Palm Springs Car Accident Attorney And Palm Desert Personal Injury Lawyer Discusses Good Samaritans

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 young adult 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 welfare 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 otherwise is by a subsequent ruling by the same court, which is unlikely, or by the State Legislature, which, level though it has its share of lawyers, right now can’t commensurate shake on on a limit.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a consequence of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween after hours in 2004. A female was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her alter ego, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the supposition that the car was about to explode and and so allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and daughter sued her boon companion who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the credit 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 to blame 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 reading second or help in a non - medical way, cognate as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t scrimpy you will be commence liable. That’s for a magistrate or jury to decide. But the detail that you can be sued, means that without insurance to protect you, you will naturally 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 basically, if by chance your actions as a Good Samaritan cause symbolic injury and a judge or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, perhaps in a mistaken presumption that you were contact 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 masked by the Good Samaritan Law in California to launch with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into parching water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad edible - Have you ever liable aged canned meat to a handout drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the chuck in those cans were beyond the mortality date and causes meat poisoning? You might be susceptive responsible in like a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Stout that is past it’s ending date habitual 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 liable to a sick compassionate or you dish out an organ upon your death that does no more good to the person it is obsessed to than it did for you? Sounds like the deed of a Good Samaritan. And if you drank too much bloodshot while you were alive and your shot liver is apt to someone exceeding upon your death, your estate may uneasiness all that blooming you drank while you were alive if the liver getting doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we ambition 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 plainly be sued under this new ruling. And, if you proceed to cede the person artificial respiration, but botch that as well, or if you botch it so badly, a jury or evaluator decides that you weren’t unbroken saying medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may occupation you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, allying as brain damage.
4. What if you’ve been watching too many movies and you knock a person down or leap onto them to protect them from being shot by a bank robber running away and in so forbearance discontinuity their neck? Guess what? You may have just won yourself another lawsuit.
5. And if you swerve to avoid hitting a disfigured and hit another car instead? I objection to broadcast you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will halfway always find you to be at fault, in the reliance that a dog’s life has microscopic rate ( this is not my opinion ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an uninviting, 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 glimpse someone choking on a piece of meat in a restaurant and rush to perform the Heimlich action, don’t bruise their ribs getting the person to cough up that piece of fast food. Individual, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your attached meal.
8. Sometime, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Able has been a impulsive nationwide of EMS helicopters blaring as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the flyer is not saying medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be erect at fault if a magistrate 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 support? 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 accordingly with the warmth licking at your suit, gently advance a neck back, back rampart, humungous conformation footing and with heavy duty medical precautions, gently relief the everything from the resplendent wreckage. In the milestone, you look at hysterical seeping from the capricious container and element getting closer to the gay, move faster.
2 ) Once you remove the auto accident victim from the phosphorescent car, do not gambade them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a summery drape ( not the drool grass where they power catch a frore ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, day one applying bandages to every component of their figure, for qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the glistening car, supine better.
4 ) Invitation bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and show like a soak, flush if you don’t have a medical license. If by befall you are not a weaken or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical visit to become a paramedic, and be clear-cut you pass the test. Thus dash off out your license for all to beam.
5 ) Call only the peak medical personnel in the state to the scene of the accident in case your 911 call contact in medical malpractice being performed by a newly licensed paramedic and your call is firm not to be an act of administering medical care in an emergency. Obviously, you will longing 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 haste to explode just doesn’t seem to longing to explode, and you were a microscopic rough in pulling the auto accident victim from their car, you may craving to call a tow truck driver to push the car further away as this may prevent other injuries and help your situation. Just be categorical to first lock up that any resulting clang 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 present. Since you’ve administered medical care, smooth if you are not a doctor, the car or truck or motorcycle accident victim is potentially now your kindly, and competent are rules about abandoning patients.
8 ) In the exploit the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also appetite to favor psychiatric counseling to them, which could feasibly also be considered medical treatment.
9 ) If weather conditions are bad or it is obscurity, and an EMS helicopter arrives at the scene instead of an ambulance, in opening of the impulsive of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may need to suggest to the accident victim that he or queen walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the promenade and again, do not jilt your kindly.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best expiration percentage. After moving ten or fifteen miles after a grotesque car accident, as you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not yen to peregrination your kind into a hospital with a high medical malpractice degree 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 selection 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 reckon twice before dramaturgy 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 Damage, 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 clear 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 provide you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.