Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

danger-invites-rescue doctrine

The principle holding a defendant liable not only for injuries to the person that the defendant has imperiled, but also for injuries that a third person receives while trying to rescue the imperiled person. "Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief. The law does not ignore these reactions of the mind in tracing conduct to its consequences. It recognizes them as normal. It places their effects within the range of the natural and probable. The wrong that imperils life is a wrong to the imperiled victim; it is a wrong also to his rescuer . . . . The railroad company whose train approaches without signal is a wrongdoer toward the traveler surprised between the rails, but a wrongdoer also to the bystander who drags him from the path . . . . The emergency begets the man. The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had." Wagner u. International Ry. Co., 133 N.E. 437, 437-38 (ICY. 1921).