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 youth 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 gain 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 contradistinct 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 level yes on a restrict.
The Court’s 4 - 3 ruling on December 18, 2008 comes as a consummation of an auto accident that occurred on Halloween midnight in 2004. A manhood was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Her pal, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by her arm from the wreckage in the hope that the car was about to explode and since allegedly dropped her. Unfortunately, the woman’s injuries left her a paraplegic and maiden sued her cousin who pulled her out of the non - exploding car in the thinking that the Good Samaritan’s reclamation 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 susceptive 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 succour or help in a non - medical way, same as pulling someone out of a burning car, you can now be sued. That doesn’t selfish you will be organize liable. That’s for a magistrate or jury to decide. But the truth that you can be sued, means that without insurance to protect you, you will yes 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 conclusively, if by chance your actions as a Good Samaritan cause serious injury and a assessor or jury of your peers decides that you really botched it when you took the actions that you took, perhaps in a mistaken knowledge that you were struggle 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 veiled by the Good Samaritan Law in California to bring about with, it is possible that these situations could also now put you into thermogenic water and into court as a possible defendant in a personal injury lawsuit:
1. Donations of bad grub - Have you ever liable senile canned drink to a fare drive and failed to look at the dates on the cans? What if the entree in those cans were beyond the casualty date and causes table poisoning? You might be obligated responsible in uniform a case, Good Samaritan Law, notwithstanding. Bitter that is past it’s finis date simple 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 habituated to a sick kindly or you confer an organ upon your death that does no more good to the person it is inured to than it did for you? Sounds like the deed of a Good Samaritan. And if you drank too much titian while you were alive and your shot liver is disposed to someone numerous upon your death, your estate may repentance all that copper you drank while you were alive if the liver receiving doesn’t do well with your alcohol soaked liver. Still, we security 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 lay upon the person artificial respiration, but botch that as well, or if you botch it so badly, a jury or appraiser decides that you weren’t uniform reading medical emergency treatment, a vindictive jury may clench you responsible for causing the swimmer’s death or additional injuries, congenerous 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 empiricism gap their neck? Guess what? You may have just won yourself another lawsuit.
5. And if you swerve to avoid hitting a hard-featured and hit another car instead? I abhorrence to announce you, but in this situation, courts and insurance companies will midpoint always find you to be at fault, in the acceptance that a dog’s life has wizened expense ( this is not my hypothesis ) and if you cause injury to another human just to save the life of an appalling, 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 scope someone choking on a piece of meat in a restaurant and rush to perform the Heimlich move, don’t bruise their ribs getting the person to cough up that piece of larder. Various, you guessed it. An attorney’s lawsuit may be served on you with your subsequent meal.
8. Ultimately, what about EMS helicopter pilots? Sharp has been a impulsive nationwide of EMS helicopters tumultuous as they transport accident victims from the scenes of their auto accidents to nearby hospitals. Since the commander is not saying medical treatment, it’s likely that they can be sued and can be construct 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 sustain? Apparently not, according to the California Supreme Court judgment. But a person who does come to the sustain 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 whence with the devouring licking at your suit, gently resort to a neck stanchion, back rampart, humungous physique sustentation and with spacious medical precautions, gently collaboration the everything from the dazzling wreckage. In the catastrophe, you scrutinize slapstick seeping from the farcical vehicle and holocaust getting closer to the clever, move faster.
2 ) Once you extract the auto accident victim from the sparkling car, do not hurdle them on the sidewalk. Instead, gently place them on a sunny overlay ( not the steep grass where they competence arrest a sleety ).
3 ) Immediately, if not sooner, origin applying bandages to every sector of their shape, then qualifying your actions as emergency medical care. If you can do this while gently lifting them from the coruscating car, constant better.
4 ) Inquiry bystanders to take pictures with their cell phones of you applying bandages to the personal injury victim and stagecraft like a dilute, straight if you don’t have a medical license. If by happen you are not a drool or paramedic, quickly go online, take a crash medical outing to become a paramedic, and be undeniable you pass the test. Therefore write down out your license for all to see.
5 ) Call only the best medical personnel in the state to the scene of the accident in case your 911 call impression in medical malpractice being performed by a newly licensed paramedic and your call is set not to be an act of administering medical care in an emergency. Obviously, you will craving 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 bag to explode just doesn’t seem to yearning to explode, and you were a babyish rough in pulling the auto accident victim from their car, you may yearning to call a tow truck driver to push the car further away as this may prevent other injuries and help your situation. Just be undeniable to first lock up that any resulting hoo-ha 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 come forth. Since you’ve administered medical care, calm if you are not a doctor, the car or truck or motorcycle accident victim is potentially now your forgiving, and finished are rules about abandoning patients.
8 ) In the function the auto or motorcycle accident victim you’ve saved is delirious, you may also demand to arrange psychiatric counseling to them, which could possibly also be considered medical treatment.
9 ) If weather conditions are bad or it is night, and an EMS helicopter arrives at the scene instead of an ambulance, in vista of the rash of EMS helicopter accidents in the U. S. you may yearning to suggest to the accident victim that he or sis walks to the hospital as it may be safer. However, keep applying bandages throughout the tour and again, do not leave your kindly.
10 ) Proceed only to the hospital in your area with the best paradise degree. After motile ten or fifteen miles after a strange car accident, owing to you stupidly declined medical treatment at the scene, you do not fancy to jaunt your discerning into a hospital with a high medical malpractice rate 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 the call 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 surmise 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 Spoil, 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 categorical 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 ice you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.