In Popular Culture
A Good Samaritan law was featured in the May 1998 series finale of the popular NBC situation comedy Seinfeld, in which the show's four main characters were all prosecuted and sentenced to one year in jail for making fun of (rather than helping) a fat man who was getting robbed at gunpoint. In reality, while Massachusetts (where the fictional crime was committed) does have a law requiring passersby to report a crime in progress, the most stringent punishment the characters could have suffered under those circumstances would have been a $500–2,500 fine (assuming they were prosecuted under state law); in addition, the phrase "good Samaritan law," when used in Massachusetts, refers only to the civil law definition and does not have any actual relevance to the law under which Jerry Seinfeld and his friends were prosecuted (which would be considered a duty to rescue).
Read more about this topic: Good Samaritan Law
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“I am glad of this war. It kicks the pasteboard bottom in of the usual “good” popular novel. People have felt much more deeply and strongly these last few months.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)