A Duty to Rescue and Its Costs

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the problem of cost generated by the performance of a duty to rescue. The authors consider three distinct views of this problem by confronting a scenario in which one party decides to rescue another, where providing such assistance seems to involve an infringement upon the property rights of the third party. For example, A rescues drowning B but in the process of doing so A apparently trespasses upon C’s land. The question that the authors pose is: Assuming that there is a duty to rescue, who should be charged with the cost of what seems to be an infringement upon the third party’s property rights? The paper analyses the following possibilities: the cost should be borne by (a) the victim of the emer- gency, (b) the rescuer, (c) the third party whose rights seem to have been encroached upon. Even though the authors begin with a pronouncedly libertarian assumption about the third party’s absolute property rights, in the course of the discussion they come to the conclusion that it is exactly this assumption that should be further probed and ultimately relaxed in order to reach the most plausible solution to the present dilemma.