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Fire & Rescue personnel play the system

This is ridiculous. When you choose to enter this profession, you're volunteering to potentially be exposed to blood, guts, rearranged body parts, foul odors, infectious goop, and all manner of other unpleasant realities. You can't sue someone just because you were called on to do exactly what you deliberately and of your own free will elected to do for a living. My colleagues to the south are embarrassing me today.

I'm really torn over the notion that we can sue each other just because our feelings get hurt. On the one hand, in a capitalist society, in which corporate entities are legal persons, the only way to punish those "persons" is to reach deep into their pockets. You can't imprison a corporation. You can't cane it, or put it in the stocks, or electrocute it. And when judgment awards for the actual crimes committed aren't enough, relative to the wealth of the corporate "person", to make the point and change bad behavior, I can see where punitive damages might give a little more oomph to the proceedings.

But it seems they've become a get-rich-quick ticket for injured parties with dollar signs in their big, tear-filled, puppydog eyes. And that's odious. Bad shit happens in life. Under very special circumstances, maybe the bad shit that happened to you should come with a fat check. Maybe. But cashing in for doing the job you freely chose to do, a job you knew came fraught with physical and emotional dangers of precisely this nature? That's low.

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Comment by once banned twice shy on December 5, 2007 at 9:29am: I am not sure why the NM Supremes ruled this way--it could be some kind of procedural thing and not at all related to the merits of the case. I would say that these guys might not prevail if the case were brought to trial.
I have to agree, though, that this sets a dangerous precedent--now we could potentially see lawsuits every time a first responder goes to a grisly accident--whether it was caused by a negligent corporation or a negligent person. Not so sure this is a fine idea.

Comment by davis on December 5, 2007 at 12:31pm: I would agree with you that people who volunteer or whose job it is to respond to these kinds of horrors are, well doing their job. But I think maybe in this case there might be more to the suit. Gas companies have NO oversight regarding the condition of their pipelines. Not in the sticks, and not here in town. So one of the added horrors of that event was that the gas company would not be held accountable. I haven't kept up with the case, so I don't know what's happened with any (inevitable) lawsuit by the family of those killed. So, despite how absurd it seems for responders to be suing about this, anything that puts some onus on the gas companies to maintain pipelines is fine by me.

Comment by Jessie on December 5, 2007 at 2:05pm: I can't disagree with your position that the gas company should be somehow held responsible, but if anyone is going to benefit from a legal action, it should be the family, not the rescue workers. As heinous as the company's negligence may be, the ends do not justify the means in this case, mostly because those means set a dangerous precedent.

Comment by davis on December 5, 2007 at 2:41pm: I see your point. Though I wonder if this will actually be a precedent? Its quite possible its not the first time responders have sued the alleged responsible party of a disaster. I don't know that, I'm sincerely curious. This is an interesting issue. I can see how lawsuits could go completely out of control, with EMTs suing people involved in car accidents, etc. But I'm just not feeling the danger when it comes to suing a corporation, for the reasons you stated in your original post- that lawsuits are how we hold them accountable. And its not like if the responders benefit the family cannot. I don't know. It will be very interesting to see how it turns out, though. Thanks for posting about this.

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