[3] Carroll Beardsley, his wife being out of town, invited a woman, Blanche Burns, to spend the weekend with him in his living quarters.
[3][4] Beardsley was tried for manslaughter for failure in his duty to act to provide reasonable care to Burns.
The prosecutor argued that Beardsley at the time was Burns' natural guardian and had a clear duty to protect her.
The fact that Burns was a woman does not create that same legal duty as a husband has toward a wife or a parent to a child, as the prosecutor sought to infer.
Had this been a case where two men under like circumstances had voluntarily gone on a debauch together and one had attempted suicide, no one would claim that this doctrine of legal duty could be invoked to hold the other criminally responsible for omitting to make effort to rescue his companion.