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No Good Deed Goes...Court Says Good Samaritans Can Be Sued

By David Packman

div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jN7PogF33lA/SU1uKBsMSqI/AAAAAAAAAqw/OgXF7Qg3knE/s1600-h/gustavedore_thegoodsamarin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jN7PogF33lA/SU1uKBsMSqI/AAAAAAAAAqw/OgXF7Qg3knE/s400/gustavedore_thegoodsamarin.jpg" //a/divbr / This story from California bugged me, not just the inherent injustice of someone being punished for doing a good deed, but because it also could apply to any of us... even here in Washington state, or wherever you live too.br / br / a href="http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-me-good-samaritan19-2008dec19,0,6547898.story"The case, Van Horn v Torti,/a pits Alexandra Van Horn, who was injured as a passenger in a car that slammed into a light pole at 45 mph in November of 2004, against Lisa Torti who was a co-worker and friend of Van Horn's following in a car behind Van Horns who attempted to pull Van Horn out of the vehicle in the fear that her car might ignite in to flame.br / br / Van Horn now blames Torti for her being paralyzed and has brought suit against Torti for damages, and the California Supreme Court has given the lawsuit a green light based on the assumption that the state's Good Samaritan Law only protects people administering emergency medical care, not those attempting to rescue others from potentially life threatening situations.br / br / Think something like that can only happen in crazy California? Think again. br / br / In 2005 Washington state governor a href="http://www.governor.wa.gov/news/news-view.asp?pressRelease=67amp;newsType=1"Christine Gregiore signed a Good Samaritan Law/a that made it a crime for a person to not render aid to a person who has suffered physical harm.br / br / Yet, the other a href="http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=4.24.300"Good Samaritan Law on the books for Washington state/a that provides protection from liability while performing aid for a person injured only applies to medical aid, just as the one in California does.br / br / So in Washington state, you would be stuck in a catch-22, liable to be sued if you help, subject to criminal charges if you don't...br / br / The same thing that happened in California can happen here too. For readers elsewhere, I recommend you check up on your laws too. Most are likely based on each other so it's very likely this is the case nation-wide.br / br / Looks like we all might need to think twice before we try to help our fellow humans in need.br / br / It's chilling to think that it seems as though when I attempted to break up a stabbing I witnessed a href="http://injusticeinseattle.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-story.html"that night in November/a that I could have very well been sued for intervening to save that guy's life on top of being beaten and wrongfully arrested for it. Definitely think twice about doing that again now.br / br / No good deed goes unpunished indeed...div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InjusticeInSeattle?a=VxSeO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InjusticeInSeattle?i=VxSeO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InjusticeInSeattle?a=KeOqo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InjusticeInSeattle?i=KeOqo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/InjusticeInSeattle/~4/490914158" height="1" width="1"/

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on December 20, 2008 (boomark / email).