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Comment by smith-kyle | Hacker News Reader

Sad that they're being sentenced based on the impact of the response by TfL's IT team

I mean you can’t put a building on fire and say you should not be sentenced for the whole building burning down because the impact of the response by the fire department (if they had been faster/better the fire would not caused so bad damages)

The building owner has a degree of duty to mitigate loss. They can't go around opening doors and windows after the fire is started but before the fire department gets there and be all "whoops not my fault blame it on the guy who started the fire" regardless of how the fire started.

The duty to mitigate loss is a concept in contract law, and its main use is in calculating damages (ie. you can't claim damages for a loss that you ought to have mitigated)

It would definitely come into play if TfL were suing Jubair & Flowers, but it's not really relevant in a criminal situation like this.

I should have avoided those specific works because of the nitpickers.

In any case you can't go out of your way to make the situation worse with a sort of sly understanding that because you're the victim the other person will wind up on the hook for it. They may wind up on the hook for it if you are a huge and exceptionally well connected entity and the other side is a nobody, but that's not how the system is supposed to work and it's not how it does work when the parties are on equal legal footing.

In that case it would be criminal insurance fraud, right?

Actually if only half the building burns down you aren't supposed to be sentenced as if the whole building burned down. Even if the whole building would have burned down if the fire department didn't show up.

But that's part of the thing, isn't it?

You don't get to argue that your crime wouldn't have been so bad if your victims weren't incompetent.

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