There’s a *moral *duty to call the police when someone threatens suicide. Whether a legal duty was breached, I cannot say for certain. Also, unless the eggers-on in question were mandated reporters, it’s hard to argue that they had a legal duty to even report the incident.
I bet anything Reddit enacts a policy change after this incident, as they should. Pretty much every message board I’ve ever been a part of will contact the police if suicide is threatened. So Reddit may have some responsibility for failure to intervene, *if *one of their mods was aware of the situation and did nothing.
It’d be relevant to know whether timely intervention would have changed the outcome of this situation. Did he make the post on a smartphone and then jump immediately, before even seeing the responses? Or was there a gap of a few hours, during which time intervention could have saved his life? Time will tell.
This reminds me of our own erstwhile severe depressive poster, mookieblaylock. Did he ever threaten suicide before he got banned? If so, what did the mods here do? I remember that he threatened self-harm at one point…
The problem is a lot of things can provoke suicide if someone is sufficiently unwell.
For example,this thread might be intepreted as encouraging those who care about the environment to kill themselves.
I am a lot better now, but nine months ago I attempted suicide in part due to environmental guilt(fish to be precise). So of course, I found that topic rather concerning.
The question is; where shall we draw the line? what debates would we censor just to reduce the suicide risk of a potential depressed lurker?
Meh, I think there’s a pretty clear difference between talking about overfishing with someone thats depressed about it and actively telling someone who says they’re going to kill themselves that they should do it.
I don’t know if you remember the Jenny Jones talk show tragic case, but a Wrongful Death suit was filed, here is the opinion, the MI SC declined review. I won’t brief the details, you can read it.
Short answer, it depends on the state and the exact conduct of the aggressor’s I would imagine.
It discusses Causation, as Bricker points out, and the doctrine of Forseeability, etc.
As Kimmy points out though, a meritless claim will not only be subject to a dismissal, but the Attorney filing one may get sanctioned and the Plaintiff may be counter sued for Abuse of Process.
Those deemed vexatious litigators need permission to go forward even before the defendant is served.
My off-the-cuff impression (torts is not my specialty), I would imagine that it would also depend a great deal on whether the applicable law recognizes contributory negligence or not. But I haven’t dealt with torts since the bar exam.
I would argue that you have no duty of reasonable care to the suicidee if you sit by and silently watch. However, if you commit any affirmative act, you have a duty to anyone whom your act may effect. So, I would say that there is a duty and breach here.
As for proximate cause, an argument could be made that the taunts were the final causation of the suicide. He really wasn’t going to do it, but the taunts were the act that caused the death.
As for the jumping as a supervening cause or comparative negligence, I would argue that a person who is contemplating suicide is not in a lucid state of mind and is incapable of negligence.
I was once dispatched to an elementary school as part of a crisis management team.
We’re talking little kids.
During recess they saw a man standing on the edge of a roof. Maybe 6 stories. Some of them started yelling, “Jump! Jump!” He did. He died.
It was awful. I’ve never been so farmisht. What do I tell a classroom of 3rd graders? (And I don’t do befuddled often, if ever.)
What the hell was I going to tell these kids? It was a one shot deal. The best I could do was tell them that I knew “for a fact” that they did not make him jump.
