The urban centers are such ‘great’ and ‘civilized’ places to live.

Blame it on WalMart?  Certainly!  Will there be a major lawsuit?  You bet, and with all of their troubles lately, they can’t afford this!

This really is both pathetic and obscene.  American shoppers now resemble, to the rest of the world, the crowds that stampede at European soccer games or the Muslim or Hindu pilgrim mobs in Asia.  Never mind excuses about culpability.  The crowd management, or lack thereof, procedures used are producing an equivalent result.

I hope they have some security video that enables individuals to be held accountable.

Brian:

Asked about the possibility of criminal charges in the Wal-Mart death, {Nassau County police Detective Lt. Michael}Fleming said he would not rule it out but noted that charges would be “very difficult,” as it would be “almost impossible” to identify people in the crowd from the video and that those in the front of the crowd were also pushed by those behind them. Hundreds of people probably lined up in an orderly fashion, he said, but got caught up in the rush.

it’s been worse - remember Cincinnati 1979: http://www.crowdsafe.com/cafe/who20.html

of course it’s still awful what happened today, perhaps as a result we’ll see some pull back from the Black Friday craziness….

Blame it on WalMart?  Certainly!  Will there be a major lawsuit?  You bet, and with all of their troubles lately, they can’t afford this! 

How about laying the blame where the blame belongs?  With greedy materialistic people who think the miracle of Christmas is to be equated with getting their child the “Clarinet Hero XVI” game or a 25 ft tall Hi-Def plasma tv or a half-inch ipod which carries 100 GB of memory?  How about laying the blame on the shoulders of those who not only caused this accident but also on those who ignored it?

I’m all for the suggestion of looking at the security tape and I think those people’s faces should be shown on TV’s and computers non-stop until they are identified and held accountable.

Truly awful. Time for retailers to rethink how they use (and sometimes abuse) this day.

As a (mercifully) former Wal-Mart employee, I am amazed that this sort of unfortunate incident has not happened before now.  I worked two Black Fridays during my 21 month sojourn in Wally-world, and was flabbergasted by the appalling behaviour of supposed adults.

Vitner, you and I don’t always see eye-to-eye, but I agree with you about this.

Sadly, I too, had to work the Mall on Black Friday’s. 

Frankly, the ‘treasures’ offered these last few years have certainly NOT been worth ‘stampeding’ the stores to save a few pennies on the crappy $2.00 DVDs. 

Now I go later in the morning, but when the sales are still in effect. If I miss a special, I miss it.  But I don’t miss the standing in line at 3 AM to get into Best Buy on the off chance that they won’t run out of ‘Clarinet Hero XVI’ before I’m even let in the store.

I pray for the peace of this gentleman’s soul and offer sincere condolences to his family. 

What is this culture coming to that(basically) murder is committed for a retail fix?  Foul…

What in fact is the crime here committed? It isn’t murder surely. There was never any intent of any sort to kill. And who actually did the killing? Many. The death was an accident.
 
  My you, I am not whitewashing the horror of this incident, but the crime is cultural, not legal. Where can we more clearly see that the essential civilizing force of self discipline and self restraint have become meaningless? Why would anyone join an enormous crowd, a true mob, for the sake of being first to buy and X or a Y, in itself a trivial matter? The only answer is, “Because we have been taught that it is good to do so.” Once again, :He whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”  Larry

Truly, a Black Friday.

What in fact is the crime here committed? It isn’t murder surely. There was never any intent of any sort to kill.”

Larry [#13]: Strange though it may seem, you can commit murder without actually intending to kill.
—- If you attacked me intending to do serious bodily harm (e.g., hitting me on the head with a 2baseball bat) and I die, you have committed murder, even though you didn’t intend to kill me.
—- If you killed someone while acting with wanton disregard for human life (e.g., by driving down a crowded sidewalk at 60 mph), you’d be guilty of murder. Some states classify driving while skunk drunk as a form of wanton disregard for human life.

Based on what I’ve read about this sad episode, I wouldn’t call it murder. But—-depending on exactly what happened—-it might in principle be manslaughter.

Regardless of what you call it, Walmart MUST be held responsible…....and they will be!

Walmart? Walmart? This is like charginig Dunkin Doughnuts with serving coffee so hot it burned a woman who spilled it on herself. Where does the culpability lie? With the people themselves, nowhere else. WalMart cannot be charged with an obligation for mob control.
  Nor is this murder in any sense, for there is no mens res at any point. Even if the only intent was to do serious bodily harm, the intent to injure was never present. Manslaughter? Who will be charged? Who CAN be charged? Those who ran over the man even though they did not know he was down and who were pushed so hard they could do nothing else but go forward or go down? Those who ran over the man can argue, with legitimate justice, that the issue for them was self-preservation.
  That no one in that mob could stand up and say, ” How could I be part of a mob driven by greed?” How can I live with myself?” And mind you, all of us know and have known that this Black Friday gang-event is socially insane.

    Well, it’s done, and we will forget about this shortly because the man was so unimportant and because the consumer-as- mob is so thoroughly commonplace.  Larry

#14, yeah.  You stumbled into the truth.  To my recollection, the term “Black Friday” is a recent innovation.  Named because retailers have the opportunity to go from “in the red” to “in the black” in one day, I always thought it sounded morbid anyway.

My Dad and I went to our first Black Friday sale at Best Buy to pick up a printer—at 7:00am, not the advertised 5am opening with a two hour wait in line beforehand (which moves you to 3am).  They called it as “doorbusters” sale.  I’m not one of the “I hate WalMart” crowd,  but these gimmicks just invite mob behavior.

This is unfortunate. But, criminal charges shouldn’t be filed against shoppers. I don’t know why the store employee didn’t quickly move out of the way? The crowd was unruly!! Everyone knows how Black Friday crowds can stampede into a building. I bet he was knocked off balance unintentionally by shoppers. As the crowd was moving, they have no idea anyone is on the ground until they are about to step on him or already have stepped on him.

Since this happend on Walmart’s “watch,” they should compensate the employee’s family.

-Vincent

Where does the culpability lie? With the people themselves, nowhere else. WalMart cannot be charged with an obligation for mob control.

That depends on whether Wal-Mart incited the mob.

What if . . .
—- This sort of death had occurred at Wal-Mart stores six times over the past two Black Fridays but not at all at other retailers.
—- Other retailers avoided problems by structuring their early-arrival bargains in ways less likely to promote shoving scrums.

Retailers have encouraged Black Friday frenzies as marketing tools. Not homicidal frenzies, to be sure. But this episode illustrates how a jolly stampede can turn a mean one. That should encourage retailers to rethink the extent to which they want to set up stampedes. I believe they will do some rethinking. But if they did not—-if, indeed, they set up yet more frenzied stampedes—-they would at the very least bear some moral responsibility for the consequences.

Depending on exactly what happened, this episode might in principle be manslaughter.

If in your haste to get into the store, you knocked the employee over and left him to be trampled to death by those behind you, you might well commit manslaughter.

Good Friday changed the world. And yet this silly shopping day has a more portentious-sounding name.

Larry,
two things:

1) there is such a charge as ‘involuntary manslaughter’, which is probably what this would be classified as

2) it was McDonald’s not Duncan Donuts with the scaulding hot coffee case (which changed labeling laws forever).