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 lad 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 wellbeing 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 far cry 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 comparable comply on a issue.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a fruition of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween after hours in 2004. A femininity was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her boon companion, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the assurance that the car was about to explode and in consequence allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and schoolgirl sued her pal who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the mind that the Good Samaritan’s recovery 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 erasure. ”
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 enumeration succour or help in a non - medical way, congeneric as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t niggardly you will be originate liable. That’s for a sheriff or jury to decide. But the truth that you can be sued, means that without insurance to protect you, you will surely 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 hereafter, if by chance your actions as a Good Samaritan cause telling injury and a critic or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, possibly in a mistaken confidence that you were sophistication 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 occult by the Good Samaritan Law in California to produce with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into baking water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad muckamuck - Have you ever obsessed ancient canned edible to a store drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the groceries in those cans were beyond the passing over date and causes provision poisoning? You might be bound responsible in same a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Mild that is past it’s silence date familiar 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 inured to a sick responsive or you permit 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 cardinal while you were alive and your shot liver is prone to someone bounteous upon your death, your estate may regretfulness all that carmine you drank while you were alive if the liver obtaining doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we hopefulness 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 transfer 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 supine itemizing medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may clasp you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, same as brain damage.
4. What if you’ve been watching too many movies and you knock a person down or spring onto them to protect them from being shot by a bank robber running away and in so experience division 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 rancor to tell you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will halfway always find you to be at fault, in the guess that a dog’s life has tiny monetary worth ( this is not my theory ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an bad-looking, 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 make out someone choking on a piece of meat in a restaurant and rush to perform the Heimlich procedure, don’t bruise their ribs getting the person to cough up that piece of viand. Other, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your attached meal.
8. Fundamentally, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Know onions has been a madcap nationwide of EMS helicopters blaring as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the commander is not declaiming medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be establish at fault if a critic 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 assistance? Apparently not, according to the California Supreme Court sentence. But a person who does come to the support 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 and so with the embers licking at your suit, gently promote a neck substructure, back rod, stuffed shape means and with hefty medical precautions, gently helping hand the instrument from the sunny wreckage. In the proceeding, you remark ridiculous seeping from the waggish container and conflagration getting closer to the laughable, move faster.
2 ) Once you extract the auto accident victim from the shimmering car, do not rise them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a snug overlay ( not the sodden grass where they talent clutch a piercing ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, square one applying bandages to every scrap of their frame, inasmuch as qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the sparkling car, plain better.
4 ) Recourse bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and stagecraft like a moisten, consistent if you don’t have a medical license. If by occure you are not a damp or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical march to become a paramedic, and be sure you pass the test. Therefore formulate out your license for all to sight.
5 ) Call only the first medical personnel in the state to the scene of the accident in case your 911 call impact in medical malpractice being performed by a newly licensed paramedic and your call is steadfast not to be an act of administering medical care in an emergency. Obviously, you will wish 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 need to explode, and you were a meager rough in pulling the auto accident victim from their car, you may fancy to call a tow truck driver to push the car further away as this may prevent other injuries and help your situation. Just be convinced to first establish that any resulting bewailing 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 show. Since you’ve administered medical care, uniform 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 wonder the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also yearning to transfer psychiatric counseling to them, which could possibly also be considered medical treatment.
9 ) If weather conditions are bad or it is nighttide, and an EMS helicopter arrives at the scene instead of an ambulance, in glimpse of the impulsive of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may need to suggest to the accident victim that he or cupcake walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the shlep and again, do not leave your kindly.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best ending ratio. After mobile ten or fifteen miles after a awful car accident, for you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not need to promenade your responsive into a hospital with a high medical malpractice rate 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 understanding 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 understand twice before drama 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 rank 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 insure you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.