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).
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