Jan 15 / Goat

Duty or No Duty

What's up goats.
I hope you've all been doing amazing and studying hard - I am proud of all your hard work and effort this cycle

I'm dropping a torts module on you on the No Duty Rule - it is the beginning of the Duty section.

Check it out in the Torts course.

I'll have one more Duty section before I move to breach

There should be about 3 questions on Duty so this section is high priority

I know this is how some of you feel going into the final weeks:
I feel like that too sometimes - especially when my clients call me 98 times in a row from the jail and ask me "How are things looking on my case?" when I've talked to them 20 minutes ago.
But we will prevail in six weeks.

Keep up the grind and hit me up if you have ANY questions or you are just simply freaking out

I'll do my best to help in any way I can.

And now, a reading from Duty: No-Duty Rule & Exceptions...

The No-Duty Rule

A person does not, by mere presence alone, owe a duty to come to the aid of another.

The first question I want you to ask on the bar exam is: does the defendant even have a duty to act here?

Our first baseline rule is simple: There is no duty to affirmatively come to the aid of another.

If you need assistance or rescue, I do not have to help.

It's heartbreaking, but I don't.

If you see a blind child about to step in front of a train, you have no duty to warn the child of the danger.


Even if it would put you in absolutely no danger at all.


If an off-duty trauma surgeon sees a child hit by a car writhing in pain on the ground, they have NO duty to aid the injured child, even if there would be ZERO inconvenience to the surgeon


If someone places a bag with a damn bomb in it, and you see it... you don't have to say anything

No matter how evil you are acting, you never have to put your life at risk to help others. There might be a moral duty, but certainly not a legal one.

Witness it in action:
Write your awesome label here.
Rainbow Brown here is clowning around and about to fall off the edge of this cliff and Goat is sitting there filming it.

Not even attempting to warn him.

Rainbow Brown is attempting to act like famous climber Alex Honnold and about to fall to his death and Goat is filming it for the new Chinese TikTok app "Red Note"

It's fucked up. But still, there's no duty to aid.

But sometimes... in certain special situations... there is an affirmative duty to act.


Write this down:


The "no duty to aid" rule has four basic exceptions:

1. When the defendant creates the risk (even innocently) they owe a duty to aid (warn, help) to avoid further harm;

2. When the defendant has begun to offer aid, he may have a continuing duty to act;

3. When the defendant has engaged in a voluntary undertaking he cannot (1) increase the risk higher than it would have been without the undertaking, or (2) cause the plaintiff to detrimentally rely on the undertaking;

4. When the defendant is in a special relationship with the plaintiff they will owe a duty to aid.

None of that makes sense to you.

But it will.

Catch you next time.

- Goat