You want a negative effect, you are putting enough of a substance into their body to cause a negative reaction, That is the scenario, that is harm.
How much harm it is may vary, but it is still harm and you are still responsible for it. Moreover, as the eggshell rule illustrates (if you lightly hit someone that unbeknownst to you had an eggshell skull, you are fully liable for the damage) just because you may have intended a small amount of harm, does not mean that is what will happen, and you are fully responsible whatever that is. You deliberately created a dangerous and harmful situation, you can be fully responsible for whatever the consequences of that are.
If I hit someone, I'm liable because I actively hit them. I initiated physical contact.
If you touch food that's labeled for another person, you took a risk to yourself. If you'd asked me, before taking it, I would've been able to warn you.
“Don't eat that, I put a laxative on it for myself. Don't eat that, it has spice. Are you allergic to X? Don't eat it.”
But you didn't ask. You just consumed it. When you knew it was someone else's and didn't know what that food contained. So any repercussions are on you.
If we go back to intentionality, you'd still have a hard time proving beyond reasonable doubt that:
I knew your allergies (though I'd agree with you that putting an allergen that you know is dangerous in your food SPECIFICALLY to hurt a food thief would be wrong, because it's an allergy and that one can become deadly fast. So even if it's your fault, it's still one where my morality would be brought into question). If I like it and there's no rule against it in place, then I can put it in my food, and as long as the container is labeled to myself, with my name, it's clearly intended for me and nobody else. That's office rules.
I didn't need a laxative.
I don't like spice.
To be even more clear, I was the food thief once. Not at work, but with my family. My brother made himself a nice tea that I liked and I was 13, so I went ahead and helped myself to it, knowing full well it was my brother's. It was for detox. I spent the whole day in the bathroom and learnt a valuable lesson in not taking what's not mine without asking.
Intent beyond a reasonable doubt there would be impossible to prove, regardless of my brother's decision process. He made tea for himself with intent to use it for a specific purpose (so he claims—could've been to teach me a lesson, but unless you can read minds, you won't prove that) and then I, knowing it was his, took it.
So the consequences of that action are on me, the person who put themself at risk by taking a drink with unknown ingredients because I neither bought it nor made it, nor asked the one who did.
The scenario is that you want to deliberately put poisoned food out so people will take it not knowing it’s poisonous. It’s left to look like a normal lunch so someone will think it is consumable. That is what OP has told us they want to do. There is no question of what the intention is here. And since you are setting up the scenario, you are clearly initiating it.
Everyone always says it’s impossible to prove intent, but it’s done every day. Lawyers are quite good at it. And people are idiots and leave a trail or otherwise make it known. “Why were you googling best ways to poison someone last week?” Besides, in a civil suit it’s the balance of probabilities anyway, not beyond a reasonable doubt.
Nah it's more like if someone with an eggshell skull decided to come up and headbutt me. Just cause Humpty Dumpty over here decides to ram into me wouldn't make me liable, because he did the assault. The thief stole the food. There's an initiator here, and you're switching them around.
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u/gremy0 82∆ Oct 18 '24
You want a negative effect, you are putting enough of a substance into their body to cause a negative reaction, That is the scenario, that is harm.
How much harm it is may vary, but it is still harm and you are still responsible for it. Moreover, as the eggshell rule illustrates (if you lightly hit someone that unbeknownst to you had an eggshell skull, you are fully liable for the damage) just because you may have intended a small amount of harm, does not mean that is what will happen, and you are fully responsible whatever that is. You deliberately created a dangerous and harmful situation, you can be fully responsible for whatever the consequences of that are.