phoenix helicopter crash - death liability?

[El Diablo]

tup,

Have any of the articles/coverage discussed how the crash happened? Just sounds a little odd to me, seems like copters would be able to see each other well before they got dangerously close, but who knows, I know jack about flying copters.

[tuq]

NT!,

Those are pretty terrible examples since they will never happen. You might as well say "helicopters covering a jaywalker" or "news choppers on the scene of someone going 15 over". I can tell you that most of the people in this town want this guy to fry, since his actions led to the deaths.

That said, this raises the inevitable question about the stations' responsibility to the public. What was their point of being up there? They can cry public service all they want, but they were there to entertain us and make our midday more exciting. Yay, car chase! Irresponsible journalism IMO, whether the guy is on the hook or not. But every large city seems to do this stuff, and we can't help but watch. Early indications of local feedback seem to indicate no remorse for covering this sort of thing, just a reassessment of protocol for the future.

[NT!]

tuq,

sort of clumsy examples, yeah. ok, suppose it was something more benign, like two choppers providing aerial footage of the rolling stones at fenway. they could reasonably guess that there might be air coverage there, is it their fault?

the reason i included that a crime was being committed is that it's the legal basis for the argument. in fact, i think for the legal argument to stand it has to be a felony. so that does change things somewhat.

basically i guess i'm not too sold on the idea that your actions, even if they are criminal, make you liable for someone else's voluntary reactions, when your actions did not directly impose risk on the 'victim'. if two cops got killed during the chase, fine.

[pergesu]

[ QUOTE ]
basically i guess i'm not too sold on the idea that your actions, even if they are criminal, make you liable for someone else's voluntary reactions, when your actions did not directly impose risk on the 'victim'. if two cops got killed during the chase, fine.

[/ QUOTE ]
Absolutely. You know that cops will follow you because they're legally obligated to do so. You "know" that helicopters will follow because that's human nature. That's some pretty shaky ground on which to base a felony conviction.

[Uncle Wimp]

I'm a photojournalist, and I was run into on the sideline at a football game. I didn't blame anyone but myself for getting in the way. Just because I decide something is newsworthy doesn't mean I can blame the newsmaker for anything that goes wrong.

[Alobar]

If I was the families id sue the [censored] out of the city of phoenix for liablility because sooo many retarded deaths happen due to needless police chases.

[Blarg]

WTF no way suspect is liable. He didn't ask for coverage by newsmen or anyone else, and we can be certain he didn't want it. Even if he did, he wasn't flying the choppers himself or in any way responsible for the pilots flying safely.

[marchron]

Those of you in favor of prosecuting the guy for these deaths: Seriously, where do you draw the line?

Say some guy gets drunk, gets in his car, and plows through a telephone pole resulting in a significant power outage. Then the news station sends a reporter and cameraman in a van to go live from the scene for the 11:00 news, and on the way there whoever's driving the van runs a red light, and they crash into some other car and die. By your logic, he's on the hook for those deaths, too.

[tuq]

This thread is lacking really bizarre analogies and I can only hope in the near future people come up with some.

[Sponger.]

Ok what if I get pulled over when I'm driving drunk and when the officer tells me to get out of the car for a sobriety test I piss myself in plain sight of the camera mounted on the dash of the police car. The video is then posted on youtube and someone chokes on their own vomit and dies from laughing so hard.

Should I be liable for his death then too? I mean what the [censored] where does it [censored] stop?