03-11-2008, 06:31 AM
http://www.nullapoena.de/stud/explorers.html
This is a hypothetical case (which I'm told is quite famous!) involving some cavers who are trapped and enter into an agreement in hopes to survive until they can be rescued, only to have to fight the legal system. It's written from the perspective of several judges who observed the case. One of the most striking lines reads as such:
"Ten workmen were killed in the process of removing the rocks from the opening to the cave. Did not the engineers and government officials who directed the rescue effort know that the operations they were undertaking were dangerous and involved a serious risk to the lives of the workmen executing them? If it was proper that these ten lives should be sacrificed to save the lives of five imprisoned explorers, why then are we told it was wrong for these explorers to carry out an arrangement which would save four lives at the cost of one?
Every highway, every tunnel, every building we project involves a risk to human life. Taking these projects in the aggregate, we can calculate with some precision how many deaths the construction of them will require; statisticians can tell you the average cost in human lives of a thousand miles of a four-lane concrete highway. Yet we deliberately and knowingly incur and pay this cost on the assumption that the values obtained for those who survive outweigh the loss."
This is quite possibly the most interesting legal case I've ever read (even if it isn't real).
As I did a bit more research into this topic, I found that someone other than the original author has written the book The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions, and I was wondering if anyone has read it and can give a recommendation as to whether it's worth checking out.
This is a hypothetical case (which I'm told is quite famous!) involving some cavers who are trapped and enter into an agreement in hopes to survive until they can be rescued, only to have to fight the legal system. It's written from the perspective of several judges who observed the case. One of the most striking lines reads as such:
"Ten workmen were killed in the process of removing the rocks from the opening to the cave. Did not the engineers and government officials who directed the rescue effort know that the operations they were undertaking were dangerous and involved a serious risk to the lives of the workmen executing them? If it was proper that these ten lives should be sacrificed to save the lives of five imprisoned explorers, why then are we told it was wrong for these explorers to carry out an arrangement which would save four lives at the cost of one?
Every highway, every tunnel, every building we project involves a risk to human life. Taking these projects in the aggregate, we can calculate with some precision how many deaths the construction of them will require; statisticians can tell you the average cost in human lives of a thousand miles of a four-lane concrete highway. Yet we deliberately and knowingly incur and pay this cost on the assumption that the values obtained for those who survive outweigh the loss."
This is quite possibly the most interesting legal case I've ever read (even if it isn't real).
As I did a bit more research into this topic, I found that someone other than the original author has written the book The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions, and I was wondering if anyone has read it and can give a recommendation as to whether it's worth checking out.