Legally, in my state, and I would believe in most states, that you could turn away a stranger without legal recourse to yourself.
Hospitality is generally not legislated.
Interesting that the majority of the responses have focused more on the moral and ethical obligations of individuals, for which such responses probably belong in a different forum. 
Turning away the person back into the snowstorm is morally wrong. Legally actionable probably depends on the specific locality & their laws.
But it’s a stupid thing to do.
Humans are warm blooded. Meaning they generate heat. Having this additional person inside your house will keep it warmer.
If you have a good, working furnace that may not matter much – allowing them in will just reduce your heating bill a bit. But if “you live in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles away from any other shelter”, you would be foolish to waste fuel when you don’t need to. Regardless of moral concerns, simple frugality would support bringing another warm body* into your shelter.
*Yes, warm. Even if he is near to freezing to death (core body temp around 85°F/30ºC), that is still warm compared to the ambient temperature of a “killing snowstorm”.
Yeah; a similar situation resulted in the poor inhabitants of a castle getting turned into candelabras, clocks, ottomans and shit. (And the person who refused to offer hospitality got turned into a beast, killed, resurrected and got to bang a hot nerdy brunette).
In any event… if I feel I can provide shelter to that person without risk to myself or my property, hell yeah I let them in.
There’s a very big difference between saying that the necessity defense prevents you from being convicted of trespassing on my property and saying that there is some law which requires that I allow you into my home. For one thing, it’s not unusual for the law to treat homes, especially occupied homes, differently from other property. For another, there are all sorts of defenses unrelated to necessity that might prevent someone from being convicted of trespass but don’t impose a requirement that I allow them into my home- infancy and insanity are the first two I can think of.
Definitely; I was only asking about the latter, and the answer seems pretty clear: there is no such legislation.
There is “moral law,” which everyone has to figure out for themselves. Francis Vaughan cites the Golden Rule, and also national character. The U.S. is a bit more persnickety about rules, and a bit more standoffish toward strangers, than Australia. Our loss, I think. I also agree it differs by the degree of viciousness of the climate. I’d be more likely to pick up a hitchhiker in the middle of the Mojave Desert than in a crowded suburb. I’d also still be scared spitless the whole time.
Pretend you’re back in Torts class: the prof gives a hypothetical as found in the OP. Your exam response is “No, there is in general no duty to rescue. The end.” This happens to be a true statement about the common law of tort.
Do you expect to get an A on the exam?
Well, I can’t go back to law school, having never been there , but I’m not sure what you’ re trying to say. Is it that the answer to the question asked in the OP
is “No, you have to let him in. If he broke into your unoccupied house he couldn’t be convicted of trespassing and he would have a defense if you sued him for trespassing and it therefore follows that you have no legal right to refuse to let him in.” ?
Actually, a full and proper law-school exam answer would probably only leave me more confused; a simple answer is enough for the non-lawyers here.
I think that’s wrong, from what’s gone before: the answers, so far, indicate that, no, I don’t have to let him in. Yes, he can defend his breaking in when I’m not there, but that doesn’t extend in law or logic that I would have to let him in if I were home. I’m guessing that the legal logic is that he can’t possibly be a menace to me, personally, if I’m not home, but if I am, he might.
If I am in my truck, you will ride in the back.
In the car, you will ride in the front seat beside me or if the Wx is too bad to be in the back. Both cases one hand will be holding my personal handgun. It will be obvious & you will be told in advance. If you are too fearful of me to ride under those conditions, you are free to get out.
If you are an silly mother with three kids in sandals, no water or map and I need to take you back around the canyon, you get water & the back of the truck.
I have made folks stay outside, I have let them in.
I am big, mean, & already made my choices so there will be no silly time spent wondering what to do, only reaction as fast as I can.
If you live in an area where the ‘snowstorm or distance or remoteness or the heat’ would put you in this kind of situation & yoiu live unarmed without a good dog and do not know how to judge people pretty good, the laws will do you no good or harm.
The laws needed to be made because people are not basically good & the difference between desperate need & evil is a very finbe line. Laws only apply to the survivors.
Since most people have bought into the fantasy of the sanctity of human life and that no cost is to great to save one life even if it kills 3 trying save that one by strict adherence to written LAW, we we tend to not see the double edge parts of all rules or laws.
People who go out unprepared in times of likely trouble have to have these laws or they would not survive. Ask a lone deep water sailor what they think of those who do that expecting the CC to save them.
Since we are talking about the US of A, & since this make a comparision to other culturs, comparision to other societies is silly. One of ther reasons we are more into sel;f protection is because that is how life is viewed here.
There is always going to be ‘judgment calls’ on any laws like this and IMO, if the other guy can’t talk, my version will carry more weight.
Are their laws here? The ones we have are so seldom needed to make a determination, any worry about them before hand should have already been thought out, If you are not prepared for the situation, you will be the person who can’t talk.
I wonder what the “LAW” says about the guy running from a pissed bear coming for your door, looks like it will be a cl;opse tie and your wife & kid are slanging watching, what does law say bout this? What does moral law say. ( bear better turn away if it is my wife, she likes & knows how to use guns, and would be charging the bear, gun ablaze. )
What if it was me with a large gun & no one besides myself in the house? Law & moral law?
