unreal....simply unreal. Let'em friggin burn then...what a horrible message to send and ultimately an injustice to the poor sap who tried to help her friend, as she was in an impossible position, if the car had caught fire then what?

read the link for the particulars...



The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a young woman who pulled a co-worker from a crashed vehicle isn’t immune from civil liability because the care she rendered wasn’t medical.

The divided high court appeared to signal that rescue efforts are the responsibility of trained professionals. It was also thought to be the first ruling by the court that someone who intervened in an accident in good faith could be sued.

Lisa Torti of Northridge allegedly worsened the injuries suffered by Alexandra Van Horn by yanking her “like a rag doll” from the wrecked car on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

Torti now faces possible liability for injuries suffered by Van Horn, a fellow department store cosmetician who was rendered a paraplegic in the accident that ended a night of Halloween revelry in 2004.

Both opinions have merit, “but I think the majority has better arguments,” said Michael Shapiro, professor of constitutional and bioethics law at USC.
Shapiro said the majority was correct in interpreting that the Legislature meant to shield doctors and other healthcare professionals from being sued for injuries they cause despite acting with “reasonable care,” as the law requires.

Noting that he would be reluctant himself to step in to aid a crash victim with potential spinal injuries, Shapiro said the court’s message was that emergency care “should be left to medical professionals.”


Hot Air » Blog Archive » California court holds rescuers liable for injuries

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

I'm a little torn on this one. I traveled a lot for home health nursing and usually came upon at least one accident a month. I never allowed bystanders to remove the victims from the car, even if they were hanging upside down because I knew paramedics would be along in a matter of minutes with the proper equipment. I would, however, crawl into the car with them and administer any first aid that I could. Luckily though, I was never faced with a car leaking gasoline because then, I would have had to make a decision on what was more important, taking a chance on further injury by moving the patient or taking the very slim chance that the car would explode, which by the way, doesn't happen near as often as the movies would have you believe. If the victims got out of their vehicles on their own, I always led them to a safe place and gave them first aid because I knew I was covered by the Good Samaritan Law. If not for that law, I don't know if I would have risked my nursing license and I definitely wouldn't take a chance if I was in California!

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

well yea but look, she saw the car smoking and liquid leaking out, she was scared and it was her freind,,,,,IF the car had exploded and she had stood back what then? anyway I am fully aware and versed on never moving possible spinals and all, but this is, this is real life happening in real time....its a good faith issue.....

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

In the case of a car on fire i would always say its better to help due to the exploding car scenario. Half the time though the passengers are completely knocked out if its a bad crash so they don't even know what is going on one way or another.

It's a basic standard of negligence. The average person should know better than to pull someone from a car "like a rag doll."

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Question those who think themselves above questioning.

On the other hand, waiting for emergency responders to turn up may be too late and they may well die if the car explodes.

Its a very difficult situation, without the qualified training, taking them out could seriously hurt them due to moving them without precaution (sp?) and leaving them there could see the whole car engulf the person(s) inside.

That's why I said I'm a little torn. As a medical professional, I'm sure I would move the victim in the same situation but then again, I know how to do it. It's not really something that I'd recommend to someone that doesn't know anything about it and especially someone that is given to panic. I do think that it's incredibly selfish of the victim to sue her rescuer, though, given that her friend was only trying to protect her.

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

As an EMT, you've worked hundreds of accident scenes, I'm sure. How many vehicles did you actually see explode or catch fire?

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

Compared to stupidity, all other forms of competitive endeavours seem to shrink to insignifigance!

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Making no concessions for America!

No good deed goes unpunished!!!!

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I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

I've been to a couple of car-b-queues, but those weren't the result of collisions.

Otherwise, I've seen one or two cars catch fire post-impact, and not a one explode.

Even fully engulfed cars don't explode.

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Question those who think themselves above questioning.

In an ideal worled i guess if a car was on fire or something maybe there'd be a fire extinguisher somewhere in a nearby shop or something someone might be able to run and go get to put out the flames rather than risk moving anyone.

Exactly! The Hollywood crap scares people into doing stupid things like yanking someone out of a car when it'd be best to wait until trained rescuers arrive.

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

That’s the lawyer talking, we really don't know and wasn't here, if the rescuer had a real fear as to the car going up, well, I have a hard time finding them guilty wherein their life is fucked forever too.....

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Like Mrs M, I believe this one is a hard call.

I don't have the California statute in hand but only part of it, but the divided court was engaging in statutory construction rather than just rendering judge-made law in the absence of statutory directives (common law decision making):

California Supreme Court allows good Samaritans to be sued for nonmedical care - Los Angeles Times

Good Samaritan immunity statutes generally track how the majority of the California court held how to interpret CA's looser statutory language. Here is PA's Good Samaritan Law for example:

NONMEDICAL GOOD SAMARITAN CIVIL IMMUNITY

In fairness to the majority decision of the California court, statutory immunity laws are limitations to general laws permitting lawsuits on a subject matter, so they are supposed to be strictly construed under statutory interpretation rules. If the language of the immunity statute expressly covers a certain subject matter and/or situation, then it must be followed without undercutting it. But if not, the court cannot 'expand' upon what is written to give further immunities than what is expressly written. Thus, the words of the statute speak for themselves--no more and no less--as to what is immune or not.

It seems the California statute is less clear than PA's, but they looked to ordinary statutory construction rules on strict construction for legislative abrogations/limitations of general statutory and/or common law, plus other legislative intent rules of interpretation such as placement in the code book (the Cali statute was placed in the emergency care section), legislative debate notes, how other courts and acts appear, etc.

I agree with the professor cited in the article in the OP too. The dissent isn't frivolous either IMO, but it does seems to be more 'activist' in the interpretation in walking away rather than towards the normal statutory construction rules, although the loose language itself gives plenty of room for the alternative wider definition too.

I believe this is an issue that should be handled by the legislature so they can speak more clearly, like PA has, as to whether they intend ordinary citizens altogether to be immune from suit instead of just those who are trained in medical assistance from taking actions.

As for whether the legislature should do so, giving a broader invitation is also a very tricky situation because there are plenty of hypothetical scenarios where one would want to encourage help and in others discourage such help. Sometimes the law is just not perfectly able to address certain situations such as emergency situations because they are just that and all the factors that go with them for making judgement calls.

I assume legislatures more often than not think encouraging nonmedically trained assistance with immunity statutes on the whole will cause more harm than good on a case by case basis.

Moreover, in cases where the person did more good, such cases can be thrown out on merit once litigated. After all, a civil lawsuit must prove negligence and resulting harm. For example, if a rescuer yanked someone out of a burning vehicle but caused spinal injury when doing so, it's pretty hard to call it negligence because the rescuer didn't 'use more care' in pulling the person out of the burning vehicle and also that the rescuer did more harm than good if the alternative is that the person would have burnt to death had the person not acted as they did.