this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
523 points (97.6% liked)
Not The Onion
12304 readers
1158 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The title is a bit misleading. The state went after him because he doesn't have an engineering license in the state. I used to be a P&C insurance agent and one of the things that we were cautioned about was using our expertise in insurance outside of our job duties. There is a degree of liability there that you don't really want to be taking on. While on the job, you are covered by professional liability insurance if you make a mistake that causes harm to clients. Outside of your job though, the company you work for has no obligation to protect you as you aren't acting as an agent of that company on your own time. In this case, itd be a bit of a stretch to equate the two in that there isn't really a scenario where him talking about the infrastructure causes the state harm as far as a court would be concerned but I can kind of see where the case might have even gotten to court in the first place rather than dismissed off the bat as frivolous by the judge.
They can and will fire you for posting things they don't like on social media on your own time, whether you're right or wrong, though. With the justification that you ARE acting as a representative of the company.
If I had a dollar for every time someone got fired for saying anything remotely supportive about Palestine or criticizing cops for being bastards, I'd have enough to buy Boston.
It isn't about being fired for a viewpoint.
Something that would happen a lot on some engineering forums is that someone without any experience would ask if something looked structurally ok and provide a photo. Now, if a PE said it looked ok but something happened to the building and the person was hurt, there may be a liability problem for the PE.
Yeah, but he DOES have the necessary experience to know and he's pointing out that there IS a flaw, so your hypothetical doesn't apply to the actual case here.
They're trying to use his license being temporarily lapsed to keep him from embarrassing them with the knowledge he's had the entire time.
Your forum example is different from this.
The forum poster is soliciting advice, for the purpose of continuing use of the construction. The poster is relying on the engineer for their safety.
If a neighbor looks over the fence, and tells you "looking good Joe!", it won't create any sort of relationship between you, and if it is in fact not good the neighbor isn't liable. You weren't relying on their comment.
The engineer is publishing an open letter about work that somebody else completed, that they were never involved in. They aren't being relied on to approve the continued use of the construction. This is the same as lawyers blogging dissenting opinions on rulings or commenting on legal proceedings in areas they haven't passed the bar.
I can't see that anything like that would get anywhere if there was no compensation or contract entered into for that advice.
The point is that you dont need comp or contract.
This is the same principle that spurs the IANAL tag people slap on to any and all posts that discuss a legal situation. Because if you let someone think you are speaking from an educated authority, you are offering them a level of expert approval or advice. And thus, any misled person can blame you for making them think you were speaking from experience and knowledge.
You don't necessarily need compensation or a contract.
If you're working for or licensed by a government agency in the USA, it gets more complicated. Your 1st ammendment rights carry more weight since firing you or pulling your license is the state taking action against you.
Obviously they can still punish you if you're bringing "disrepute" to your employer/professiom: bigotry, obscenity, misrepresentation, ethics violations, etc.
Let an AI speak on your behalf and you're free to say whatever you want. Just ask the correct questions and you're done
No thanks. It's bad enough that Zuckerberg is trying to take my data and spy on me, I'm not gonna make him my spokesperson too.
You got plenty of choices about AI, llama is just one of them
I wasn't talking about llama AI, I was referring to the fact that Mark Zuckerberg isn't a human.
Now now. It is bad manners to talk about the reptilian aliens.