Responsibility and the Duty of Rescue

ABSTRACT What difference might it make to the duty of rescue if the victim is responsible for needing to be rescued? Having distinguished the natural duty of rescue owed as a result of a chance encounter from the artificial duties of rescue that may be created by agreement among participants in high‐risk activities, I examine three ways in which the victim's responsibility might lessen the stringency of the duty: by lowering the cost threshold above which rescue ceases to be a duty; by lessening the force of the duty when it competes with other duties of justice; and by making the duty unenforceable by third parties. I then consider different forms the victim's responsibility may take: simple negligence, deliberate risk taking, and engaging in wrongful behaviour. There are only two circumstances in which the duty of rescue is entirely eliminated as a duty: when by virtue of repeated risk taking, the victim unfairly imposes excessive costs on his rescuer, and when rescuing the victim would allow him to continue threatening harm to others. In other cases, however, responsibility considerations should qualify the natural duty of rescue: rescue should not be a responsibility‐free zone.