Failsafe

Failsafe (pronounced feyl-seyf)

(1) In electronics, pertaining to or noting a mechanism built into a system, as in an early warning system or a nuclear reactor, for insuring safety should the system fail to operate properly.

(2) Anything equipped with a secondary system that insures continued operation even if the primary system fails; something designed to work or function automatically to prevent breakdown of a mechanism, system, or the like.(3) In manned nuclear weapon delivery systems (airplanes), of, relating to, or designating a system of coded military controls in which bombers dispatched to a prearranged point as part of a standard operating procedure cannot advance farther without direct orders from a designated authority and cannot have the nuclear warheads they carry armed until they have passed their prearranged point (known as the failsafe point (sometimes initial capital letter)).

1945: A compound word, the construct being fail + safe, apparently a back-formation from the verb phrase "to fail safely" (which would for those poor souls who worry about the split infinitive be "safely to fail".  Fail was from the Middle English failen, from the Anglo-Norman faillir, from the Vulgar Latin fallire (an alteration of the Latin fallere (to deceive, disappoint)), from either the primitive Indo-European bhāl- (to lie, deceive) or the primitive Indo-European sgwhhzel- (to stumble).  It was related to the Dutch feilen & fallen (to fail, miss), the German fehlen (to fail, miss, lack), the Danish fejle (to fail, err), the Swedish fela (to fail, be wanting, do wrong), the Icelandic feila (to fail) and the Spanish fallar (to fail, miss).  Safe was from the Middle English sauf, safe, saf & saaf, from the Old French sauf, saulf & salf (safe), from the Latin salvus (whole, safe”), from the primitive Indo-European solhz- (whole, every).

The meaning "unscathed, unhurt, uninjured; free from danger or molestation, in safety, secure; saved spiritually, redeemed, not damned" emerged circa 1300 from the Old French sauf (protected, watched-over; assured of salvation), from the Latin salvus (uninjured, in good health, safe) and related to salus (good health) & saluber (healthful), all from the primitive Indo-European solwos from the root sol- (whole, well-kept).  The quasi-preposition from circa 1300 was on the model of the French and Latin cognates.  From the late fourteenth century, the sense "rescued, delivered; protected; left alive, unkilled" had formed, along with the meaning "not exposed to danger" (of places) whereas the same thing as applied to actions was attested from the 1580s and "sure, reliable, not a danger" from about two decades later.  The sense of "conservative; cautious" dates from 1823.  The noun term safe-conduct was from the late thirteenth century language of diplomacy, from the Old French sauf-conduit; it was used to describe the protected status of diplomats who would for example be afforded safe-passage from their mission in situations such as the outbreak of war between the two states.  Although most associated with nuclear-weapons delivery systems (The novel Fail-Safe (1962) by Eugene Burdick (1918-1965) and Harvey Wheeler (1918-2004) was about a nuclear attack caused by mechanical error), the term failsafe was used originally by engineers in reference to aircraft construction.  The spellings failsafe and fail-safe are used interchangeably.  Failsafe is a noun & adjective and fail-safed & fail-safeing are verbs (seemingly usually; the noun plural is failsafes.  The adjective failsafeish is engineer's humor.

In fiction: Failsafe and nuclear weapons

Two films from 1964, Sidney Lumet's (1924-2011) Fail-Safe and Stanley Kubrick's (1928-1999) Doctor Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb were both about the fear of a nuclear holocaust.  Kubrick had his project in pre-production in early 1963 when he learned another studio had purchased the rights to the Fail-Safe, planning a cinema release before Dr Strangelove.  Not happy, Kubrick alleged plagiarism and threatened a lawsuit, asserting the novel Fail-Safe was "copied largely” from the book on which Dr Strangelove was based, Peter George's (1924-1966) Red Alert.  Rather than pursuing the matter through the courts, Columbia Pictures, committed to Dr Strangelove, chose the M&A route and took over distribution of Fail-Safe which it scheduled for a release after Dr Strangelove.  Kubrick probably needn’t have worried, Dr Strangelove, a masterpiece of dark humour, was a critical and commercial success while Fail-Safe, although praised by many scholars and military analysts wasn't well received by reviewers who though it melodramatic and found the plot implausible, dooming it at the box-office.

