At Aardvarchaeology, Martin describes an ethical conundrum:
Let's say that Jenny's in bed with a cold and asks her partner Anne to take out a book for her from the library. This Anne does, but on the way home she loses the book. Maybe she absentmindedly puts it on a shelf in the grocery store and it gets stolen, or she forgets to close her backpack and the book falls into an open manhole along the way. Who pays the library for the lost book?
At its heart, this is a question about just what responsibilities one takes on when one volunteers to assist someone.
In this particular case, when Anne agrees to take out the book from the library for Jenny, it seems like implicit in this agreement is a promise not only to locate and check out the book in question, but also to get it home safely to Jenny. Fulfilling the promise to Jenny thus involves taking a certain reasonable amount of care in keeping track of and transporting the book once it has been checked out.
This would make the absentminded placing of the book on a grocery shelf, or the failure to close up the backpack, instances of Anne falling down on the duty she has undertaken.
Granted, forgetting to zip a backpack is the kind of thing that anyone might do. It doesn't make Anne a bad person. But it does mean that her level of attention got in the way of her fulfilling her duty. It's certainly less of a moral failing to lose the library book this way that it would be if Anne had hurled it at a homeless person or fed it to the bonfire at a book burning on her way back from the library (since both of these ways to lose the book would involve something like a conscious decision by Anne to release the book from her control). But it's also more of a moral failing than if Anne had been forced to surrender the book at gunpoint, or had used it to reach a child drowning in a pond only to have the book slip away from her into the water once she was holding the child.
I'm inclined to think that the circumstances matter for the assignment of responsibility. If, in the circumstances, Anne did all that she reasonably could to discharge her responsibility to Jenny, but the discharge of that responsibility still failed, then Anne is not a bad messenger but rather the victim of bad luck. Her effort to fulfill her duty to Jenny failed owing to circumstances beyond her control, not circumstances within her control.
But in the case Martin describes, unless there are additional relevant details not in evidence, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the circumstances that would allow Anne to get the book safely to Jenny are within her control.
I think it's important that we also examine the situation from the point of view of the person asking the favor and her duties.
Jenny has a duty to explicitly recognize the right of the volunteer to beg off when her assistance is being requested. (If Anne doesn't have the option to decline, she isn't really a "volunteer", and we might well ask how Jenny gets to impose the responsibility for getting the library book on her.) Jenny also has an obligation to recognize that the volunteer is human, and that there may be circumstances beyond her control that prevent her from accomplishing the task she has offered to perform. Finally, I would argue that Jenny has something like a duty to ensure that the requested task does not put too heavy a burden on the volunteer. (If Anne is juggling a full-time job, final exams, and the care of a sick parent, for example, asking her to get the library book might be one task too many -- and her divided attention might make what is on its face a straightforward task likely to fail.)
The way Jenny deals with her obligations here may affect how we understand Anne's obligations. If Jenny has pressured Anne into getting the book in a circumstance where Anne was already overburdened -- and where Jenny knew Anne was overburdened -- then we may be less inclined to blame Anne if she loses the book because she's distracted. On the other hand, if Jenny made a point of establishing that Anne was not occupied by other duties -- indeed, gave Anne every opportunity to refuse to take on the book retrieval -- and Anne, having freely accepted the task, failed at it because she let her attention wander, we may fault Anne for taking on the task and then not devoting the manageable amount of attention required to complete it.
Of course, the question of who pays for the lost book has a non-monetary aspect to it. How Anne and Jenny respond both to the task, and to the fact of it going wrong, can have an impact on their relationship with each other.
Here, a lot may turn on their shared history and on the importance of the task. Ultimately, does Jenny prioritize getting the book or maintaining her relationship with Anne? Does Anne's failure in delivering the book count as a strike against her relationship with Jenny? Does Anne have a good track record at performing this kind of task or not?
I'm sure I am not the only parent who has had the experience of having a friend fail to execute the planned carpool, leaving a kid stranded at the after school program. Kid-retrieval is a pretty important task, so much so that sometimes maintaining friendships requires working out alternate carpool arrangements.
Also, it's worth noting that people can blame themselves even for circumstances that are beyond their control or that aren't reasonably foreseeable. (I still feel guilty about a night years ago when, at a friend's house, I voted against leftovers and in favor of pizza. My friend, on the way to pick up the pizza, was hit by a drunk driver and ended up hospitalized.) In Martin's library book scenario, Anne may feel her responsibility for the loss of the book to an extent that goes well beyond the cost of the book -- she may feel that she has profoundly failed Jenny on a personal level.
In short, I'm going to agree with Martin's commenter Zombie who notes that both Anne and Jenny are responsible in this situation. Jenny has duties that come from asking for help. Anne has duties that come from agreeing to provide help. Both have duties that flow from the relationship they have with each other that (presumably) they want to maintain whether or not the library book makes it back from the library safely.
