Shouldn’t we reserve punishment or liability for the times when people actively injure
others, and allow rescue to be a matter of personal choice? In a sense, those who do
not choose to rescue are not behaving badly; rather, they are merely doing nothing. As
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “While there is properly
in law a duty not to harm, there is not … a negative duty not to allow harm to happen.”