Has US law ever imposed liability for purely unethical behavior, unconnected to professional Codes of Ethics? I'm familiar with the so-called ethics/law divide, where some acts may be lawful but unethical and other acts ethical but unlawful. This question is not about this. I'm also familiar with professional Codes of Ethics that gain "legal" force by virtue of contract law and/or incorporation into professional regulatory statutes, but generally only apply to certified or licensed professionals (e.g. non-physicians do not incur liability by behaving in ways that are inconsistent with contemporary medical ethics but are otherwise lawful). This question is not about this either. Has US law ever imposed a general duty on the general public to behave ethically? Restated, has a court ever imposed liability on a private citizen (holding no professional licensure or certification, holding no public office, etc.) for behavior that did not violate any specific provision of criminal or civil law, but rather transgressed either normative community ethics or the court's view as to what such ethics ought to be? I used to think that it would be absurd for there to be "purely ethical" liability, but I found this article by an attorney in Arizona, who seems to be primarily talking about professional ethics (not general citizen ethics), but states that a court could theoretically punish on the basis of transgressing an ethical rule that has broad community acceptance but that had not been formally accepted by or imposed on the defendant by specific legal process. If asking about the United States in general is too broad, we can limit it to the state of New York.
A general obligation to behave ethically would quickly be struck down as unconstitutional deprivation of due process under the void-for-vagueness doctrine. [T]he void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. ... Although the doctrine focuses both on actual notice to citizens and arbitrary enforcement, we have recognized recently that the more important aspect of vagueness doctrine "is not actual notice, but the other principal element of the doctrine—the requirement that a legislature establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement." ... Where the legislature fails to provide such minimal guidelines, a criminal statute may permit "a standardless sweep that allows policemen, prosecutors, and juries to pursue their personal predilections." Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352 (1983).
Ensuring that you are compliant with all laws is a notorious problem. For example, nobody has successfully enumerated even the number of criminal laws under the U.S. (federal) code! There's a book that delves into this problem called 3 Felonies a Day. The title alludes to the (unverifiable) suggestion that a typical person unwittingly commits three felonies a day. (There is some discussion of that claim on Skeptics.SE ... and regular amusement published at https://twitter.com/CrimeADay.) In practice, you can look for safe harbors. Obtaining and following the advice of a licensed lawyer offers some indemnification. For example, if you are part of an institution you can vet your planned activities with its ethics and/or legal counsel. If those activities are later found to have violated a law then that approval could conceivably (but not certainly) transfer liability to the institution.
A police officer (or any other random person) would not be guilty of a crime or subject to civil liability for standing by and watching a suicide occur when it could be prevented, unless the person attempting to commit suicide was in his custody and he failed to take reasonable care to prevent a suicide in which case the officer could be subject to civil liability. It would not be a violation of the law, however, for a police officer (or in most cases, even a private citizen) to intervene to attempt to stop an attempted suicide. Likewise, prisons and prison guards can have civil liability for failing to prevent the suicide of someone in their custody. Of course, a police officer might still receive a negative employment evaluation from his supervisor for such conduct, or might even be fired for it depending on the rules of a particular department, as it would reflect poorly on the police department and show bad judgment on the officers part. In general, an affirmative duty enforceable by a lawsuit to take reasonable efforts to prevent someone from committing suicide applies in circumstances where the person attempting to commit suicide is in someone else's care and custody and has their liberty constrained. So, there could be liability on the part of a hospital or treating medical personnel (I've actually brought such a case that was dismissed due to malpractice in missing a deadline by local co-counsel who was then disciplined for ethical violations by the State of Illinois for his conduct.) In the absence of such a relationship, a legal duty to take affirmative action to prevent a suicide generally does not arise. Certain medical facilities and providers are required to make anonymized incident reports for the purpose of creating national public health statistics on a periodic basis. In certain extreme circumstances, there are duties to report someone who is a threat to others which may also include a risk of suicide, to authorities, but those are quite narrowly interpreted, and actual legal consequences from failing to warn are very rare. There may be other reporting requirements in educational institutions and for mental health professionals, but I am not personally aware of them and I do not believe that they are national in scope. Usually, for criminal liability, there would have to be actual affirmative acts to aid or to attempt to cause a suicide.
