A doctor was sued in China after he warned a man that smoking was bad for his health.
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A court decision in China has provoked anger on social media because a doctor has been told he needs to pay compensation for the death of
an elderly man. But the incident didn't take place in a hospital or during surgery. Instead, the man died soon after meeting the doctor in a lift.
Kerry Allan from BBC Monitoring explains the story.
This actually happened back in May. There was a doctor who entered a lift with an elderly man, and the elderly man was smoking in the lift,
and the doctor said you shouldn't be doing that is bad for your health. And shortly after, the elderly man died of a heart attack. So his family
sued the man and the court case has been going on till this week. And the doctor has been ordered to pay some compensation about - two thousand dollars
to the elderly man's family. They say that it contributed towards the stress of the man dying. The family originally requested about two million U.S.
dollars, but the court ruled that about 2000 dollars would be best because they said it was a contributing factor.
And I understand this has caused a huge uproar on Chinese social media.
Yes. Over the last few days, there's been thousands of comments on Weibo and a lot of angry reaction from people saying how is the doctor to blame
for this. People shouldn't be smoking in lifts. There's actually, over the last year, there's been a large call three state media to instigate a national
smoking indoors ban. Beijing instigated one back in 2015. People were saying it's about time because over the last few years, you've actually had people
smoking in schools, in hospitals, literally in front of children and patients. And Chinese people have been quite angry about this.
This idea that a good Samaritan like like this doctor could be sued. Is that something that happens quite often in China?
It does actually. There is a culture in China that if somebody sees an accident or somebody sees maybe two people fighting for example, they dont
want to get involved because theres been so many high profile cases in the past in China where the person who rushes in to help has actually then been
implicated in the case and has been sued. And in 2013, China did instigate a good-Samaritan law to try and help people and to try and encourage people
that if they do involve themselves in an incident, they're going to find they're going to have some legal protection.
Kerry Allen of BBC monitoring.