Radio Phone Pranks, Funny or No?

[ace99]

The Australian fellas shouldn't be thrown in the slammer for manslaughter or anything, though - no one would reasonably have expected any physical consequences as a result of this. It would be like saying something that made someone faint, and then they hit their head on a spike as they fall and die - that clearly wasn't the intention, and it wasn't caused by carelessness like reckless driving or firing an AK-47 into the air in a crowded area. From a rational standpoint, we should be putting more effort into people who intentionally bully someone for years and then have the bullied person off themselves.

That may not be true in Britain, eggshell plaintiff/eggshell victim rule:

In criminal law, the general maxim is that the defendant must "take their victims as they find them", a quotation from the judgment of Lord Justice Lawton in R v. Blaue (1975), in which the defendant was held responsible for killing his victim, despite his contention that her refusal of a blood transfusion constituted novus actus interveniens.

The doctrine is applied in all areas of torts - intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability cases - as well as in criminal law. There is no requirement of physical contact with the victim - if a trespasser's wrongful presence on the victim's property so terrifies the victim that he has a fatal heart attack, the trespasser will be liable for the damages stemming from his original tort. The foundation for this rule is based primarily on policy grounds. The courts do not want the defendant or accused to rely on the victim's own vulnerability to avoid liability.

 

[Quintillus]

That may not be true in Britain, eggshell plaintiff/eggshell victim rule:

Interesting. Reading more about the case you mentioned, it appears that in that case, it was the stabber of the victim who was guilty... which makes sense, as the victim would have died had there been no ambulance nearby, if it had been the 1700s, any number of reasons. I'm less convinced that it should be the case that you can get charged with murder for walking on the yard of the most paranoid person in the world. In my mind, there's a difference between stabbing someone and claiming you didn't expect them to die because of modern medicine, and traipsing around their front yard for whatever reason and claiming you didn't expect them to keel over.

Along the same lines, I find it a stretch to consider the defendant in Vosburg v. Putney guilty. It seems like another case of things going much worse than could reasonably have been anticipated. I suppose I don't buy the theory that you should assume everyone is as fragile as an eggshell, out of practicality. The exception being, of course, when for some reason you ought to already know that (ex. don't kick someone who's walking on crutches and expect that they'll do just fine).

Although, in this case, it would be Australian law, not British, that applies.

 

[ace99]

Vosburg v. Putney

Lol someone posted their crappy brief on wikipedia? Hahaha I should send this to Above the Law.

 

[innonimatu]

Let's say hypothetically we CFCers got wind of the DJ's plans in advance of the call taking place and someone started a thread "Should this upcoming prank call be illegal/stopped from happening?". I'd guess the overwhelming response would be no. And if a poster mentioned "but the person taking the call may end up killing themselves as a result of it", that would be considered ridiculous.

And you are right! It's one of those cases where public empathy for the dead nurse is blinding people from extending the same understanding to the pranksters. It could not be foreseen.

 

[Borachio]

I'd have advised the pranksters not to pull the prank. Whether the nurse had killed herself or not is surely irrelevant. It was bound to have a not good result. Dem royals don't like this sort of thing. Apparently. And the less fuss the royals make of it, the worse for the pranksters, whose careers are probably in tatters now.

They were talking on the radio here today how this is the future head of state we're talking about, who's not even born yet, and the media's trying to get in on the act. Oh dear me.

Stuff them all. I'm a republican.

 

[Skwink]

Dem royals don't like this sort of thing.

Prince Charles of somebody was joking about it the other day.

 

[Borachio]

Yeah, it's hard to know which way they'll jump sometimes. And perhaps it's not always the royals themselves who get upset so much, as people getting upset on their behalf.

But they didn't like people taking pictures of her without her top on, did they? I'd be more annoyed about an intrusion into a hospital visit, myself.

 

[Camikaze]

That may not be true in Britain, eggshell plaintiff/eggshell victim rule:

But Wagon Mound (assuming you're talking about the suicide here). The eggshell skull rule doesn't send the law back to Re Polemis. What initial damage was reasonably foreseeable? Any additional damage that comes about due to an individual infirmity, arising out of the reasonably foreseeably initial damage, will be covered by the eggshell skull rule (a good illustration being Smith v Leech Brain [1962] 2 QB 405 - molten metal splashed onto a worker's lip, which was reasonably foreseeable, but it just so happened that the tissue was susceptible to cancer, which the worker consequently developed; liability was for his death, because the initial injury satisfied the requirements of remoteness, even though the development of cancer did not). But if there's another act involved (e.g. suicide), the eggshell skull rule isn't necessarily relevant anyway. And weird rules apply for mental harm.

If you're talking about falling on a spike, then eggshell skull doesn't really apply, because the extra damage caused by there being a spike where the plaintiff fell isn't an infirmity of the plaintiff. If the plaintiff were standing on grass, and had an eggshell skull, so died when they fell, the rule would be applicable, but damage resulting from falling on a spike doesn't require peculiar susceptibility. Rather, it's just a simple application of the normal remoteness principles; it's reasonably foreseeable that if someone faints on a hard surface or around a spike, they could suffer injury when hitting the ground. Subjective intentions are irrelevant. It's an objective test.

 

[azzaman333]

Prank calls are idiot humour. Conducted by idiots for the amusement of idiots.

This whole situation is just tragic though. A couple of no name DJs use a common method of attempting to generate humour on their show, a prank call. It goes way better than expected, and they actually get some information that they shouldn't have. The media go into a frenzy, giving worldwide attention to the nurses' screw up, one of them take their own life, the DJs receive an unfathomably immense backlash, now the DJs are receiving extensive counselling with the female host rumoured to be borderline suicidal herself.

 

[filli_noctus]

I've known a fair few student and practicing nurses and in my experience the incidence of clinical depression, bi-polar disorder and self-harm is considerably higher among them is noticeably higher than among the general population. It is entirely conceivable to me that someone with normally manageable BPD could be driven to such an extreme act given the high-profile and worldwide media furore surrounding the whole incident.

 

[NovaKart]

Was the woman fired for the mistake? I imagine making such a big mistake like that with such a high profile patient would lead to getting sacked. I remember reading the hospital made some comment about how she was a valued employee or something like that, but maybe they're just saying that because they feel bad and they actually sacked her. No idea, just speculating.

 

[Borachio]

I wouldn't think she was fired, no. She was a nurse there for 20 years. It would have taken months to sack her. And I don't believe being gullible is a sackable offence. I think taking the call and the suicide happened within 3 days.

edit: and she hadn't been criticized or disciplined in any way by the hospital management, according to the latest reports.

 

[NovaKart]

Maybe she felt so overwhelmed having a royal patient and felt really bad about letting her down.

 

[Flying Pig]

I do think there's an interesting moral point at work here - can the DJs in question be held in any way responsible for her death? Obviously there's no way that they could have forseen it, so it seems harsh to blame them, but it equally seems wrong to absolve them totally.

 

[Borachio]

If it wasn't foreseeable, how can they be responsible?

And their radio/media careers will have taken a substantial hit, if not completely at an end.