CE 480

Responsibility for Public Safety and the Obligation

of Client Confidentiality

Tenants in an apartment building sue the owners of the building in order to force them to repair a number of annoying, but not dangerous, problems. The owners' attorney hires Duchane, a structural engineer, to inspect the building and testify on behalf of the owner. Duchane discovers serious structural problems in the building, which are an immediate threat to the tenants' safety. These problems, however, are not mentioned in the tenants' suit. Duchane reports this information to the attorney, who tells Duchane to keep this information confidential because it could affect the lawsuit. Duchane complies with the attorney's decision.

Questions:

(1) What, if anything, might Duchane have done other than keep the information confidential?

(2) Is there a way to resolve the problem without compromising either Duchane's professional responsibility for the public safety or his obligation to preserve client confidentiality?

(3) How do an engineer's professional obligations to preserve client confidentiality differ from those of a lawyer?

Definitions

RESPONSIBILITY

The moral and forward-looking sense of responsibility is the sense in which one is responsible for achieving (or maintaining) a good result in some matter. The idea is that one is entrusted with achieving or maintaining this outcome, and expected to both have relevant knowledge and skills, and to make a conscientious effort. However, despite one's best efforts, the result may not be achieved. For example, patients of responsible physicians may die, and the work of a responsible engineer may result in an accident because the accident was not foreseeable, it was not possible to compensate for the factors causing the accident, or because others were unwilling to heed the engineer's warnings.

The moral and backward-looking sense of responsibility is that in which a person or group deserves ethical evaluation for some act or outcome, that is deserves moral praise for a good outcome or blame for a bad one.

The moral sense of responsibility should not be confused with the causal sense of responsibility for some existing or past state of affairs. For example, when we say that "the storm was responsible for three deaths and heavy property damage," meaning that it caused these outcomes, we do not mean to attribute moral responsibility to the storm. Storms do not have moral responsibilities, and are neither responsible or irresponsible in the moral sense. However, when a moral agent is causally responsible for some outcome, that is some reason to think that the agent is morally responsible for it. Causal responsibility is not conclusive evidence of moral responsibility, however. If one's actions case a terrible outcome only because of bad moral luck, in the form of a freak accident, then one is not morally responsible for the outcome.

Forward-looking responsibilities are often specified in terms of the outcome to be achieved rather than the acts to be performed. It takes judgment to figure out what acts will achieve a given outcome. For this reason you will hear the phrase "the age of responsibility" or "the age of discretion" used to mean an age at which a person is sufficiently mature to exercise such judgment. Such practical wisdom is not required in order to fulfill many obligations which are often specified in terms of the acts to be performed or to be avoided. For example, contrast the engineer's responsibility for the safety of the public with a citizen's obligation to testify when witness to a crime. Notice that "obligation" would never be used in the way "responsible" is, to refer to a virtue of a person. That is, you would not say that so-and-so was an "obligatory" person, though you may say she was "responsible."

Sometimes "responsibility" is used to mean an act one is required to perform, as in "It is your responsibility to take minutes for this meeting." In this Center, the term "responsibility" will be used only for matters that require some exercise of discretion and judgment and required acts will just be called "obligations."

Sometimes "responsible" is used in a phrase of the form "responsible to (some other party), in which the term "responsible" is used as a synonym for "answerable" or "accountable." An example would be: "This citizens' group was accountable/responsible/answerable to its parent organization." This use of the term "responsible" is easily distinguished from the present one which is "responsible for (some matter for which one must exercise discretion)."

OFFICIAL RESPONSIBILITY

The responsibility that one is assigned as a result of one's job or office. Of course, official responsibilities might require one to behave unethically - "it was my job" is not a valid excuse for immoral behavior. However, even when the requirements of an official responsibility are ethically acceptable, the concept of an official responsibility functions differently from moral responsibility. Official responsibility resembles moral responsibility in generating prescriptions for conduct - duties, or at least statements about what someone "ought" to do. As philosopher John Ladd points out, moral and official responsibility differ in at least two respects: First, official responsibilities are exclusionary - if one person has a particular official responsibility, another person does not (unless, of course, it was part of the job description of both). Second, official responsibilities, together with whatever rights, duties and requirements for accountability attend them, are all alienable (see rights) - they can be given to or taken over by someone else. In contrast, if one has a moral responsibility to inform the public about some matter, then even if one is in the position to delegate that responsibility to someone else, one still must see that the responsibility is fulfilled, because one does not get rid of a moral responsibility by giving it to someone else.

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

A paradigm case of the moral responsibility that arises from the special knowledge that one possesses. It is mastery of a special body of advanced knowledge, particularly knowledge which bears directly on the well-being of others, that demarcates a profession. As custodians of special knowledge which bears on human well-being, professionals are constrained by special moral responsibilities; that is, moral requirements to apply their knowledge in ways that benefit the rest of the society.

OBLIGATIONS

Requirements arising from a person's situation or circumstances (e.g., relationships, knowledge, position) that specify what must or must not be done for some moral, legal, religious, or institutional reasons. For example, students have an obligation to see their advisor on or before Registration Day. People have a moral obligation to keep their promises. Notice that usually statements of obligations specify what acts are required or forbiddden without reference to the consequences of performing the act (except insofar as these consequences are a part of the characterization of the act itself -- for example, killing is an act that results in death.) However, occasionally you will see such statements as "engineers have an obligation in their work to ensure public safety," meaning that engineers are morally required to ensure the public safety but without specifying what acts they should or should not perform in order to ensure safety.

A legal obligation is a legal requirement that specifies what types of actions are permitted, forbidden, or required on legal grounds. Often legal obligations are monetary debts. When we speak of an obligation without specifying its nature we will mean a moral obligation.