US war-room film set for Dr Strangelove.  Upon becoming president in 1981, Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) was reportedly disappointed no Situation Room quite so dramatic actually existed, the room in the White House something like what would be used by an insurance company to conduct sales training seminars.  The story is thought likely apocryphal but there is documentary evidence Mr Reagan did sometimes confuse historic fact with depictions he'd seen in movies.

Pleading in the Alternative

In law, the courtroom tactic of “alternative pleading” is sometimes called a "legal failsafe" but, in the sense of the etymology, that's true only if the tactic works; in some cases it should more correctly be classified as "a last resort".  In US law, “alternative pleading” is the legal strategy in which multiple claims or defenses (that may be mutually exclusive, inconsistent or contradictory) may be filed.  Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, at the point of filing the rule is absolute and untested; a party may thus file a claim or defense which defies the laws of physics or is in some other way technically impossible.  The four key aspects of alternative pleading are:

(1) Cover All Bases: Whatever possible basis might be available in a statement of claim or defence should be invoked to ensure that if a reliance on one legal precept or theory fails, others remain available.  Just because a particular claim or defense has been filed, there is no obligation on counsel to pursue each.

(2) Multiple Legal Fields: A party can plead different areas of law are at play, even if they would be contradictory if considered together.  A plaintiff might allege a defendant is liable under both breach of contract and, alternatively, unjust enrichment if no contract is found afoot.

(3) Flexibility: Alternative pleading interacts with the “discovery process” (ie going through each other’s filing cabinets and digital storage) in that it makes maximum flexibility in litigation, parties able to take advantage of previously unknown information.  Thus, pleadings should be structured not only on the basis of “known knowns” but also “unknown unknowns”, “known unknowns” and even the mysterious “unknown knowns”.  He may have been evil but for some things, we should be grateful to Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021: US defense secretary 1975-1977 & 2001-2006).

(4) No Admission of Facts: By pleading in the alternative, a party does not admit that any of the factual allegations are true but are, in effect, asserting if one set of facts is found to be true, then one legal theory applies while if another set is found to be true, another applies.  This is another aspect of flexibility which permits counsel fully to present a case without, at the initial stages of litigation, being forced to commit to a single version of the facts or a single legal theory.

In the US, alternative pleading (typically wordy (there was a time when in some places lawyers charged “per word” in documents), lawyers prefer “pleading in the alternative”) generally is permitted in criminal cases, it can manifest as a defendant simultaneously claiming (1) they did not commit alleged act, (2) at the time the committed the act they were afflicted by insanity they are, as a matter of law, not criminally responsible, (3) that at the time they committed the act they were intoxicated and thus the extent of their guilt is diminished or (4) the act committed way justified by some reason such as provocation or self defense.  Lawyers however are careful in the way the tactic is used because judges and juries can be suspicious of defendants claiming the benefits of both an alibi and self defense.  When elements in an alternative pleading include a logical inconsistency, it's an example of "kettle logic".

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011. 

Kettle logic

The term “Kettle logic” (originally in the French: la logique du chaudron) was coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), one of the major figures in the history of post-modernist thought, remembered especially for his work on deconstructionism.  Kettle logic is category of rhetoric in which multiple arguments are deployed to defend a point, all with some element of internal inconsistency, some actually contradictory.  Derrida drew the title from the “kettle-story” which appeared in two works by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) & Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905).  In his analysis of “Irma's dream”, Freud recounted the three arguments offered by the man who returned in damaged condition a kettle he’d borrowed.

(1) That the kettle had been returned undamaged.

(2) That the kettle was already damaged when borrowed.

(3) That the kettle had never been borrowed.

The three arguments are inconsistent or contradictory but only one need be found true for the man not to be guilty of causing the damage.  Kettle logic was used by Freud to illustrate the way it’s not unusual for contradictory opposites simultaneously to appear in dreams and be experienced as “natural” in a way would obviously wouldn’t happen in a conscious state.