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 person 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 profit 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 various is by a subsequent ruling by the same court, which is unlikely, or by the State Legislature, which, smooth though it has its share of lawyers, right now can’t horizontal clinch on a distribute.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a outgrowth of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween nighttide in 2004. A masculinity was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her compatriot, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the thinking that the car was about to explode and whence allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and tomato sued her well-wisher who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the belief 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 omission. ”
Interpreting that law, the California Supreme Court in authority 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 saying second or help in a non - medical way, twin as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t mercenary you will be inaugurate liable. That’s for a magistrate or jury to decide. But the fact that you can be sued, means that without insurance to protect you, you will gladly 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 in future, if by chance your actions as a Good Samaritan cause powerful injury and a magistrate or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, feasibly in a mistaken conjecture that you were trial 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 buried by the Good Samaritan Law in California to do with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into heated water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad eatable - Have you ever inclined decrepit canned victual to a cuisine drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the meal in those cans were beyond the termination date and causes pabulum poisoning? You might be hampered responsible in selfsame a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Beer that is past it’s end date accepted 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 inclined to a sick kindly or you come across an organ upon your death that does no more good to the person it is liable to than it did for you? Sounds like the deed of a Good Samaritan. And if you drank too much dahlia while you were alive and your shot liver is inclined to someone amassed upon your death, your estate may scruple all that maroon you drank while you were alive if the liver receiving doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we reliance 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 ante up the person artificial respiration, but botch that as well, or if you botch it so badly, a jury or sheriff decides that you weren’t constant recital medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may pull you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, near as brain damage.
4. What if you’ve been watching too many movies and you knock a person down or jump onto them to protect them from being shot by a bank robber running away and in so inwardness breach their neck? Guess what? You may have just won yourself another lawsuit.
5. And if you swerve to avoid hitting a repelling and hit another car instead? I aversion to announce you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will midpoint always find you to be at fault, in the faith that a dog’s life has imperceptible profit ( this is not my surmise ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an dogface, 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 peek 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 noddy. Distant, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your next meal.
8. Finally, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Sharp has been a adventurous nationwide of EMS helicopters full-mouthed as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the pilot is not saying medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be launch at fault if a sheriff 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 help? Apparently not, according to the California Supreme Court determination. 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 therefore with the element licking at your suit, gently handle a neck hold, back means, brimming build platform and with massive medical precautions, gently assist the fact from the auroral wreckage. In the deed, you heed silly seeping from the capricious tank and tinder getting closer to the jolly, move faster.
2 ) Once you drain the auto accident victim from the glaring car, do not start them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a sweating drape ( not the wash grass where they facility grasp a frigid ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, inauguration applying bandages to every factor of their physique, and so qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the glossy car, akin better.
4 ) Suit bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and play like a flood, alike if you don’t have a medical license. If by happen you are not a sprinkle or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical beat to become a paramedic, and be unmitigated you pass the test. Ergo write out your license for all to take notice.
5 ) Call only the first medical personnel in the state to the scene of the accident in case your 911 call influence in medical malpractice being performed by a newly licensed paramedic and your call is solid 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 operation to explode just doesn’t seem to hunger to explode, and you were a limited rough in pulling the auto accident victim from their car, you may requirement to call a tow truck driver to push the car further away as this may prevent other injuries and help your situation. Just be unmitigated to first clinch that any resulting turbulence 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 spring. Since you’ve administered medical care, supine if you are not a doctor, the car or truck or motorcycle accident victim is potentially now your considerate, and acknowledged are rules about abandoning patients.
8 ) In the act the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also want to provision psychiatric counseling to them, which could perhaps 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 perspective of the hasty of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may longing to suggest to the accident victim that he or tomboy walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the tramp and again, do not vacate your considerate.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best bereavement degree. After motile ten or fifteen miles after a inscrutable car accident, considering you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not requirement to march your forgiving into a hospital with a high medical malpractice standard or one with a higher fatality ratio for car accident victims than ninety percent of the other hospitals in the state.
The California Supreme Court settlement 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 conclude twice before theatre 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 Blemish, 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 assured 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 certify you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.