The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

This is slander! Lies! Distortions! Ad hominum! Nolo contendre!

Well you didn't have to admit it was YOU!

If, in AWIL, the American had told his shrink that he turned into a werewolf, stalking the countryside and killing at will, would the shrink have a duty under Tarasoff to warn, and who specifically would he have to warn?

Can we also hold the lab liable for the damage done by plague they set loose in torts? Yes, they can be held strictly liable for any damage caused by their animals for a couple of reasons.

1. Ultrahazardous activites. Infecting animals with "Rage" just has to be considered an ultrahazardous activity, much more hazardous than simply creating a reservoir on your land, or blowing up stumps. (There are at least four different standards to judge this, I think, and the lab satisfies each.)

2. Wild animals. Chimps aren't domestic animals, so keeping them qualifies one for strict liability.

Of course, this brings up the question of who you'd collect from (and also who would collect), since the entire state of England essentially ceased to exist.

Also, the animal activists could be held liable in torts even if the release hadn't been negligent, since the creation of risk creates a duty to warn, even absent negligence.

If you carelessly set your house on fire, and the whole city burns down, you're not liable to every other property owner in the city. I'm not sure if the same applies in criminal law, but in tort law you'd run into proximate cause problems.

PS. Cathy, maybe you should put an 'I am not a lawyer, and neither are my law-student friends' disclaimer on your site, everyone else seems to do that.

Wait...if you keep a wild animal, you're strictly liable for damages that are normally caused by wild animals, like bites. I'm not sure a deadly (man-made?) disease qualifies.

You think the title "Turning Cathy into a Lawyer," and the whole pretense of the blog being about documenting the process of turning me into a lawyer doesn't make it sufficiently clear that I'm not actually a lawyer yet?

I guess I haven't undergone the Great Change sufficiently long enough to have developed that level of paranoia. Give it time?

Good points. I'm about to start outlining the causation chapter, so this counts as practice.
;-)

As to the fire issue, only New York has a strict limit on the extent of liability for fire damage (only the first person to whose property the fire spread). It's not a settled question, but many jurisdictions hold a person liable for the entire fire, on foreseeability grounds. If you can foresee that the fire would spread, you are liable for its entire spread. One judge gave the example of firing a gun negligently across the street, thinking you were going to hit a laborer, but in fact killing a person "in receipt of a large income." You'd be liable for the entirety of that person's lost wages.

So, could the lab have foreseen any spread of the virus. Well, first, it's in the nature of viruses to spread. Second, they certainly acted as if they knew. [Spoiler] The lab technician tried to kill the woman who was infected first, because he knew that the virus was virulent and very easily spread. Their actions can probably be found to be the proximate cause of the deaths of anyone who died directly from the virus (which would include anyone to whom it spread).

As to the wild animal, that's a very good argument, to which I have several counters. A keeper of an abnormally dangerous animal is strictly liable for injuries resulting from the abnormal characteristics. If I have a dog that I know is abnormally likely to bite, I'm not held liable for injuries resulting from that animals chasing of a bicyclist. In this case, it can be argued that the chimps have an abnormally dangerous propensity to infect someone with a life-threatening disease.

Second, if you look at the virus itself, it isn't truly man-made. Unless the lab has come up with a way to effect abiogenesis, it's actually a man-bred virus. It's like a dog bred specifically for viciousness. The virus harmed the populace in the way that it was known to be abnormaly dangerous, so on that theory they would likely be held liable for the injuries to England.

They may, however, be protected from liability by the intentional misbehavior of the animal rights activists. The Restatement provides that innocent, negligent and even reckless behavior by a third person are NOT bars to liability, but the intentional acts of third parties are an unsettled question. Missouri said that a striker firing into a truck filled with dynamite shielded the defendant from liability, but Alaska said that the very nature of dynamite was such that the storer of dynamite should be held liable even for intentional explosions by third parties.

I could go on about this for days. (And I might, if I run out of practice tests.) Some other issues I thought of are, can the lab be held liable for the death of Jim's parents who committed suicide because of the plague? Can the lab be held liable for the death of the zombies that were shot in self-defense? Can the little girl recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress for watching the death of her father? Against whom?

Etc.

Ignoring for the moment any implications of third party meddling, the lab would be liable for injuries inflicted by the monkey bites. (May v. Burdett 115 Eng. Rep. 1213 (Q.B. 1846) dealt with monkey bites specifically.) I'd think the liability for damages could range from the cost of a bandaid for a minor flesh wound, to payment on a wrongful death claim if the consequence of the bite were so severe.

Would it matter that the reason for the severity of the injury was due to another organism? I don't think so, but I can't think of a case at the moment strictly on-point. We read Marsalis v. LaSalle [94 So. 2d 120 (La. App. 1957)] which involved a potentially rabid cat, but that case had more to do with liability stemming from promising to quarantine the cat than strict liability for the rabies. Although for the purposes of calculating damages, the rabies aspect justified a higher award than a more innocuous injury would have.

But I don't think we've directly considered whether the question of liability for the injury would change in instances of animals engaged in parasitic or symbiotic relationships. What happens if your cute, well-behaved puppy suddenly becomes rabid and as a result of the infection, bites another? If the puppy could be cured, would he have lost his status as a tame animal?

And what would happen if a man infected with rabies bit another, would the question of liability focus on his "keeping" of a ferocious organism in his being? (And as long as we are using Hollywood as the source of our hypotheticals, ever seen Stargate SG-1?) Similarly, what if in 28 Days there had been no intermediary monkeys were involved at all? What if the activists had merely freed beakers and vials and petri dishes full of virii? Would the lab have strict liability for having kept an untame organism? Or does that stretch tort law past what it can currently accomodate?