Word: samaritanism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American view of charity has altered considerably since the kindly Mr. Day wrote Life With Father. To many, his notion seems oldfashioned, more closely allied with the times of the original good Samaritan than with the thrust of contemporary society. Charity, the fundamental decency of one man helping a less fortunate fellow, seems hopelessly out of date in the era of the welfare state, social activism and racial and ethnic tensions...
Johnson's exoneration was based on Alaska's good Samaritan statute. Like similar statutes in more than 40 other states, it holds that one who voluntarily aids a person in distress is not liable for damages unless gross negligence is involved. Although some European countries (including Soviet Russia) have laws making a rescue attempt mandatory, the English common law traditionally rejected compulsion; instead, it made the rescuer responsible for mishaps caused by his negligence. Thus in 1966 a Georgia court ruled that the owner of a private swimming pool had no duty to rescue a drowning child...
...Trooper Johnson, the law has taken a strange twist. The Alaska Supreme Court has now reversed the ruling absolving him. As an officer, said the court, Johnson was under a legal obligation to provide aid; he cannot be protected by any good Samaritan statute. Elizabeth, now 15, is therefore free to press her complaint of negligence. The court added, however, that if Johnson is found at fault, Alaska too would be liable. In that case, the state would presumably pay the bill...
...played all right. Considered juju (good luck) by the Biafrans, he rode around in a white Mercedes with a death's-head pennant fluttering from its hood. Though a capable military commander, Steiner was regarded by observers as something between a borderline psychopath and a gleeful good Samaritan. To command attention from his troops, he would fire submachine-gun bursts into the ground at their feet...
...traveling repertory is The Water Play, a short work about the revolutionary implications of ecology. The play tells two mortality tales-the first mourning the death of a once-upon-a-time lovely river (killed by a polluting Union Carbide plat) and the second extolling praise upon the Good Samaritan who saves a weary, fellow traveler from the certain doom of thirst, resulting from the impurification of the river's water...