Although your "title" may not of itself have legal force, that doesn't necessarily mean you can do as you please in every situation without fear of liability. For example, if you falsely claim to be a medical doctor or lawyer, you could find yourself liable for civil damages to defrauded clients; you may also violate criminal laws. (An anonymous bureaucratic form probably won't create that problem, because as another answerer pointed out nobody really cares or pays attention to titles most of the time. But stranger things have happened; and by "form" you could mean "tax form" or some declaration made under penalty of perjury. Lawyers generally avoid blanket "that's fine" answers, because there are almost always many ways that it might not be fine.)
In California, UPL has a flexible definition and is analyzed situationally, as is the formation of an attorney-client relationship. The shorthand definition for UPL is usually given as something like "doing what lawyers do." When your "help" goes beyond "studying law" and begins to deal with applying that law to a particular legal matter, you're definitely in the neighborhood. If you're encouraging people to compensate you monetarily, even on the sly (or perhaps especially on the sly) that's just going to make it shadier. There's no clear line that divides "assistance" from "advice" or "information" from "counsel." You're not going to find a statute or professional rule that helpfully explains just how close you can get to UPL through wink-wink-nudge-nudge "unofficial-but-maybe-you-should-still-pay-me" legal "information-but-not-advice" before liability attaches, which seems to be the drift of the question (although I understand it was edited). People v. Merchants Protective Corp., 209 P.363, 365 (1922) 'As the term is generally understood, the practice of the law is the doing or performing services in a court of justice, in any matter depending therein, throughout its various stages, and in conformity to the adopted rules of procedure. But in a larger sense it includes legal advice and counsel, and the preparation of legal instruments and contracts by which legal rights are secured although such matter may or may not be depending in a court.' Quoting In the case of Eley v.Miller, 7 Ind. App. 529, 34 N. E. 836. Baron v. Los Angeles, 2 C.3d 535, 86 C.R. 673, 469 P.2d 353 (1970). "(T)he Legislature adopted the state bar act in 1927 and used the term 'practice law' without defining it. [FN7] The conclusion is obvious and inescapable that in so doing it accepted both the definition already judicially supplied for the term and the declaration of the Supreme Court (in 'Merchants') that it had a sufficiently definite meaning to need no further definition. The definition above quoted from People v. Merchants' Protective Corp. has been approved and accepted in the subsequent California decisions (citations), and must be regarded as definitely establishing, for the jurisprudence of this state, the meaning of the term 'practice law." (People v. Ring (1937) supra. 26 Cal.App.2d Supp. 768, 772, 70 P.2d 281, 283.) For comparison, the Texas Bar's UPL Committee has a digest of the applicable statutes and rules here (they also provide a few appellate decisions that might interest you). In terms of legitimately paid non-attorney help with preparing documents and the like, here's a long discussion on avoiding UPL from a Legal Document Assistant trade association site. Realistically, UPL is investigated in retrospect, mostly in response to complaints. The proper context to analyze this hypothetical is to envision the non-client furious at the non-lawyer after the case has been lost. If everything goes well the non-lawyer probably gets his "gift" and the State Bar is none the wiser. (Although I suppose there's the further wrinkle that if the non-client wins and doesn't provide the "gift" then the non-lawyer likely has no good remedy).
