From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: That Responsibility Thing, Take 2
Organization: Who, me???
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 02:25:09 GMT

In article <9535@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM> mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson) writes:
>This post is in response to the person I have been debating as to whether
>pregnancy is trespass.
>
>I lost your post but I wanted to respond anyway.
>
>[Comment about having to wait 36 weeks before trespasser leaves missing.]
>
>This analogy is getting a little silly, but in the interest of getting
>the last word.  I will extend it a little further.
>
>Suppose your house is a boat.  You invite someone onboard.  You go for a 
>sail.  After a while you get tired of this person, so you ask him to leave.
>The problem is that you are now miles from shore.  To leave the boat is
>to die.
>
>It has been mentioned that when you ask a guest to leave and he doesn't
>this constitutes tresspass.  This is probably correct.
>
>In the above scenario, forcing the trespasser to leave will kill him.
>Do you have the right to kill this trespasser?
>
>I think not.

Your analogy has several problems:

1. PRIOR ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY

   If I'm not mistaken, maritime law dictates that the captain of a vessel is
   responsible for the safety of each and every passenger on that vessel 
   during their stay on the vessel, assuming that the passenger in question 
   isn't posing an immediate threat to other passengers. The captain of the 
   ship KNOWS this to be the case when he or she assumes captainship of the 
   vessel, so he or she cannot claim that the "burden" of having to put up 
   with the unwanted passenger was simply an unforeseeable accident. If they 
   wanted to avoid the possibility of this occurrence, they shouldn't have 
   captained the boat in the first place, or they should have been MUCH more 
   careful about the guests they invited on board.

   I can anticipate some objections to this analysis:

	A) There is no reason to assume that you, the house-boat's owner, are
	   also its captain.

	   True. But how does this help resolve the problem? The captain, not
	   the owner, has the ultimate responsibility for deciding who boards 
	   and who leaves the boat, too, so if you hire someone else as your
 	   captain, you'll still need to get that person's authorization to 
	   eject the unwanted guest. If the captain refuses, then you may fire 
	   him, ONCE YOU BOTH GET BACK TO SHORE. But, while the boat is at 
	   sea, the decision, and the responsibility, always falls on the 
	   captain's shoulders.

	B) The property in question is a domicile as well as being a sea-faring
	   vessel. Therefore it might fall under normal property laws, instead
	   of maritime law.

	   I claim no expertise in maritime law, but I think you'll find that
	   all sea-faring vessels fall under maritime law while they are 
  	   actually at sea, whether they are domiciles or not. When you think 
	   about it, most sea-faring vessels ARE domiciles of one sort or 
	   another, so maritime law would be pretty impractical if the above 
	   objection were to be taken seriously.

	C) In the same way that the captain of the ship knows the risk of being
	   landed with an unwanted passenger, and should plan and avoid that 
	   occurence, and, failing that, deal with the consequences, so should
	   a woman having sex.

	   The situations are not symmetrical, however. Buying and operating
	   a houseboat is NOT a fundamental right, but adults having consensual
	   sex is. We cannot subject women to all sorts of licensing and 
	   safety-check regulations in the case of sex, but we do this all the
	   time for boats (and trains, and planes, and to a lesser extent, 
	   cars). The intrusiveness of regulating sex is worlds apart from that
	   of regulating the transportation industry.

2. NON-SEVERITY OF VIOLATION

   You did not go into details about _why_ the passenger is unwanted, but I
   would suspect that it simply doesn't measure up to the severity of an
   unwanted pregnancy. Is the passenger just bad at making conversation? Are
   they ugly? Do they have bad breath? Body odor? Putting up with these is
   nothing compared to pregnancy (so I've been told). Certainly nothing to
   commit murder about. Go to another part of the ship. Don earplugs and/or
   put a clothespin on your nose. Deal with it.

   Now, maybe there's something worse about the passenger. Let's say the 
   passenger physically attacks you, attempts to rape you, or whatever. Now 
   we're talking about a criminal act. The captain has the right to subdue the 
   passenger, and to bind him/her so as to prevent further violence until the 
   boat returns to shore, and the appointed authorities can deal with the 
   matter. 

   Let's say, instead, that you, the captain and only other occupant in this
   case, are incapable of subduing the passenger, and you are in immediate 
   danger of life and limb from him or her, but that you DO have an 
   opportunity to dump them overboard, where they will die. Now, I would say 
   you have the right to do so, but in this case it's IRRELEVANT that the 
   passenger is on your property, or that you are both at sea. The right of 
   self-defense applies just as much here as it would on public land.

   How about another variation: the passenger is the carrier of a deadly 
   disease, and, there being no way to adequately quarantine them, that you 
   will contract it before you can get back to land. This is more interesting
   variation, since the passenger is not _necessarily_ guilty of any crime. 
   Let's split out several cases at this point:

	A) The captain knew about the disease beforehand

	   This falls under the aforementioned "acceptance of responsibility"
	   and the captain is duty-bound to protect the safety of their
 	   passenger.

	B) The captain was unaware of the disease, but the passenger knew

	   The passenger has committed a criminal act. Different slightly in
	   degree from an actual physical attack, but essentially the same.
	   Same principles apply. The fact that the passenger is on your
	   property is irrelevant, as is the fact that you are both at sea.

	C) Neither the captain nor the passenger knew about the disease; it was
	   discovered _en route_

	   In this case, the deadly disease is no different from any liferaft
	   situation, where it must be decided who must die so that others may
	   live. The decision, as usual, belongs with the captain. If the 
	   diseased passenger poses a mortal threat to MANY other passengers,
	   then I would think the decision would have to be made to toss him
	   or her. If it's just a captain_vs_passenger situation, then I think
	   under maritime law (I'm really going out on a limb here), in a 
	   mutual-innocence situation, the captain is duty-bound to offer his 
	   or her own life for that of their passenger. Then again, it would 
	   depend on the nature of the disease. If the diseased passenger was 
	   likely to infect millions of people upon reaching shore, then 
	   perhaps the captain would be duty-bound to respond to that threat 
	   instead. Optimally, the carrier of the deadly disease would be a
	   strict Utilitarian, and would OFFER their life if the only 
	   alternative was that many others would die. Again, the property 
	   aspect, and the at-sea aspect are essentially irrelevant -- this is 
	   no different from any other Utilitarian Ethics dilemma of the genre.

3. DELEGABILITY

   If another ship happens by, or the Coast Guard, or whoever, then, with the
   agreement of the parties, the unwanted guest can be transferred to that
   other vessel, instead of killing him or her. Granted, the captain of another
   given vessel may not WANT the unwanted passenger, but if the owner really 
   was on the brink of murdering his or her unwanted passenger, I think by 
   maritime law the captain/owner of the houseboat MUST radio for assistance,
   and the other captain is duty-bound to accept the unwanted passenger 
   aboard, so there is at least a good chance of a "delegation" solution. The 
   immediate concern is the physical safety of passengers -- the criminal and 
   or civil charges can be taken care of once everyone's back on shore...

								- Kevin
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