I was in an interesting discussion the other day about Good Samaritan laws, and without going over a lot of details, the question came up on whether or not these laws would keep someone from being hauled into court.
Like if you pulled someone out of a burning automobile, could they turn around and sue you for pain and suffering because you dislocated their shoulder?
Would this be allowed, requiring you to have to hire an attorney, take off work to go to court and so on to get the judge to hopefully dismiss the lawsuit?
Or would they be prevented from suing you at all?
I’m sure it varies by state, but just wanted to get some kind of reading on this because none of us really knew how these laws work. Anecdotes welcome.
No, people can always pretty much sue you. But if you are acting in good faith and up to your level of training (that last part is important) than it would be pretty easy to get dismissed. At least that is my understanding after years and years of WFA courses. Clearly, IANAL or a medical professional.
Pulling someone out of a burning car - you’d be covered by the Good Samaritan Laws.
Attempting to do a tracheotomy with a pen knife and straw - unless you were an emergency room DR you could be in trouble.
There was a case recently where someone pulled a victim out of a non-burning car, where danger was not immediate, and did damage. I don’t recall how that was decided but it was a real test of the Good Samaritan laws.
A guy I worked with witnessed a motorcycle skid. A lady got out and sprayed his massive abrasions with Lysol I guess to disinfect them. BTW: this was a very bad idea.
There lies the problem. If they sue you, even without merit, you have to defend yourself in court and that costs money. You could counter sue for time and costs of defending the lawsuit but again that costs money.
And the odds of getting a judgement enforced against the type of plaintiff that brings a frivolous suit is as about as likely as successfully selling sow’s milk in a kosher grocery store.
Yes, it varies by state but alas, lawyers can be found in every state to explain why that particular sentence or phrase does not mean what you thought it meant.
In our litigious society, not only can they sue you, but they can sue you successfully for trying to help, Good Samaritan Law notwithstanding.
If you are a responder with any kind of training, the suit will simply claim that you acted outside the reasonable bounds of your training. If you have no training, it will claim that you were reckless.
Here’s a famous fairly recent example, but there are others.
I recall another from a while ago where a surgeon stopped to help in a car accident. There was a complication and the patient died. Surgeon lost the suit, Good Samaritan Law notwithstanding.
There’s a reason (lawyers) for our cynicism in medicine, leading to the popular phrase: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
I should note, in defense of what my profession (Emergency Medicine) actually does in most emergencies outside the ED, that I have never met a clinician in my field (including me) who does not hesitate to stop and render assistance, regardless of circumstance or potential legal implication. My cynicism here is directed to lawyers and the litigious, not to clinical practitioners.
And while it’s easy to say that many lawsuits are frivolous and get tossed out (and this is true) it’s hard to convey the irritation and nuisance of being sued at all when the intention was charitable.
See here for a write-up by an ED physician who is also a JD.
I learned in my first aid/cpr class that you NEVER move an accident victim, unless there is an immediate risk of death. (The car is on fire, or they were thrown into the middle of a busy highway with no way for cars to avoid them)
Also, you never exceed your level of training. So if the person needs medical help you aren’t authorized to give, you just call 911 and stay with them until help arrives.
I think the Good Samaritan laws are more to cover you if, for example, you give CPR but the person dies anyway, you can’t be blamed for NOT saving them.
It’s worth pointing out that sometimes the people doing the suing aren’t simply greedy. Since we don’t have UHC in this country, people with injuries that will require long-term care can be driven to sue out of desperation to pay their bills.
IIRC there was a study of a non-American country, but one that had pretty high tech medicine/ambulance/emergency service (at least in the big metro areas). I want to say Brazil.
Anyway, in that country, generally procedure was to grab em up and run to the hospital. They had no qualms about moving sombody unless it was pretty damn obvious moving the patient was a bad idea.
The study showed there was little to no additional risk to taking that approach.
Obviously, if you can afford to NOT move em, thats the safer option. Its just that apparently, its not quite as big a bogey man as we tend to think it is.
And, if you run across a hurt me, please don’t move me either unless you have to
In Germany, not only are you insured for damage you receive when helping somebody (usual example is blood stains on your 500 Euro suit), you are required by law to help anybody you find. In theory, the police can bring you to court and you can be sued for not helping an accident victim. (In practice, it’s difficult to find the persons who drove on by the accident scene, though the ambulance crews are getting more and more upset at gawkers who hinder their job, and asks the police to start handing out fines for “standing stupidly around gawking a human tragedy while blocking emergency personnel from doing their job”).
In Germany, everybody is required by law to render first aid, if this is not an imposition under the cirumstances, he isn’t neglecting other important duties to do so, and he isn’t endangering himself (see paragraph 323c of the Criminal Law code). Persons who don’t help are guilty of “failure to render assistance”, which can be punished with a fine or jail time.
If the first aid helper is a medical doctor, he has to adhere to the rules of basic life support at least, otherwise he might be held responsible.
The law protects the first aid helper. (translation by me)
I have not heard of cases where people sued their helpers. Partly because our society (thankfully) is not that crazy litigious, partly because we don’t need to sue to recover our hospital bills, because we have a better health insurance system. If somebody tried I’m sure the thing would be thrown out by the judge, maybe with a stern warning for being thankful to the helper for helping him, but IANAL.
Oh, and if you want to take your drivers license test, you have to show that in the last 2 years you went to a first-aid-course (8 hours), otherwise you won’t get it. That’s because the law thinks it would be a good idea if at least those people driving dangerous machines with high speed have at least a rudimentary knowledge of first aid so they can stop a bleeding or do chest compression.
In a time when almost everybody has a cellphone, not doing the first two steps - calling 112 (911) for help, and securing the accident site - are inexcusable for me. Considering that a person with a cut artery can bleed out in a few minutes, but all you need is to press the right point; that an unconcious person can suffocate on their own tongue, but all you need is to stretch their head back; and so on, I have very little understanding for not wanting to help because “iiih, blood”.
Every first aid instructor I’ve had (I went to several courses to try and keep things fresh) has said when we worried about doing things wrong:
IF YOU DON’T HELP, the person will surely die. IF YOU HELP, even if you screw up, you give that person a chance.
Even if you break a rib during chest compression, it’s better to live with a cracked rib that will heal than be dead because you were afraid of helping.
But, as I said, nobody thought of people being so ungrateful/ dumb that they would sue a helper, and it’s not necessary for the health bills.
I don’t know who told me, but it was a medical professional of some kind, who said that because of all those “cars exploding” in Hollywood movies, for a long time people thought when a car is burning, it will explode any moment, and either don’t come closer, or pull people out, instead of taking their fire extinguisher and putting it out.
In fact, modern cars are almost impossible to explode. Several popular-science shows tested this to show the audience that you need much more than a ruptured gas tank, or a trail of gasoline, and a spark or even flames - you need explosives.
If I’m recalling correctly, the ‘Good Samaritan’ in the above situation was drunk and hysterical and hauled the ‘victim’ out of the car while her seatbelt was still on, causing substantially more injury than the car accident itself.
That doesn’t strike me as a good deed any more than a drunk picking a fight with someone because they think the other person was rude to their girlfriend (or whatever).
Here is the real problem with Good Samaritan laws - most people are idiots. I would say that 75% of Americans I wouldn’t trust to wipe my ass let alone give me first aid.
