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The fireman's rule (firefighter's rule) is a common law or statutory restriction on tort actions by public safety officials. In general, the fireman's rule bars lawsuits by firefighters, police officers and, in some jurisdictions, all government safety professionals from collecting on damages that occur in the course of their duties even in cases of clear negligence by other parties.
The principal reason for the firefighter's rule is the assumption of the risk that public safety officers willingly accept as the risks inherent to their professional duties. Said another way, since the very purpose of public safety professionals such as firefighters and police officers is to confront danger, the public is not liable for injuries incurred while carrying out that function.
Although the rule is named after the risks and actions by firefighters, the relationship between danger and duties is similar in all public safety officers, and other professional rescuers. Many jurisdictions have extended this rule to include other public safety professionals.
The determinative factor when applying the firefighter's rule is whether the injury sustained by the firefighter or police officer is related to the particular dangers which they are expected to face as part of their job duties. In situations where public safety professionals are injured while responding to an emergency, the firefighter's rule precludes the public safety professionals from suing individuals whose negligence caused or contributed to the emergency that caused the injury.
The fireman's rule has been heavily criticized for preventing police officers from suing criminals who intentionally lead them on high-speed car chases. In response to one such case, the California State Legislature enacted California Civil Code Section 1714.9 in 1982, which overrides the fireman's rule where the tortious conduct occurred after the defendant knew or should have known of the plaintiff's presence. In Minnesota peace officers are exempted from the fireman's rule by statute. [1]
In certain states, such as Pennsylvania, the courts have not always applied the fireman's rule. In 1995, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that in regards to landowners, firefighters are viewed as "licensees," and are therefore owed the same duty of care that any citizen who is permitted to be on the property would receive. In earlier decisions, such as 1988's Mull v. Kerstetter, [2] in which a volunteer firefighter was injured after falling into an unmarked and unprotected window well, the court ruled that a police officer entering land in his or her official capacity and in response to a call for assistance is generally considered a licensee. Therefore, the landowner is responsible for warning the licensee of any dangerous hidden conditions on the premises. [3]
Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate care expected to be exercised in similar circumstances.
In law and insurance, a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to an injury that the courts deem the event to be the cause of that injury. There are two types of causation in the law: cause-in-fact, and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact is determined by the "but for" test: But for the action, the result would not have happened. The action is a necessary condition, but may not be a sufficient condition, for the resulting injury. A few circumstances exist where the but-for test is ineffective. Since but-for causation is very easy to show, a second test is used to determine if an action is close enough to a harm in a "chain of events" to be legally valid. This test is called proximate cause. Proximate cause is a key principle of insurance and is concerned with how the loss or damage actually occurred. There are several competing theories of proximate cause. For an act to be deemed to cause a harm, both tests must be met; proximate cause is a legal limitation on cause-in-fact.
A tort is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable by the state. While criminal law aims to punish individuals who commit crimes, tort law aims to compensate individuals who suffer harm as a result of the actions of others. Some wrongful acts, such as assault and battery, can result in both a civil lawsuit and a criminal prosecution in countries where the civil and criminal legal systems are separate. Tort law may also be contrasted with contract law, which provides civil remedies after breach of a duty that arises from a contract. Obligations in both tort and criminal law are more fundamental and are imposed regardless of whether the parties have a contract.
Good Samaritan laws offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or whom they believe to be injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated. The protection is intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death. An example of such a law in common-law areas of Canada: a Good Samaritan doctrine is a legal principle that prevents a rescuer who has voluntarily helped a victim in distress from being successfully sued for wrongdoing. Its purpose is to keep people from being reluctant to help a stranger in need for fear of legal repercussions should they make some mistake in treatment. By contrast, a duty to rescue law requires people to offer assistance and holds those who fail to do so liable.
A licensee can mean the holder of a license or, in U.S. tort law, is a person who is on the property of another, despite the fact that the property is not open to the general public, because the owner of the property has allowed the licensee to enter. The status of a visitor as a licensee defines the legal rights of the visitor if they are injured due to the negligence of the property possessor.
English tort law concerns the compensation for harm to people's rights to health and safety, a clean environment, property, their economic interests, or their reputations. A "tort" is a wrong in civil law, rather than criminal law, that usually requires a payment of money to make up for damage that is caused. Alongside contracts and unjust enrichment, tort law is usually seen as forming one of the three main pillars of the law of obligations.
In the law of torts, an invitee is a person who is invited to land by the possessor of the land as a member of the public or one who enters the land of another for the purpose of business dealings with the possessor of the land. The status of a visitor as an invitee defines the legal rights of the visitor if they are injured due to the negligence of the property owner.
