Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Should you maintain property containing facehuggers, the only legal advice I can ethically give is to hire a lawyer.
Warning, contains Spoilers from Alien: Romulus and Aliens
Fans of the Alien series are likely familiar with the Weyland-Yutani corporation. In Alien, the mega corporation hired the Nostromo crew and ordered them to investigate a transmission it received. In Aliens, the mega corporation built a colony on LV-426 and terraformed it to be able to sustain human life without warning the colonists about what might also be on that planet. In the movie Alien: Romulus, the company salvages material from the wreckage of the Nostromo and stores it on the Renaissance, a research station it owns to conduct experiments on Xenomorphs using what they found from the wreckage.
Twenty years later, a disgruntled group of Weyland-Yutani employees decide enough is enough and want to escape the planet they are living on. The crew hatch a plan to sneak aboard the station Renaissance to steal the cryogenic fuel they need to escape the planet. This being an Alien movie, the crew accidentally releases several facehuggers from stasis and things quickly go to hell. There are some deaths and injuries suffered by the trespassing crew. Will Weiland-Yutani be liable for damages suffered by these trespassers?
When it comes to trespassers going onto another’s property, the landowner is often shielded from liability due to injuries sustained by a trespasser. That said, California Code, Civil Code – CIV § 1714(a) provides: “Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his or her property or person, except so far as the latter has, willfully or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself or herself.”
A landowner cannot take any willful acts to protect property, such as setting up booby traps or planting land mines that would cause harm to someone entering the property. A landowner also needs to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances to maintain the property. Otherwise, the landowner could be at risk of being liable for damages due to any resulting harm. Even if the person hurt is a trespasser.
So what about Weyland-Yutani’s handling of the Renaissance? The station was clearly abandoned after everyone on board was seemingly killed. On the other hand, the station was difficult to access. In fact, the crew brought a Weyland-Yutani android on board so that they could gain access to the station. The precautions the corporation took to prevent anyone from accessing their property seems reasonable under the circumstances. Weyland-Yutani could also argue that the crew brought the injury on themselves when they accidentally disabled the temperature control, releasing the facehuggers from stasis. Finally, Weyland-Yutani could argue that they abandoned the property. Under these circumstances, a court will likely rule in Weyland-Yutani’s favor here based on any of these arguments.
Weyland-Yutani isn’t completely out of the woods, as the station did have facehuggers on the ship. Although we thankfully don’t have facehuggers on Earth, there are laws regarding the steps owners need to take to protect the public at large from potentially dangerous or vicious dogs that are on their property. California Food and Agricultural Code (FAC) § 31642 requires an owner to keep potentially dangerous dogs at all times indoors or in a “securely fenced yard from which the dog cannot escape, and into which children cannot trespass.” A potentially dangerous dog includes an unprovoked dog biting a person. FAC § 31602(b).
Facehuggers are far, far more dangerous than a potentially dangerous dog, and their presence on the station was a hazard to everyone on board. Although they were technically “fenced in” by being held in stasis, it was only a simple error on the part of the crew that released them, and there were not any other safeguards preventing their escape. Under these circumstances, given the threat that the facehuggers present, it is likely that a jury would hold Weyland-Yutani responsible for their negligence in containing the facehuggers on its station.
Weyland-Yutani may also have other legal problems due to the facehuggers being contraband. In the movie Aliens, the facehuggers were considered contraband that would not make it past customs. This prompted Carter Burke (a Weyland-Yutani employee) to release facehuggers where Ripley and Newt were sleeping in hopes that they would both be implanted, put into stasis for the journey home, and wake up in a Weyland-Yutani lab to have chestbursters hop out.
Aliens took place more than 30 years after Alien: Romulus and facehuggers were still not allowed to be brought into known space. It is unclear what the government knew about what was going on in the Renaissance station, but it is doubtful that the experiments Weyland-Yutani was conducting were legal.