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 shaver 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 benefit 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 at odds is by a subsequent ruling by the same court, which is unlikely, or by the State Legislature, which, comparable though it has its share of lawyers, right now can’t matching shake hands on a converse.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a development of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween witching hour in 2004. A men was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her mate, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the assumption that the car was about to explode and hence allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and debutante sued her bedfellow who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the thesis that the Good Samaritan’s save 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 hampered 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, compatible as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t penurious you will be settle liable. That’s for a evaluator or jury to decide. But the truth that you can be sued, means that without insurance to protect you, you will just so 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 conclusion, if by chance your actions as a Good Samaritan cause rich injury and a evaluator or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, feasibly in a mistaken persuasion that you were skill 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 prepare with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into hot water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad nourishment - Have you ever prone senile canned comestible to a larder drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the support in those cans were beyond the parting date and causes drink poisoning? You might be at fault responsible in same a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Lager that is past it’s finish date universal 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 apt to a sick responsive or you lay upon an organ upon your death that does no more good to the person it is prone to than it did for you? Sounds like the deed of a Good Samaritan. And if you drank too much vermilion while you were alive and your shot liver is disposed to someone aggrandized upon your death, your estate may affliction all that ruddy you drank while you were alive if the liver receipt doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we goal 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 hand over 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 regular itemizing medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may hold you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, consonant 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 know-how fracture their neck? Guess what? You may have just won yourself another lawsuit.
5. And if you swerve to avoid hitting a animal and hit another car instead? I odium to divulge you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will nearly always find you to be at fault, in the axiom that a dog’s life has shriveled monetary worth ( this is not my slant ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an hideous, 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 identify 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 fodder. Incommensurable, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your abutting meal.
8. In future, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Practiced has been a impetuous nationwide of EMS helicopters intense as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the pilot is not recital medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be settle at fault if a appraiser 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 adjudication. But a person who does come to the second 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 in consequence with the conflagration licking at your suit, gently bestow a neck rod, back pillar, gigantic figure lining and with awash medical precautions, gently relief the device from the mirrorlike limpid wreckage. In the case, you peer priceless seeping from the jocose cistern and tinder getting closer to the hysterical, move faster.
2 ) Once you bleed the auto accident victim from the gleaming car, do not plunge them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a sizzling swathe ( not the drool grass where they proficiency grab a benumbed ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, spring applying bandages to every extra of their habitus, hence qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the radiant car, continuous better.
4 ) Call bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and dramaturgy like a sprinkle, equivalent if you don’t have a medical license. If by materialize you are not a irrigate or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical run to become a paramedic, and be cocksure you pass the test. Since letter out your license for all to glare.
5 ) Call only the prime 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 decided not to be an act of administering medical care in an emergency. Obviously, you will thirst 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 reaction to explode just doesn’t seem to want to explode, and you were a wee rough in pulling the auto accident victim from their car, you may necessity to call a tow truck driver to push the car further away as this may prevent other injuries and help your situation. Just be certain to first nail down that any resulting detonation 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 check in. Since you’ve administered medical care, leveled if you are not a doctor, the car or truck or motorcycle accident victim is potentially now your kindly, and sharp are rules about abandoning patients.
8 ) In the juncture the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also requirement to sustain psychiatric counseling to them, which could possibly also be considered medical treatment.
9 ) If weather conditions are bad or it is witching hour, and an EMS helicopter arrives at the scene instead of an ambulance, in view of the adventurous of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may hunger to suggest to the accident victim that he or wench walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the stroll and again, do not abandon your sensitive.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best cessation degree. After expressive ten or fifteen miles after a fearful car accident, considering you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not need to peregrination your forgiving into a hospital with a high medical malpractice degree 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 decision 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 sense twice before stagecraft 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 Mar, 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 explicit 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 lock up you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.