In the law of tort, property, and criminal law a trespasser is a person who commits the act of trespassing on a property, that is, without the permission of the owner. Being present on land as a trespasser thereto creates liability in the trespasser, so long as the trespass is intentional. At the same time, the status of a visitor as a trespasser defines the legal rights of the visitor if they are injured due to the negligence of the property owner.
A duty to rescue is a concept in tort law and criminal law that arises in a number of cases, describing a circumstance in which a party can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of another party who could face potential injury or death without being rescued. The exact extent of the duty varies greatly between different jurisdictions. In common law systems, it is rarely formalized in statutes which would bring the penalty of law down upon those who fail to rescue. This does not necessarily obviate a moral duty to rescue: though law is binding and carries government-authorized sanctions and awarded civil penalties, there are also separate ethical arguments for a duty to rescue even where law does not punish failure to rescue.
In tort law, the standard of care is the only degree of prudence and caution required of an individual who is under a duty of care.
Volenti non fit iniuria is a Roman legal maxim and common law doctrine which states that if someone willingly places themselves in a position where harm might result, knowing that some degree of harm might result, they are not able to bring a claim against the other party in tort or delict. Volenti applies only to the risk which a reasonable person would consider them as having assumed by their actions; thus a boxer consents to being hit, and to the injuries that might be expected from being hit, but does not consent to his opponent striking him with an iron bar, or punching him outside the usual terms of boxing. Volenti is also known as a "voluntary assumption of risk".
In the USA, the rescue doctrine of the law of torts holds that if a tortfeasor creates a circumstance that places the tort victim in danger, the tortfeasor is liable not only for the harm caused to the victim, but also the harm caused to any person injured in an effort to rescue that victim. This doctrine was originally promulgated by Benjamin N. Cardozo in the 1921 case, Wagner v. Int'l Ry. Co. There, writing for the Court of Appeals of New York, Cardozo stated: "Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief [...] The emergency begets the man. The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had." The rescue doctrine was established nineteen years later, in the landmark case of Cote v. Palmer.
Canadian tort law is composed of two parallel systems: a common law framework outside Québec and a civil law framework within Québec. Outside Québec, Canadian tort law originally derives from that of England and Wales but has developed distinctly since Canadian Confederation in 1867 and has been influenced by jurisprudence in other common law jurisdictions. Meanwhile, while private law as a whole in Québec was originally derived from that which existed in France at the time of Québec's annexation into the British Empire, it was overhauled and codified first in the Civil Code of Lower Canada and later in the current Civil Code of Quebec, which codifies most elements of tort law as part of its provisions on the broader law of obligations. As most aspects of tort law in Canada are the subject of provincial jurisdiction under the Canadian Constitution, tort law varies even between the country's common law provinces and territories.
Premises liability is the liability that a landowner or occupier has for certain torts that occur on their land.
Public liability is part of the law of tort which focuses on civil wrongs. An applicant usually sues the respondent under common law based on negligence and/or damages. Claims are usually successful when it can be shown that the owner/occupier was responsible for an injury, therefore they breached their duty of care.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to tort law in common law jurisdictions:
In the North American legal system and in US Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, willful violation or willful non-compliance is a violation of workplace rules and policies that occurs either deliberately or as a result of neglect.
The civil liability of a recreational diver may include a duty of care to another diver during a dive. Breach of this duty that is a proximate cause of injury or loss to the other diver may lead to civil litigation for damages in compensation for the injury or loss suffered.
In American tort law, the Baseball Rule is an exculpatory clause applicable to baseball games with spectators; it holds that a baseball team or its sponsoring organization cannot be held liable for injuries suffered by a spectator struck by a foul ball batted into the stands, under most circumstances, as long as the team has offered some protected seating in the areas where foul balls are most likely to cause injuries. This is considered within the standard of reasonable care that teams owe to spectators, although in recent decades it has more often been characterized as a limited- or no-duty rule, and applied to ice hockey and golf as well. It is largely a matter of case law in state courts, although four states have codified it.
McKesson v. Doe, 592 U.S. 1 (2020), was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that temporarily halted a lawsuit by a police officer against an activist associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and instructed the lower federal court to seek clarification of state law from the Louisiana Supreme Court. At issue was whether the activist, DeRay Mckesson, could be liable under Louisiana tort law for injuries caused by other people at a protest. Mckesson had argued that the First Amendment's protection of freedom of assembly should block the lawsuit entirely. The Court's decision to instead redirect the tort law issue to the Louisiana Supreme Court means that the constitutional question was delayed or avoided.
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