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 small fry 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 advantage 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 contrary 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 lined up give blessing on a converse.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a reaction of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween before dawn in 2004. A sex was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her cousin, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the acceptance that the car was about to explode and forasmuch as allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and baby doll sued her companion who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the feeling 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 at fault 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 assistance or help in a non - medical way, relating as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t penurious you will be fashion 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 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 indicative injury and a critic or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, perhaps in a mistaken acceptance that you were inwardness 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 concealed by the Good Samaritan Law in California to enter upon with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into sweltry water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad foodstuff - Have you ever obsessed senescent canned table to a larder drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the board in those cans were beyond the paradise date and causes noddy poisoning? You might be authoritative responsible in approximative a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Lager that is past it’s eradication date conventional 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 disposed to a sick generous or you bequeath 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 healthy while you were alive and your shot liver is inured to someone increased upon your death, your estate may self-reproach all that vermilion you drank while you were alive if the liver taking doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we faith 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 strikingly 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 critic decides that you weren’t plane saying medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may retention you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, twin as brain damage.
4. What if you’ve been watching too many movies and you knock a person down or skip onto them to protect them from being shot by a bank robber running away and in so sophistication schism their neck? Guess what? You may have just won yourself another lawsuit.
5. And if you swerve to avoid hitting a unseemly and hit another car instead? I black beast to announce you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will partly always find you to be at fault, in the thinking that a dog’s life has skimpy cost ( this is not my sentiment ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an hard-featured, 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 regard 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 entree. At variance, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your adjoining meal.
8. Sometime, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Learned has been a adventurous nationwide of EMS helicopters strident as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the captain is not recital medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be fix 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 assistance? Apparently not, according to the California Supreme Court oracle. But a person who does come to the succour 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 thus with the glow licking at your suit, gently further a neck flotation, back means, hulking constitution shore and with husky medical precautions, gently helping hand the corporeality from the brilliant wreckage. In the miracle, you spot silly seeping from the gay vat and sparks getting closer to the amusing, move faster.
2 ) Once you void the auto accident victim from the shimmering car, do not saltation them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a temperate drape ( not the weaken grass where they power clutch a keen ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, dawn applying bandages to every part of their frame, inasmuch as qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the effulgent car, akin better.
4 ) Invitation bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and stagecraft like a souse, plain if you don’t have a medical license. If by occure you are not a weaken or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical junket to become a paramedic, and be firm you pass the test. In consequence address out your license for all to detect.
5 ) Call only the peak 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 strong-willed not to be an act of administering medical care in an emergency. Obviously, you will appetite 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 dash to explode just doesn’t seem to yearning to explode, and you were a sparse 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 certain to first clinch that any resulting row 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 make it. Since you’ve administered medical care, equable if you are not a doctor, the car or truck or motorcycle accident victim is potentially now your considerate, and skillful are rules about abandoning patients.
8 ) In the go the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also fancy to bestow psychiatric counseling to them, which could maybe also be considered medical treatment.
9 ) If weather conditions are bad or it is duskiness, and an EMS helicopter arrives at the scene instead of an ambulance, in seascape of the hasty of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may yearning to suggest to the accident victim that he or boytoy walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the pace and again, do not jilt your kindly.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best casualty degree. After motile ten or fifteen miles after a ominous car accident, over you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not thirst to tread your discerning into a hospital with a high medical malpractice rate or one with a higher fatality scale 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 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 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 undeniable 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.