Anonymous wrote:All of those so quick to post, from the anonymous safety of your homes...do you speak up when you see something wrong in your work place?
Because it sounds like there were a millton red flags along the way with several of these people, and no one in authority took action. They were about saving money. Or just stayed silent.
So, I hope you all do the right thing when you are in authority.
NP. I’ve been following this thread partly as a movie-lover interested in how movies get made but mostly as a lawyer interested in the legal complexities. For the record, I’m agnostic on the questions of legal fault, moral fault, civil liability, criminal liability, insurance coverage, worker’s comp, etc, because we the public simply don’t have enough information to come to any conclusions.
But. This poster makes a great point on separating the legal issues from the questions of “what went wrong” for this dangerous situation ever to arise in the first place. Many unsafe choices were made, at many steps in the process, by multiple people. Choices that probably won’t lead to legal liability, may not even carry moral stain, but were bad choices all the same. And PP is right that similar situations arise across all industries.
I have a friend who’s a legal ethics professor, and his niche interest is cases where otherwise competent lawyers make one or two questionable choices, dig in deeper trying to cover up their mistake, and ultimately end up facing serious consequences. He guest lectured for a non-law class that I teach, and his message to everyone was that (1) no one thinks they’ll ever end up in an ethical bind at work, but it happens all the time, (2) when it happens, all of the options might be BAD — doing the right thing may only get you fired, doing the wrong thing is wrong and may also come back to bite you — and (3) you’ll have to choose among those bad options.
Redundant policies and procedures like the ones that apparently should have been in place on this movie set seem like overkill in the 99% of the time when everything runs smoothly. But when they do matter, they matter a lot. Amidst all the bickering about guns and film sets, it doesn’t hurt to take a moment to reflect that corner-cutting and rule-breaking happens in your industry too, and there may come a time when you have to make hard choices.