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At 05:00 PM 11/13/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Although common sense tells you this would never be a problem in a
>rational legal system, Tim brings up a few thought-provoking points.
Actually, I don't think it constitutes the threat of a trend. I have more
faith than THAT in the judicial system. I'm just concerned about the
outliers that can catch some of us in bizarre, rare, but expensive problems.
>I wonder if you could provide a reasonable defense by demonstating that
>the US military has been inserting potentially dangerous warnings and
>cautions since the beginning of tech writing. The US military
>represents a substantive authority for "proper" tech writing. I'd think
>the court would have a hard time saying you were writing something for
>which you could be held liable for injuries resulting from deliberate
>misuse. Especially on a "he should have known" basis.
>
Hoo, boy! The military? Authoritative about technical writing? To paraphrase
a wiser head, "Military tech writing is to tech writing what military music
is to music."
More seriously (and quite speculatively), the military gets away with a lot
of things the rest of can't. Its publications are generally only for
military personnel, who are presumably trained and definitely under
observation at most times. I suppose (wildly speculative) that somebody
could be sued if a looney Master Chief or something bombs a school with
knowledge gleaned from demo classes. But I haven't seen any precedent or
even opinion language that would hold anyone blameless because they're doing
something the way the Army or Navy does it.
I'm with you in spirit; I can't imagine any sane court letting the issue
even get to trial. And as I've pointed out, Paladin hasn't even gotten that
far. But if Paladin's found liable and loses, logically where does the line
end? Because if the test becomes "where he got that awful knowledge" then
you can just start going hand-over-hand back up the chain of causation. I'd
think that a truly safe position for the courts would be to stop at the
perpetrator, period. Paladin didn't make anybody kill anybody else. Paladin
only supplied the means. But in our society we seem obsessed with stomping
on every link in the chain, just to make sure. And since we're in that
chain, however unintentionally, we could be dragged along in the wake. What
if Timothy McVeigh had learned his demolitions from an agricultural chemical
magazine's warnings? Could the magazine be held liable for disseminating the
information, even in the negative? Once we leave the doctrine of proximate
cause ("but for him, it wouldn't have happened"), the rest of the chain is
in danger, too.
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
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