So emergency is one of the doctrines in tort law that provides for some amount of defense, but it's actually a much narrower doctrine than one would think. Emergency in and of itself is not a defense to essentially any intentional tort. Necessity, which often is a result of emergency, might be. So, a classic case that I teach is called Ploof v. Putnam. It's a fun case because of some sort of disparities between the parties. So Putnam is a scion of a very wealthy family, whereas Ploofs are kind of this family of scavengers and they're generally disliked in the neighborhood. And they have this sort of houseboat and kind of everybody who lives on this lake knows that, eh, you know, if you interact with Ploofs, things might go missing. So nobody really likes them. And so they're on this houseboat and at one point a storm comes to the lake. And so they try to moor the boat onto Putnam's property. And one of Putnam's servants knowing Ploof's reputation, he keeps unmooring them. So they throw the rope onto the pylon and the servant keeps throwing it off the pylon, and eventually they fail to moor the boat and it gets destroyed in the storm. Luckily, like nobody actually dies, but they're injured. Their boat is done for as well. And Ploofs actually sue Putnam and Putnam, he looks at him like, are you crazy? It's my property. I don't want you there. I didn't make the storm, I didn't force you to go out there. It kind of sounds like a “you problem.” The court says, while you know, Putnam had no duty to help. Right? So if they, for example, couldn't move the boat themselves, he had absolutely no duty to help Ploofs. But, he also had a responsibility not to interfere with their attempt to save themselves, even though they were trying to do it at the cost of entering his property. This idea that when necessity exists, this goes back to a very early question we talked about, is tort law about pure economics or is it about morality? The court says if we have to choose between inviolability of real property and saving lives of these people, who may not be all the great people, but still, we're going to choose option B. We're going to choose saving someone. Right after that case, I teach another case Vincent versus Lake Erie. Basically, same story. Not so much lives at stake, but there's a ship that's been moored to the port and to the dock in a storm, and nobody's actually trying to unmoor. But after the storm passed, it turns out that the ship was being held throughout the storm by the sailors, you know, tightly by the ropes. As it was kind of hitting the dock, it caused some amount of damage. And the question became, okay, well we started out with working dock and working ship, and now we have a dock that's working a bit less, right? It's a damaged dock. And the question is, who ought to pay for it. Nobody's actually saying that it was wrong to hold the ship. And the court says it's fine if because of necessity, you end up using somebody's property. But if you cause damage, you ought to pay because after all, you are choosing to impose costs on somebody else. Whether you're saving life or you're saving your property, you think it's worth it? Well, if you think it's worth it, if you're getting the benefit out of it, then you ought to pay for it. And this again, that's where both morality and economics work in tandem, would make a moral judgment that yes, it's okay. Property interests potentially are outweighed by interest of saving lives, but in doing so,you got the benefit of saving the life, you should also bear the cost of it. And so that damage to the dock, $50, damage to the dock, the ship had to pay. So necessity is one of the defenses. It's not a super broad defense and it doesn't necessarily free you from paying damages, but actual damage as opposed to merely damages for just entering somebody's property.