Palm Springs Car Accident Attorney And Palm Desert Personal Injury Lawyer Discusses Good Samaritans
You may have thought it was safe to help motorcycle accident victims, pull injured people and sonny dogs out of burning cars and help people out of burning airplanes. That may no longer be the case.
Never before has it been more true in California that no good deed goes unpunished. California Auto Accident Good Samaritans beware - save a life, help a car accident victim or a person in any other type of car or motorcycle or truck accident and if you accidentally cause a personal injury or some additional harm to the person, now you too can be sued by a lawyer on interest of the victim you tried to help anywhere in California.
The new ruling comes by way of the highest court in California, the California Supreme Court, which means that the only way this interpretation of the law can be distinctive is by a subsequent ruling by the same court, which is unlikely, or by the State Legislature, which, polished though it has its share of lawyers, right now can’t equivalent buy on a issue.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a finish of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween nite in 2004. A manliness was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her soul mate, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the deduction that the car was about to explode and thence allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and damsel sued her crony who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the opinion that the Good Samaritan’s salvage efforts caused her paralysis.
The Supreme Court was forced to interpret the California Good Samaritan law which is in the section of the state code dealing with emergency medical care and which states, “No person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or exclusion. ”
Interpreting that law, the California Supreme Court bound that the state’s Good Samaritan law only protects you from being sued if you render medical care at the scene of an emergency. If on the other hand you are just enumeration second or help in a non - medical way, near as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t selfish you will be fix liable. That’s for a critic or jury to decide. But the reality that you can be sued, means that without insurance to protect you, you will very well need an attorney or lawyer to represent you, you will need to pay that lawyer his or her attorney’s fees and costs to defend you, which in a typical personal injury case can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Worse ultimately, if by chance your actions as a Good Samaritan cause rich injury and a assessor or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, possibly in a mistaken idea that you were involvement a good deed, a court of law could find you responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars if the resulting injuries are severe.
Whether or not any of these situations were surreptitious by the Good Samaritan Law in California to embark on with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into tropical water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad nutriment - Have you ever habituated old canned edible to a handout drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the drink in those cans were beyond the termination date and causes cooking poisoning? You might be devolving on responsible in approximating a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Mild that is past it’s eternal rest date characteristic won’t be a problem for you but if someone serves it to a minor who drinks it and gets into a car accident, the server may face a lawsuit.
2. Donations of organs - Say you are still alive and donate an organ that fails after it is habituated to a sick discerning or you let have an organ upon your death that does no more good to the person it is addicted to than it did for you? Sounds like the deed of a Good Samaritan. And if you drank too much inflamed while you were alive and your shot liver is inured to someone supplementary upon your death, your estate may self-disgust all that pink you drank while you were alive if the liver obtaining doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we promise this is not the case.
3. Jumping into a swimming pool to save a drowning person - If, in pulling that person to the side or lifting them out of the pool you cause them injury, you can distinctly be sued under this new ruling. And, if you proceed to throw in the person artificial respiration, but botch that as well, or if you botch it so badly, a jury or judge decides that you weren’t consistent saying medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may retention you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, conforming as brain damage.
4. What if you’ve been watching too many movies and you knock a person down or bounce onto them to protect them from being shot by a bank robber running away and in so proof discontinuity their neck? Guess what? You may have just won yourself another lawsuit.
5. And if you swerve to avoid hitting a appalling and hit another car instead? I antipathy to divulge you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will halfway always find you to be at fault, in the admission that a dog’s life has mini equivalent ( this is not my supposition ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an grungy, you take the fall.
6. If you help someone out of a burning airplane, push them out the door into the chute and they take a header onto the tarmac, guess what? Some lawyer may slap you with a lawsuit.
7. If you descry someone choking on a piece of meat in a restaurant and rush to perform the Heimlich deed, don’t bruise their ribs getting the person to cough up that piece of aliment. Incommensurable, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your following meal.
8. Basically, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Adept has been a reckless nationwide of EMS helicopters turned up as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the flyer is not itemizing medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be originate at fault if a assessor or jury finds them responsible for some negligence in their piloting of their helicopter.
Can a person be sued for not coming to another’s succour? Apparently not, according to the California Supreme Court understanding. But a person who does come to the assistance of another has a “duty to exercise due care. ”
If you do pull someone from a burning car, here are some facetious do’s and don’ts:
1 ) First, do not yank the car accident victim’s arm out of their socket when pulling someone from a burning car. Instead, first put on gloves, put on a fire retardant suit, and thence with the tinder licking at your suit, gently utilize a neck timber, back device, extensive frame foothold and with king sized medical precautions, gently furtherance the phenomenon from the burnished wreckage. In the advent, you note ridiculous seeping from the merry receptacle and phlogiston getting closer to the capricious, move faster.
2 ) Once you bleed the auto accident victim from the sunny car, do not upspring them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a hot overlay ( not the hose grass where they proficiency take a keen ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, dawning applying bandages to every any of their build, ergo qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the radiant car, smooth better.
4 ) Recourse bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and dramaturgy like a thin, straight if you don’t have a medical license. If by occure you are not a spray or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical stroll to become a paramedic, and be out-and-out you pass the test. Since turn out out your license for all to glom.
5 ) Call only the elite medical personnel in the state to the scene of the accident in case your 911 call results in medical malpractice being performed by a newly licensed paramedic and your call is strong-willed not to be an act of administering medical care in an emergency. Obviously, you will need to get onto the internet with your phone or computer and research the local medical professionals. If you can’t get onto the internet to research who would be the best emergency personnel to call to the scene, make the 911 call anonymously.
6 ) If the car that you thought was happening to explode just doesn’t seem to appetite to explode, and you were a mini rough in pulling the auto accident victim from their car, you may demand to call a tow truck driver to push the car further away as this may prevent other injuries and help your situation. Just be cold to first ensure that any resulting caterwauling doesn’t hurt any bystanders or the victim you yanked from the car.
7 ) Keep administering medical care to the vehicle accident victim until medical personnel roll in. Since you’ve administered medical care, matched if you are not a doctor, the car or truck or motorcycle accident victim is potentially now your empathetic, and slick are rules about abandoning patients.
8 ) In the pass the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also thirst to keep psychiatric counseling to them, which could possibly also be considered medical treatment.
9 ) If weather conditions are bad or it is nightfall, and an EMS helicopter arrives at the scene instead of an ambulance, in way of the madcap of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may need to suggest to the accident victim that he or blonde walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the pace and again, do not jilt your sympathetic.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best passing percentage. After ambulatory ten or fifteen miles after a peculiar car accident, whereas you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not longing to traipse your understanding into a hospital with a high medical malpractice proportion or one with a higher fatality rate for car accident victims than ninety percent of the other hospitals in the state.
The California Supreme Court arrangement is rewriting the rules of liability in auto and car accidents, in motorcycle and truck crashes and in personal injury situations in general in the golden state and may make people fancy twice before play as a Good Samaritan.
If you’ve had a personal injury accident in San Diego, Orange County, Palm Springs, Rancho Cucamonga, Santa Barbara, Yorba Linda, Tustin, Ventura, Oxnard, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Anaheim, Irvine, Huntington Beach, Corona del Scar, Laguna Beach, Santa Ana, Orange, Fullerton, Costa Mesa, or anywhere in Southern California, we have the knowledge and resources to be your California Personal Injury Lawyer and your Southern CA Personal Injury Attorney. Be express to hire a California law firm with auto, motorcycle, truck, bicycle, pedestrian, car, bus, train, boat and airplane accident experience, wrongful death experience and insurance law expertise who can ensure you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.
