Tsunami Legal

In the past, I have tried to use the first column in the new year to relate funny stories from the past year or give some suggestions for legal New Year’s resolutions.  However, being a news junkie, I have been glued to the TV and the online news sources since the tsunami.  After trying to digest what is happening there, I just can’t seem to find any humour for this column.

The size of everything about the disaster is staggering:  the 30 foot waves, the death toll, the number of communities entirely wiped out, the number of homeless, etc.

There are staggering problems in the relief effort as well:  Coordinating the massive relief effort, feeding and sheltering the homeless, identifying and burying the dead, cleaning up the mess, etc.

What occurred to me is how the law is brought into this.  The legal system of a country does not contemplate this kind of occurrence. 

How does the law of property address the situation where your property lines can no longer be ascertained? 

Thousands of bodies will be buried before being identified, out of necessity.  How does the law of estate administration deal with situations where you cannot prove that your relative has died because you cannot provide the body to get a death certificate?

Who has rights to the land and property of the deceased if all their next of kin have been killed (like they have in certain villages)?

The system of criminal law is virtually replaced with a system of emergency law.  The system relies heavily on the goodness of people in a crisis like this.  Police do not have time to deal with looters:  they need to be focused on the clean-up of bodies and coordinating the relief effort. 

A state of emergency usually carries with it a suspension of many laws that prevail in normal circumstances and replaces them with the laws needed to deal with the problems that arise in the emergency. 

However, I doubt that even those measures are sufficient to deal with a disaster of this size.  If necessary, the countries will pass emergency legislation giving the government whatever powers it wants to deal with the problems that may arise. 

The enormous complexity of this disaster becomes apparent when you start thinking of all these things.

They say that in times of crisis, the good of people really shows through.  Unfortunately, that is not always true.  On December 31, I received an e-mail from a scammer pretending to be associated with Unicef, asking for people to “donate” money by sending it to some bank account in Cyprus, and faxing confirmation to some number in Spain.  For some, disaster is opportunity, and a world of people desperately seeking to donate money to aid the relief effort can be nothing less than a winning lottery ticket for scammers.  Be very wary of people that come to your door or solicit by phone.  If you want your dollars to go to the right places, donate it directly to the charity you choose. 

I wish all of you a Happy New Year.