Tag: California

Categories
judiciary

Help Is Not on the Way

Think twice before you save people about to lose their lives, at least if you live in California.

The state supreme court there just ruled that good Samaritans can be held liable if they cause or aggravate an injury while rendering emergency help if that help is not medical.

A 1980 California law protects persons who render emergency aid from just such liability. But in a recent decision, the high court divined that this protection only pertains to “medical” care.

Therefore, Lisa Torti is liable for damages for pulling her coworker, Alexandra Van Horn, out of a car wreck in 2004. Van Horn became a paraplegic as a result of the accident. Ms. Torti did not cause the crash, but she was reluctant to stand by to witness her friend die should the car explode.

In his dissent, Justice Marvin Baxter observes that the perverse result of the ruling is that a person “who dives into swirling waters to retrieve a drowning swimmer can be sued for incidental injury he or she causes while bringing the victim to shore, but is immune for harm he or she produces while thereafter trying to revive the victim.”

So, hide your identity when you rescue people in California. That way, when you save somebody’s life and he yells, “Who was that masked man? Because I want to sue!” — he’ll be out of luck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
judiciary property rights too much government

© Is for California

You might think that there’s nothing a government won’t try. You’d be right. But I was near stupified to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it’s not alone.

The state tries to control — through copyright — how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!

The state’s out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.

Yes, what’s ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.

Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.

On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free.

Obviously, Malamud is spoiling for a fight. Good. He should win it. He has, after all, the law (if not the state) on his side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Arnold Loses His Strudel

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger no longer likes term limits. He explained why in an interview with the LA Times.

Says Arnold: “[O]riginally I felt very strongly that it was the greatest thing ever done. Because I despised the idea of guys being so locked in and safe in their positions, staying up in Sacramento and doing their deals and all this stuff.

“Now ’ve been there for four years and I say to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is a disaster.’. . . It’s going to hurt the state, because we have to start all over again, getting acquainted with these new people coming in. . . . John Burton, whom I’d just gotten used to working with; he used to bring me delicious Austrian coffee and apfelstrudel. Now he’s gone.”

Gee, competitive elections are so inconvenient, aren’t they? With the people coming and going and all this stuff? Not to mention the strudel crisis.

U.S. Term Limits president Phil Blumel observed: “Yes, Arnold ‘learned’ the lessons most politicians learn after a while in office: that government is the solution not the problem and that staying in office is better than leaving it.’

Blumel is right on. And I’m happy to report that California citizens ignored Arnold’s recent brainstorms and his endorsement of Prop 93, a devious term limits extension measure, defeated in February by Golden State voters. If the governor is still sad, well, maybe somebody can bring him some jelly doughnuts as a consolation prize.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.