The Reasonable Prudent Person

The law expects people to behave the way a reasonable prudent person would act. This is a mythical person, one I'm guessing is not a sports fan. Sports does not seem to lend itself to any reasonable thinking or behavior, at all.

To the lesser extent, the time and emotion that your average sports invests would probably not consider reasonable. I would say that it was prudent to take to time to watch the UCLA v. USC game last night, and even setting aside time every week to watch the Bruins. That whole school spirit, break from work, camraderie time. But I don't even want to think about how much time or emotion I put in watching USC games just to cheer for the other team. It only took a short amount of time at UCLA to develop a deep disdain for the school on the other side of town, so much so that I did not even apply to their law schools. Reasonable? Who knows. But fun to have a rival? Yes.

Then to a more extreme extent, sport rivalries (combined with alcohol and mob mentality) leads to very unreasonable behavior. I just find it very hard to get into the mind of a person who thought "hey, it would be a good idea to light this couch on fire in the middle of the street." Maybe we all have an inner pyro, but I just don't understand the joy of lighting a couch on fire. Yet it seems like any riot scene has one. And the one in Westwood last night, right across from my old apartment, even set a car on fire. (see here). UCLA students have to have some kind of intellect to get into the school, but I wonder how smart the person who started the fire felt when it set a car on fire and was captrued on you tube. Yes, other nearby objects catching on fire- that's a foreseeable consequence and no, you weren't acting reasonably. What does that mean, liability! Frankly, I wouldn't feel bad at all if the person(s) who started the fire got punished harshly because its just really stupid and dangerous and I expect more out of bruins.

Yes sports may debatedly be a proximate cause of a lot of fans' stupid actions but I would say that studying torts for 12 hours straight today is a direct cause of my analogies and diminishing sanity. Sports and torts...that's funny.