Orange County Personal Injury Lawyer analysis of Good Samaritan liability in automobile accidents Orange County Auto Accident Lawyers are in shock that the California Supreme Court has severely limited the protection for good Samaritans in California. Despite a recent decision of this court, it is both sad and heartening to see that good deeds are always tempted, even at the risk of living in Orange County.
Just days before the Supreme Court decision, a student at Good Samaritan nursing woman trying to help a disabled driver, and the two walked onto I-5 Santa Ana in Orange County when another driver crashed into the back of a car and he drove in two females. One of the Good Samaritan women, student nurse 20 years was killed. The female, a 16-year-old, she was helping, was seriously injured.
Today, unfortunately, following a new court ruling in California, if a good Samaritan trying to help another does some additional damage to the person they help, they can be prosecuted court by a lawyer on behalf of the victim tried to help anywhere in California.
If you need help with an injury or a case of suspicious death or if you require more information about this, please call us at the numbers easy to find on our website at http: / / www.SebastianGibsonLaw.com
The new regulation comes from the highest court in California, the California Supreme Court, which means that the only way this interpretation of the law can be changed is by a subsequent decision by the same tribunal that is unlikely, or by the State Legislature, which, although it has its share of lawyers, now can not even agree on a budget.
The 4-3 Court ruling on December 18, 2008 is the result of a car accident on Halloween night in 2004. One woman was a passenger in a car that ran into a lamppost at 45 mph. Her friend, who was in the car behind her, pulled the first woman by the arm of the wreckage in the belief that the car was about to explode, would have dropped her. Unfortunately, the wounds of the woman left her a paraplegic and she sued his friend who was out of the car explosion in non-belief that efforts to rescue the Good Samaritan has caused his paralysis.
The Supreme Court has been forced to interpret the Good Samaritan law that California is in the code section of the state related to emergency medical care, which states: "No person in good faith, not compensation , renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission. "
The interpretation of this law, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state Good Samaritan law only protects against prosecution if you give medical care at the scene of an emergency. But if you're just making aid or assist a non-medical, such as pulling someone from a burning car, you can now be pursued. This does not mean you are responsible. For a judge or jury to decide. But the fact that you can be sued, no insurance means to protect yourself, you'll probably need a lawyer or a lawyer to represent you, you must pay the attorney's fees and legal fees for you defense, which, in a typical personal injury case can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Worse yet, if by chance your actions as a cause of serious injury Good Samaritan and a judge or jury of peers decides that you really miss when you take the steps you have taken, perhaps in a mistaken belief that you did a good deed, a court could find yourself responsible for hundreds of thousands of fraud.
Posted on April 4, 2010.