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Thank you for your thoughtful treatment of the issue. I take it your position is basically that the question is based on false premises.
the relationship they have with each other that (presumably) they want to maintain whether or not the library book makes it back from the library safely.
Conflicts over this issue actually have Anne and Jenny both feeling significantly less motivated to maintain a relationship with a person who so radically fails to live up to each woman's basic standards of moral rectitude.
To the librarian, it doesn't matter who *lost* the book. The person who has it checked out is the person responsible for paying. The rest of it is just between friends. I currently have a clueless teen at my library who has checked out *AND LOST* two copies of Twilight in one semester. This might not be so critical if it weren't such a popular book. She seems to think that because the second time she just absent-mindedly left it in the cafeteria, she shouldn't have to pay. Silly girl. Another student refused to pay me for a book because she'd lent it to a friend after she checked it out and that person never returned it to her and she couldn't remember who had borrowed it, so she felt it wasn't her responsibility. She felt that way until last Friday before spring break when the assistant principal told her she couldn't be on the soccer team until she paid for the book. I received payment in two dollar bills and pennies (silly girl was trying to make some irrelevant point), but at least I received payment.
This is one of the reasons I don't let my 12-yr. old son read your blog, Janet! He'll come up with yet another very logical, very well-presented, very wacky explanation for why his homework never got handed in to his teacher and why it is all my fault!
I can't deal with another male in my house who has these philosopically dense explanations for why things didn't get done and why they aren't responsible!
AUUUGGGHHHH...
A very nicely-nuanced logical and moral analysis of the problem Martin posed! I commented on that post and I agree with your conclusions.
The law discusses this in terms of "bailments," which is a situation where one person gives care, custody, & control of property to another person. In any case the person taking the car has to exercise reasonable care. What's reasonable depends on who's doing the borrowing, and who benefits.
Think of turning over your car keys to someone. Is it:
1) A friend borrowing your car to drive to a medical appointment?
2) The kid at the car wash?
3) Your mechanic friend who's going to give you a free tuneup?
A professional mechanic faces very high expectations of care, your teenage neighbor not so high.
Same question, except a twist: while Jenny is sick she has Anne close her bank account and bring home the total as a bank check made out to the bearer. And then absentmindedly ....
Same question, only now it's Jenny's kid who needs a ride home from school, and Anne absentmindedly loses the kid ...
Less seriously, Jenny asks Anne to pick up for her a $1 bottle of aspirin on her way home. Anne absentmindedly loses the aspirins. Should Jenny pay Anne for the money she's out?
Jenny got sick at work and left in an ambulance. She calls Anne at work to take her keys from her desk and driver her car home for her. Absentmindedly ...
I don't see this as a condundrum.
Are there actually people like Anne who would expect their friend to pay for the book under these circumstances?
I can't imagine that.
And even if Anne were stupid enough to try and avoid taking responsibility for losing the book, I can't imagine any reasonable person who would side with her.
Am I just being naive?
Imagine a somewhat different scenario where Jenny asks Anne to drive her young daughter to day care and Anne leaves the daughter in the car in a parking lot on a very hot day. The daughter dies of heat exhaustion.
Does Jenny go to jail?
I don't think so.
are you going for a descriptive account of what people say is the case for the situation? or are you trying to analyze what the right assessment of duty and blame is here based on some prior principles that we can all agree on? wasn't quite sure.
I commented on that thread so this may be somewhat repetitive. But, I cover new ground.
I believe the volunteer only has the obligation to make a reasonable, honest, and best-effort attempt to do the job as they understand it.
The question doesn't reveal much when everything goes well.
It is more interesting when things don't go well.
What happens when the job turns out to be bigger than estimated? The needed investment in time or materials exceeds their desire to volunteer them. Are you willing to go back and renegotiate?
Or the volunteer overestimates their ability to do the job? Not everyone is suited for every job. Most people have hidden weaknesses. Or the person volunteers to impress the other person without really considering the job?
Or agrees because they were brow beat or guilted into it? There is volunteering and, sometimes, being volunteered.
This is also an interesting legal question in tort law. Under the common law of torts, no one has a duty to assist a stranger, and thus cannot be found negligent for failing to assist a stranger who comes to harm that could have been avoided had the assistance been provided. However, once you begin to assist a stranger, you then incur a duty to that stranger to exercise due care, and can be liable for damages if found to have been negligent in the provision of that assistance.
This, of course, provides an incentive to not provide assistance to a stranger, and so many jurisdictions have enacted "good samaritan" statutes that provide some immunity from liability to those who assist strangers. These statutes generally do not provide completel immunity, as that would then remove a salutary incentive to behave reasonably in the provision of assistance. It is an interesting balance.