I don't think that the guy should have been brought to trial, but the machine pretty clearly malfunctioned from what I know.