Learnt something shocking at a course today. It seems that the law of negligence is based on the principle of first proving a duty of care. Thus, if I am in a park and a toddler comes hurtling out of the bush, heading straight for the pond and I watch them fall in and drown without doing anything I have NOT committed a crime. If on the other hand I am the kids nanny that is a different matter.
We shouldnt really need laws to tell us this, but in my book that is all wrong. It should be a basic part of human behaviour to act for the good of others. An ommission is as bad as a commission when that ommission can reasonably be expected to cause serious consequences.
This is the problem with a ‘rights’ based legal system. Surely we all have the RESPONSIBILITY to be good neighbours to one another, and this comes before any ‘rights’ we might claim.
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