Just a story I saw in “the practice”. I’d like to see what libertarians think of this.
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A man started to suffer from very serious hallucinations, and his wife was named custodian. She hospitalized her husband in a mental institution. After a while the man tried to commit suicide by jumping from the window. He survived, but he landed on a pedestrian and killed him. The wife of the deceased sues both the wife (the custodian) and the mental hospital. Who do you think is to blame? What should be the outcomes of these legal cases?
Not sure I agree. Was it specified in the contract of the mental institution that they will be liable if the patient kills himself? Why should they be liable by default? Just because they are named “mental institution”? And what if they changed the name to “Hotel”?
If the lady was a custodian it is likely that those custodianship responsibilities got moved over to the mental facility. But honestly what is the point of threads like these? WHy is it the task of libertarian’s to speculate on the outcome of every little thing that ever happens?
I’m not sure a ‘libertarian’ opinion is really going to differ markedly from anyone else’s opinion with regards to something like this, but anyway…
First of all, the deceased pedestrian’s spouse may have a civil claim against the ‘mental institution’ regardless of the contract the latter had entered into with the defenestrator’s custodian. A contract only gives rise to possible actions between the parties involved - this sounds like an action in tort or delict between the spouse of the unfortunate pedestrian who got squashed and the institution. I don’t see why the contract between the institution and the defenestrator’s wife is relevant.
As to whether the custodian could also be found liable in the same action… My first instinct is that she could be. Certainly from a purely common law perspective, I think she could. Her contract with a ‘mental institution’ only gives rise to personal rights, unless you’re dealing with positivist legislation which says otherwise and elevates ‘mental institutions’ to sacred status, which is probably the case in the real world. But ideally, if she wants to claim her losses back from the mental institution in terms of her contract with them, then that’s a seperate matter for her to persue.
I do, however, agree with Izzy that it is commonly understood to be a ‘mental institution’s’ job to prevent harm like this from occurring, so I’d be inclined to read-in implicit terms in the contract to this effect if there weren’t explicit terms to the contrary. It is kind of foundational to the whole concept of such a hospital. If parties to a contract don’t define their terms, and failing that, don’t use the ordinary grammatical meaning of words, then they shouldn’t be surprised when arbitrators can’t discern their intentions from it.
The naming of the institution is not a problem here…was this supposed to be a serious response? Clearly, a mental institution has a different set of services than a hotel. So a mental institution that is named Hotel would not matter because it is still a mental institution and not a hotel… capiche?
I think it should go this way. The wife of the deceased can sue the killer of her husband. Since that killer is not responsible for himself, it means she should in fact sue the custodian. Now the custodian can sue back the hospital only if she had an agreement with the hospital to that effect.
I personally don’t like the idea of certain implicit contracts to be implied just from the name of the institution. This creates a lot of inflexibility, and that’s what I don’t like about the current system. If the mental institution had stated that they follow the code of mental institutions by a respectable regulator then they should be held liable according to the contract. However if they didn’t specify what are their goals, rules, etc… then why should we imply that they have to protect their clients from suicide? What about a mental institution for very poor clients, perhaps they don’t have the resources to protect their patients from suicide, but they do offer some other services? Should they be suddenly liable just because they are called “mental institution”? Why does the name itself create a set of responsibilities?