No. The conduct described would be illegal quid pro quo sexual harassment (whether or not the subordinate was promoted), for which a civil lawsuit by the subordinate for money damages would be authorized. But it is not the crime of sexual assault (a.k.a. rape). This is because the subordinate consented to have sex, and an economic inducement to have sex, or fraud inducing someone to have sex, is not sufficient to invalidate this consent. Even if someone is induced to have sex by a much more severe inducement other than by force to the victim (e.g. by a threat to expose a highly confidential secret about someone's paternity or to kill someone's pet dog), this is often the crime of extortion, rather than the crime of rape (although state law would vary with regard to whether this fact pattern constitutes rape or extortion or both). The non-performance of the deal to provide a promotion, however, would not have a civil lawsuit remedy for breach of promise or agreement because it would be a &quot;meretricious&quot; agreement that is void as against public policy because the consideration was for sex. Similarly, suppose that in a place where prostitution is illegal, if a man promises a woman to pay her $500 to have sex, and she agrees in reliance upon that promisse, and he then refuses to pay her. In this case, the agreement is unenforceable in court (because it is a &quot;meretricious&quot; agreement that is void as against public policy), and the crime of rape has not been committed. This is true even if he never intended to pay in the first place and induced her to have sex through intentional and premeditated fraud. In that case, he would be guilty of soliciting a prostitution (even though he never intended to pay her) and she would be guilty of the crime of prostitution (even though she wasn't actually paid). Of course, where prostitution is legal, no crime has been committed in that fact pattern and the woman has a right to sue the man for $500 for breach of contract or promissory estoppel, and to sue also (for any non-duplicative additional damages) for fraud, including punitive damages as well, if he never intended to pay her in the first place. The only kind of fraud that obviates consent enough to constitute rape is when the person having sex is deceived about who they are having sex with (e.g. because they are wearing a blindfold and have been put in a context where they think they are having sex with someone else). While a colorable argument could be made that the facts in the question amount to prostitution, which is illegal in almost all of the U.S., in practice, cases where the connection between the economic inducement to have sex and the sex itself are as indirect and subtle as they are in the question are never prosecuted in that manner for that offense. Prostitution cases are prosecuted, in practice, only in unambiguously clear, immediate, quid pro quo simultaneous transactional contexts between people who don't otherwise have a relationships with each other that provides context to the exchange. Prostitution is typically such a petty offense that the prosecutorial effort needed to prove a case like this, the perception that a charge of that kind would punish a victim, and the perception that it would criminalize a large swath of socially accepted &quot;gray area&quot; conduct (like having sex following a date where one person buys the other dinner), all prevent prostitution laws from being prosecuted to their full theoretical extent, at least in cases not involving children (where statutory rape charges, or violation of position of trust charges, are often available anyway).
In the US this is generally governed by state law: RCW 4.24.350 in Washington state. The criminal jury is not empowered to make such a decision, but a separate civil trial for malicious prosecution would be possible. Plaintif (ex defedant) would have to prove that the action was instituted with knowledge that the same was false, and unfounded, malicious and without probable cause in the filing of such action, or that the same was filed as a part of a conspiracy to misuse judicial process by filing an action known to be false and unfounded The basis for the lawsuit would be the objective facts that prove that the prosecution was false and malicious, and not the fact of acquittal or the subjective opinion of a juror.
united-states The ethical standard for U.S. prosecutions, under Rule of Professional Conduct 3.8 (ethical rules have parallel numbering in every U.S. jurisdiction and there is little variation from jurisdiction to jurisdiction for this part of this ethical rule) is to refrain from prosecuting a charge that is not supported by probable cause. Probable cause is also the standard used by a grand jury, and in an adversarial pre-trial hearing, to screen charges before they go to trial. It is also the standard for issuing an arrest warrant. The higher threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard for convicting a defendant at a trial on the merits of the defendant's guilt or innocence, it is not the standard for bringing a criminal charge in the first place. The job of the prosecutor at trial is to convince the trier of fact (usually a jury, but sometimes a judge in a bench trial) that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If the case was thin on evidence when commenced, this may require law enforcement and the prosecutor's office to develop evidence after the criminal charges are brought. As a practical matter, a prosecutor wants to prosecute cases that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, and will usually try to do that. But a belief that a case can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial is not an ethical requirement for prosecutors and is not a ground for imposing sanctions against a prosecutor. Of course, individual prosecuting attorneys' offices are free to establish their own standards that are more rigorous as an internal policy for bringing criminal cases.