Unfortunately the legal system doesn’t reflect this.
This claim seemed worth checking, especially since there are multiple legal systems and it would be awful to discourage people from saving lives in one jurisdiction based on the flaws of another, so I looked into it briefly.
From my quick investigation, I think that being sued for providing medical assistance is not a serious concern in the USA, Canada, and the UK (and probably not in most other places but I didn’t read much about other places)[1]. Laws protecting rescuers from lawsuits exist in many jurisdictions; they’re called Good Samaritan laws.
I tried to find cases of people being sued for providing medical attention. There was an edge case in California in 2008 when someone caused a paralyzing spine injury to someone when pulling them from their car after an accident, believing that the car might explode[2]. The court ruled that this may have been (intended to be) emergency aid, but it wasn’t medical aid, which is what California’s Good Samaritan law specified, so the paralyzed person was allowed to sue the attempted rescuer. In response to this incident, California passed a new law stating that “no person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency medical or nonmedical care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission”.
If you’re worried about being sued for helping in an emergency, look up Good Samaritan laws in your area. The Wikipedia page on Good Samaritan laws might be a good place to start.
[1] I’m aware of a famous incident in China in 2011 when no-one provided assistance to a dying toddler, because they were afraid of being sued. China passed a Good Samaritan law in response to that incident, so it’s probably fine to attempt rescue in China now.
[2] I’ve looked into whether cars explode (separately, a while ago), and concluded that that’s not a serious risk after an accident. If a car crashes in precisely the right way (such as falling off a cliff and landing on a protrusion that violently stabs the fuel tank) then it can explode in the initial accident. But an explosion after an accident is exceedingly unlikely, I concluded. A fire after an accident can spread, but I expect that a rescuer can easily evade a car fire if one appears, so I wouldn’t be afraid of approaching a damaged car.
For example in Poland you have a duty to help another person and NOT doing so will get you sued by the state, exemption being of course if said help cannot be performed without endangering yourself as non-professional rescuer’s safety always comes first in order to not end up with more dead bodies obviously.
Courts will almost always assume that at one point in life—at school, in boy/girl scouts, when doing your driving license, in myriad of other places—you have gone through basic training and so there’s no defence of not knowing the skills.
Moving someone away from a car is included in emergency help and AFAIK there’s no differentiation of medical and non-medical actions.
Even if someone cannot be rescued and is clearly dying there might be a duty of care to comfort them through last moments of their life until emergency services arrive but in practice that’s not so stringent.
You being in shock turns you into a casualty as well and of course may be an exemption, depending on severity, later medical assessment of you etc. etc.
Fun phrase: translating from Polish civil law, if there is an emergency situation you literally “receive a task/quest from a state” to help and I think (very much check me on it) this is what grants you power to break some other laws while performing help (trespassing etc.)
Source: paraphrasing from pap.pl, Polish Press Agency — also: I’m not a lawyer and take my translation with a grain of salt.
Without a source but from my own empirical experience of being a non-pro rescue unit in scout boys (and saving people from crashes and drownings that occurred during our travels, luckily not to us) I can also add that once you call 112 (EU-wide equivalent of 911) then following prompts from the operator falls under this law as well, and depending on severity they may allow you to stand down completely or remind you of your duty if you’re trying to chicken out of helping altogether even if AED is there.
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Thank you for pointing this one out @michaelkeenan—it is often a case that in the English-speaking part of the Internet people write about the state (and thus law) as if everyone was living in the US. Going online as a diversity loss function for Europeans, that’s going to be a title of my next post ;-)
I think that is not as clear cut as you suggest*, but also agree that it’s not a terrible risk under a number of assumptions.
I think a good thing to take from Jason’s post is that one can get some pretty basic training that can prove of immense value to helping others in some not unexpected cases. The benefit I think comes from the core of the legal argument in the link. With some simple training you can start making pretty informed decisions that should help you avoid doing more harm than good due to ignorance or negligence (not considering a risk).
*I will agree that the situation in the news story and legal case is not one of the cases Jason identified but these will always be something of a judgement call and good judgement will depend on knowledge and some training.
Hm, okay, let me just stand here and carefully research the legal technicalities of the definition of medical care while you’re rapidly engulfed in flames.
