Petal_Chatoyance t1_j90csi2 wrote on February 18, 2023 at 6:49 AM

The primary test for negligence is this:

If a reasonable person would have foreseen the reasonable possibility of harm and would have taken reasonable steps to prevent it happening, and the person in question did not do so, negligence is established.

It would be unreasonable for any person to expect it to be actually possible to stitch together parts from multiple corpses, shock the resultant pile of dead meat with lightning, and instead of it being burnt to a crisp to have it suddenly sit up and question it's existence.

More than this, no reasonable person could be expected to believe, nor to prepare for such a seemingly impossible event occurring, regardless of whether or not they themselves had collected, portioned, and stitched the corpses together, and then sent up a kite with the purpose of catching an unlikely lightning strike.

Because no reasonable person could have truly expected such an outcome as a monster being born - the very notion being ludicrous and utterly impossible to all learned and unlearned men alike - it is unreasonable to expect even a person attempting such a creation to have any preparation whatsoever for its containment, nourishment, or care of any kind.

It would be even more unreasonable to expect such a collection of electrically animated meat to burst out the door and go on a rampage across the countryside, because such things cannot reasonably be expected to ever occur in the first place.

On these grounds, it is unreasonable to expect any person, regardless of any other circumstance, to foresee any harm, or indeed any events whatsoever happening beyond the smell of burning meat on a hospital gurney.

Therefore, you can only be reasonably held accountable for complaints about the smell of overcooked meat being disagreeable, which in the Germany of the 1700's (which is where the creature is literarily created, at the University of Ingolstadt), is not a crime. more than this, the meat was not charred in any way, but instead walked away complaining of existential dread, so that not even a bad smell was involved at all. You are therefore not responsible for the extraordinary and utterly unimaginable events that occurred once the monster leapt up from the table.

No man can be responsible for the impossible, and until the monster actually stood up, every aspect of its existence and behavior was universally considered impossible.

On these grounds, you must be considered guiltless and all charges must be dropped.

[deleted] t1_j9572bk wrote on February 19, 2023 at 9:15 AM

[deleted]

Petal_Chatoyance t1_j97mznx wrote on February 19, 2023 at 9:46 PM

OP mentioned that an insanity plea was integrated with the defense already. The above argument incorporates that, though it does not mention it by name.

siuknowwhatImean OP t1_j93vssv wrote on February 19, 2023 at 1:17 AM

Your argument gives me hope, but does the occurrence of an extremely implausible event necessarily place any witnesses in a stupor where they can’t reasonably be expected to do anything? I feel like the unexpectedness of an event doesn’t negate my ability to act justly in real time- no matter what I had foreseen while creating the monster

Petal_Chatoyance t1_j94176u wrote on February 19, 2023 at 2:01 AM

You are thinking of 'Good Samaritan' law, which compels people to take action to help injured or endangered others. Here, because of the time issue, you are free from legal prosecution: in the Germany of the 1700's, when and where the literary story of 'Frankenstein' occurred, there were no such laws.

If these events had happened after 2009, though, you would be liable for up to a year in prison for failing to render assistance to any person (specifically) in your view that had been injured by the creature - and possibly for failing to raise the alarm to warn the town (though that charge would be unlikely to stick). If you stayed in the university, and saw no person injured, though, you could not be convicted. The law only applies to what you could actually witness.

But, within the given time period of the novel - or even the movie version - no such legal compulsion existed yet, which makes you unprosecutable.

Additionally, there is the issue of the 'Bystander Effect', which is a known psychological phenomena where people fail to take action because they are shocked or stunned into immobility. You could, as a last resort, argue this stance, and that because of the overwhelming horror of the event, you can not be held liable for inaction.

So, yes, sufficiently terrible circumstances do, in fact, paralyze people sometimes, and the law can be forced to account for this effect. The animation of a corpse against all natural law definitely falls under the category of 'sufficiently terrible'.