> [US Coast Guard] officers determined Baluchi was conducting a manifestly unsafe voyage," the criminal complaint says.
Doing something probably dangerous to myself is a criminal offense is new to me. Besides, with such overbearing interferences the state will only hamper the pioneer spirit of American, one of the agreeable most important things that made America such a great nation.
I sort of agree in spirit but the fact is, he was within US territorial waters when he made the attempt and the coast guard is responsible for rescuing him. If you want to set fire to your house while you are in it for example the same logic applies.
Emergency responders are put at risk and tax payer money is wasted because of his actions.
What I agree with is that similar to "do not resucitstate" declarations/tattoos, you should be able to make an arrangement with the coast guard notifying them of your intent and waiving any rescue obligations on their end.
Or, he could just tow his craft with a boat until he enters international waters and start his attempt there.
If the guy goes missing, the US Coast Guard is obligated to find him, spending many hours of manpower and possibly hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
There's calculated risk and there's stupid risk...this one falls into the latter.
There's an outstanding conflict between statutory law (which codifies a duty to rescue on all mariners) and case law (which has generally found that neither private nor public actors have a duty to assist), but once USCG has essentially taken notice of an issue at sea, they have a legal obligation to deal with the situation lest they end up on the wrong side of a FTCA suit. In this case, there isn't any way they could ignore a crazy guy taking a Habitrail to sea; just by realizing a manifestly unseaworthy vessel was being taken into dangerous conditions by an impaired pilot, they (arguably) created a duty of care. There are a lot of cases where the fact pattern wouldn't obviously lead to this -- a drunk guy sailing a J/22 across the Atlantic on a bet is a bad idea, but not an obvious immediate danger to life and limb in the same way -- but I think any jury would look at this and say, "Yeah, no reasonable person would think this guy isn't gonna die out there."
(Leaving obligations aside, USCG takes its mission very seriously, and 14 USC §521 gives them incredibly expansive powers to do whatever they deem necessary to protect lives and property on the high seas and coastal waters. Playing stupid games on deep waters is not something that the Coasties like to see.)
Seems quite odd that the coast guard would have a higher duty of care than a school or a sheriff's office. Has there been any successful lawsuits where the coast guard failed to save someone and were sued?
I found this[0] but it appears to be ongoing. The state appears to again argue they have no duty to rescue anyone.
This case is a good example of the limits -- it's been held that once USCG begins an operation, they fall under "good Samaritan" requirements, which means (roughly) that they can't make things worse; and, if things get worse, a FTCA suit could force them to demonstrate they followed through without negligent acts or omission based on their existing practices, with due deference to the right USCG has to make reasonable discretionary decisions. (I don't have any case cites at hand, but IIRC USCG has lost a couple after calling off searches early or issuing confusing notices to private vessels also engaged in searches.)
Whether this would apply to the instant case is arguable, but turns mostly on the definition of when the duty of care kicks in (I think there's a decently-strong case to be made that once they stopped the "vessel," they pretty much didn't have an option to let it go). Interestingly, while SCOTUS has steadily limited government duty of care, this hasn't extended as much to conditions of public hazards where the police or government has specific knowledge of the risks: a cop doesn't have to charge into a school shooting situation to save your child, but there are conditions where, if they fail to correct a traffic hazard they had knowledge of and control over, you would have a case if you were injured. Hazards at sea are probably more similar to the latter case than the former.
It's worth noting that USCG doesn't have any statutory mandate to rescue anyone (their duties enumerated in 14 USC §102 say nothing about saving distressed mariners), so your fundamental point is correct: for example, if someone had called in "crazy guy in hamster wheel out at sea," USCG could likely decide "not my sea monkey, not my circus" and let it go; it's just that once they're on-site it's a more legally-fraught situation. (This is on top of the fact that the Coast Guard treats rescue as a core mandate, so no chance they weren't going to stop this guy from ending up Gulf Stream flotsam.)
The law (and others) seem to protect others from harm from the offender. Driving at night in a car with no brakes and no headlights is also illegal in my state. That seems to be in a similar vein.
> Besides, with such overbearing interferences the state will only hamper the pioneer spirit of American, one of the agreeable most important things that made America such a great nation.
Certainly something to be wary of but, to me, this isn’t the right example of innovation being hampered. The underlying “experiment” could have been perfectly legal with a few safeguards (for others) in place.
There are hundreds of laws specifically to compel idiots to not kill themselves and the people around them. Stuff like seat belts, helmet laws, air worthiness regulations, laws against cliff diving, against base jumping, trespassing near live electrical equipment...
I'm sure if you think about it a little more you will realize the concept isn't new to yourself either.
Its also a great chance to filter out mentally unsound pioneers and feed them to the fishes. A great improvement on the entrapeneurial caste, which filtered through this medium, tastes great with buttersauce and potato-mash on the side.
I expect you're joking, but no need to be so callous. A society that feeds the mentally unwell to the fishes isn't one you actually want to be part of. Everyone is someone's child.
4th time being rescued at taxpayer expense, before a hurricane, no support. Brandished a knife and claimed to have a bomb he would detonate.
He’s not serious about the endeavor, he’s a mentally ill troll looking for fame and publicity. All he needs is a support boat tagging along (at least to international waters), but then his failure and/or death would be on him alone.
The whole point of this country is if you want to eat garbage, balloon up to 600 pounds and die of a heart attack at 43, you can! You are free to do so. To me, that's beautiful. - Ron Swanson
There's a fascinating video from LegalEagle as to why Florida Man is such a meme, the answer was not what I expected.
It comes down to the state having procedures for reporting everything to the press and being open with what the police are doing. More than other states things like this don't require a journalist to do any discovering, all the facts are just there.
Doing something probably dangerous to myself is a criminal offense is new to me. Besides, with such overbearing interferences the state will only hamper the pioneer spirit of American, one of the agreeable most important things that made America such a great nation.