One word…Droogs. :dubious:
This is getting way too far into opinion territory, not “true answers” territory. Suffice it to say that I vigorously disagree with you, and consider your views harmful to society.
I would like to ask a moderator to consider either closing this thread, as the question has been answered, or moving it to Great Debates, where I can say what really needs saying. Thanks.
I think it’s in Spitzbergen, but there house doors are left unlocked deliberately in case of a rampaging polar bears. Of course, there everyone knows each other.
Moved to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Fine. No problem. Beggars can’t be choosers. If you give me water, I won’t complain that it wasn’t lemonade or Chivas Regal.
When it was a matter of life and death? Have you made folks stay outside…and die?
I do not admire this, but that’s a matter of my opinion.
The law might do you some good. It’s already been established that the law forgives your trespassing upon private property in a case of life-or-death. So, that far at least, the law does offer some protection. I call that good.
Agreed.
This might be seen as trivially tautological, but I consider the phrasing to be offensively callous and cynical. Yes, it might very well be “Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.” But if that is your idea of the basis of the legal system, I have to hold it (not you, but the idea) in utter contempt.
Please enlarge upon the sanctity of human life being a fantasy.
Please cite anyone who says that no cost is too great to save one life, or anyone who says you should kill three trying to save one. I hold this to be a straw-man attack, attributing views that no one actually holds or has ever expressed.
I, too, have contempt for people who are foolish and ignorant of the perils of their environment. A friend once met a woman on the Grand Canyon trail who was wearing high-heeled shoes. She also didn’t have any water.
At the same time, I believe that the death penalty is not an appropriate punishment for foolishness. It may sometimes be the only possible punishment. The Coast Guard (did you mean CG?) annually rescues idiots who try to set out from L.A. to Catalina in inadequate boats. That’s one of the reasons the Coast Guard exists. So, yes, I do expect them to do that; it is part of their duty.
I am interested in other cultures, and was very happy to have the input from Francis Vaughan. Morality does not stop at the U.S. border, and American concepts of morality are not universal.
I do not admire nor respect your views on “how life is viewed.”
Again, trivially true. This is also of great protection for murderers; if the other guy is dead, he can’t testify against you. I hold this to be a really poor interpretation of morality.
I believe that civilization exists to help people who can’t help themselves. We give medical care to the injured, treatment to the diseased, aid to the lost, food to the starving. You appear to be saying, “Let them die,” a viewpoint I hold to be uncivilized.
I would like to know that also. I suspect, from what we have learned in this thread, that you would be under no legal obligation to shoot the bear in order to save the guy who is running from it. I also suspect that nearly everyone here would hold such non-action to be morally dubious. If you could save a man’s life at the cost of nothing more than a few rifle rounds, and choose not to, that would seem to be harshly immoral.
I can understand that there should not be a legal requirement for you to shoot. (I can also understand that the law should protect you if you do fire and accidentally hit the guy, not the bear. “Good Samaritan” laws exist to protect us when we try to do the right thing and muck it up.)
I do not want someone who holds your views to be my neighbor.
A guy refused to help a lady and her two sons got swept away in Sandy.
I personally think this guy should be charged with something. Even his interview with cnn sounds like a uncaring, selfish a-hole.
Uncaring selfish a-hole, definitely.
But did he break the law? The answers given in this thread strongly suggest no, he did not. What obligation did he have, under the law?
Under any meaningful moral code, yes, he ought to have let them in. But do they have grounds to sue him for refusing? Far as I can tell, under U.S. law, no.
This is what happens when a nation favors liberty over security.
Because I live where I do this hypothetical is hardly that.
Once I have been forced to knock on a stranger’s door and ask to be taken in. That was in one dandy blizzard– as in two feet of snow, a fifty mile an hour wind and a ninety below wind-chill. It was my wife, myself and some poor schlub we picked up one the road trying to make his way home on foot from a ditched car. We had to stop because the road was blocked with drifts and my engine compartment was filled with brick-hard snow. In other word, we could not go any farther. We were taken in, fed and bundled off to bed no questions asked. Two days later when the roads were passable payment was refused. We still exchange Christmas cards with those Good Samaritans and think we owe them out lives.
We live a couple miles out of town on the main two-lane from Cedar Rapids to the Twin Cities. On four or five occasions we have taken in stranded travelers in the same circumstances.
When a big blizzard hits and the snow plows and the State Troopers are called off the roads finding shelter is quite simply a matter of life and death. Legalities aside, there is a special Hell reserved for the inhuman monster who would turn an imperiled stranger out in the teeth of that sort of weather.
Also, it seems to me that it is a special rapist or house burglar who would chose to go out in a howling blizzard to pursue his special crime.
Well put. In non-modern times, hospitality was a matter of life and death. There were rules for the host and the guest that if violated would cause all to shun the offender.
He’s a horrible person but can you charge him with something legally? A woman with two little boys can hardly be perceived as a physical threat to anyone. As opposed to say three huge men.
Last sentence of your own cite:
I do agree that he sounds like a selfish asshole. I disagree that he should be charged even though he committed no crime.