This claim seemed worth checking, especially since there are multiple legal systems and it would be awful to discourage people from saving lives in one jurisdiction based on the flaws of another, so I looked into it briefly.
From my quick investigation, I think that being sued for providing medical assistance is not a serious concern in the USA, Canada, and the UK (and probably not in most other places but I didn’t read much about other places)[1]. Laws protecting rescuers from lawsuits exist in many jurisdictions; they’re called Good Samaritan laws.
I tried to find cases of people being sued for providing medical attention. There was an edge case in California in 2008 when someone caused a paralyzing spine injury to someone when pulling them from their car after an accident, believing that the car might explode[2]. The court ruled that this may have been (intended to be) emergency aid, but it wasn’t medical aid, which is what California’s Good Samaritan law specified, so the paralyzed person was allowed to sue the attempted rescuer. In response to this incident, California passed a new law stating that “no person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency medical or nonmedical care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission”.
If you’re worried about being sued for helping in an emergency, look up Good Samaritan laws in your area. The Wikipedia page on Good Samaritan laws might be a good place to start.
[1] I’m aware of a famous incident in China in 2011 when no-one provided assistance to a dying toddler, because they were afraid of being sued. China passed a Good Samaritan law in response to that incident, so it’s probably fine to attempt rescue in China now.
[2] I’ve looked into whether cars explode (separately, a while ago), and concluded that that’s not a serious risk after an accident. If a car crashes in precisely the right way (such as falling off a cliff and landing on a protrusion that violently stabs the fuel tank) then it can explode in the initial accident. But an explosion after an accident is exceedingly unlikely, I concluded. A fire after an accident can spread, but I expect that a rescuer can easily evade a car fire if one appears, so I wouldn’t be afraid of approaching a damaged car.
In many countries it may even be a reverse!
For example in Poland you have a duty to help another person and NOT doing so will get you sued by the state, exemption being of course if said help cannot be performed without endangering yourself as non-professional rescuer’s safety always comes first in order to not end up with more dead bodies obviously.
Courts will almost always assume that at one point in life—at school, in boy/girl scouts, when doing your driving license, in myriad of other places—you have gone through basic training and so there’s no defence of not knowing the skills.
Moving someone away from a car is included in emergency help and AFAIK there’s no differentiation of medical and non-medical actions.
Even if someone cannot be rescued and is clearly dying there might be a duty of care to comfort them through last moments of their life until emergency services arrive but in practice that’s not so stringent.
You being in shock turns you into a casualty as well and of course may be an exemption, depending on severity, later medical assessment of you etc. etc.
Fun phrase: translating from Polish civil law, if there is an emergency situation you literally “receive a task/quest from a state” to help and I think (very much check me on it) this is what grants you power to break some other laws while performing help (trespassing etc.)
Source: paraphrasing from pap.pl, Polish Press Agency — also: I’m not a lawyer and take my translation with a grain of salt.
Without a source but from my own empirical experience of being a non-pro rescue unit in scout boys (and saving people from crashes and drownings that occurred during our travels, luckily not to us) I can also add that once you call 112 (EU-wide equivalent of 911) then following prompts from the operator falls under this law as well, and depending on severity they may allow you to stand down completely or remind you of your duty if you’re trying to chicken out of helping altogether even if AED is there.
—-
Thank you for pointing this one out @michaelkeenan—it is often a case that in the English-speaking part of the Internet people write about the state (and thus law) as if everyone was living in the US. Going online as a diversity loss function for Europeans, that’s going to be a title of my next post ;-)
I think that is not as clear cut as you suggest*, but also agree that it’s not a terrible risk under a number of assumptions.
I think a good thing to take from Jason’s post is that one can get some pretty basic training that can prove of immense value to helping others in some not unexpected cases. The benefit I think comes from the core of the legal argument in the link. With some simple training you can start making pretty informed decisions that should help you avoid doing more harm than good due to ignorance or negligence (not considering a risk).
*I will agree that the situation in the news story and legal case is not one of the cases Jason identified but these will always be something of a judgement call and good judgement will depend on knowledge and some training.
Hm, okay, let me just stand here and carefully research the legal technicalities of the definition of medical care while you’re rapidly engulfed in flames.