For those of you who haven’t seen (or don’t remember) the 2001 movie Rat Race, the plot centers around a Las Vegas casino owner (Donald Sinclair, played by John Cleese) who arranges to have $2 million hidden in a locker in New Mexico. After picking six people at random from his casino, he tells them very simply that the first one to get to the locker gets to keep the money.
The six people (along with friends and others) they pick up along the way manage to eventually get the money and, through a comedic series of events, eventually give the money away to charity.
Oddly enough, the racers should have kept the money as some of them are facing significant legal consequences due to their actions during the race. But that’s not what I want to discuss.
I’m curious if the owner of the casino faces any potential legal consequences for his actions. Could his actions be considered reckless in just setting six people loose with no guidelines or rules to ensure public safety? Could he be held partially or wholly responsible for some or all of the criminal or civil acts of the race participants?
Thanks in advance,
Zev Steinhardt
The devil is probably in the details. At one extreme, if you organize a Cannonball Run and equip a team to break cross-country speed records, you assuredly know that they’ll be breaking the law as well, and I think you’re very likely to face civil liability for anything that that team damages along the way. You might even face criminal liability as a co-conspirator, but you might be able to argue that the only laws you expected them to break were speed limits, which are civil infractions; you didn’t expect them to venture upward into committing misdemeanors or felonies.
At the other extreme, if you simply remark to a crowded room, “Dang it, I left my suitcase with $2 million in the men’s room in the other terminal,” genuinely as an inadvertent expression of frustration and not with the intent to move people, you’re very unlikely to face liability for any damage they inflict while racing across the airport.
I think Sinclair is probably risking civil liability. He definitely organized a race, insofar as he gave them all locker keys. I assume his defense would presumably be that he never told anyone to break the law, and that he just expected to reward the fastest team to arrive legally. I don’t remember enough of the details of the movie’s set-up to know how solid that defense might be. The chance of criminal liability is probably much more remote.
Remember Sinclair’s ultimate obsession, though. My guess is that he wants to get sued, because he knows that any such lawsuit will be, well, a gamble.