What Would You Do?

Even as a kid it bothered me how often I heard talk of frivolous lawsuits.

I'm not talking about legitimate things that need to be addressed like business disputes. No, I'm talking about things like when a man years ago tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window and was tackled by a police officer before he could jump. The man was injured by the cop tackling him and sued... AND WON! This guy would be dead if the officer had not done what he did and now the douche turns around and SUES them.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago at an "independant living community" in California. An 87 year old woman collapsed in the dining room and a nurse called 911. The dispatcher told the nurse she needed to perform CPR on the woman or she would die. The nurse REFUSED to do it because it was against the nursing home's policy to perform CPR because, similar to the story above, people who have been SAVED by CPR have turned around and SUED the EMTs or whoever because while SAVING THEIR LIFE they cracked a rib or bruised something or whatever. The woman died and now the home is defending the nurse.

Here's the difficult part to think about: what was the right thing to do? By not performing CPR, the woman died and now the nurse has to carry that burden for the rest of her life. Had she performed CPR, there's no guarantee the woman would have lived BUT she would have definitely lost her job and could have faced a lawsuit from the home and/or the woman and her family.

I'm not saying letting others die is the right thing to do, but as a country I think a story like this should open a lot of eyes as to just how scared we are as a society of being SUED just for doing the right thing.