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Good Samaritans and Bad Lawsuits


California water cooler conversation has been heated this week over a ruling by the state's Supreme Court regarding "The Good Samaritan Lawsuit." Here's the story in a nutshell.

A handful of 20-something friends went to a bar. They drank until the early morning, then left. And when one of their cars crashed into a light pole, Lisa Torti hurried over and pulled one of the passengers, Alexandra Van Horn, from the wreckage.

Van Horn was rendered paraplegic, probably from the accident itself. But she sued Torti, claiming that she was injured not as a result of the accident, but because Torti negligently damaged her spinal cord while rescuing her from the wreckage.

Last week, a divided California Supreme Court ruled that Torti is not protected from civil liability, because the help she provided wasn't "emergency medical care."

OK, as some of you know, I practice a little law when I'm not blogging.

And here's my advice: don't go getting so outraged just yet. I'm not talking about the lawsuit itself. I would fully agree that that's outrageous and heartless. I'm talking about the Supreme Court decision, and the tone on the street in regards to it.

Here's the nuance that I'm rarely hearing raised. The Supreme Court didn't rule on the merits of Van Horn's claim. It merely upheld her right to file it in the first place.

And do you know what she's gonna have to prove to win the case? She's gonna have to prove that the Samaritan...er...Torti acted unreasonably under the circumstances. That's the standard for every negligence claim in the State of California. In other words, Van Horn will have to prove that Torti did something that a reasonable person under the circumstances would not have done, or failed to do something that a reasonable person under the circumstances would have done.

Tough sell.

And would we really want a law on the books that said that anyone who helps anyone in any level of danger can act any way they please? Let me put it like this. Say you get in a car accident, a pretty bad wreck, but nothing life-threatening, and you're stuck in the car. Let's say the seat belt won't come off. The car's not gonna blow or anything, but you sure would be better off in an ER with a morphine drip. Let's also say that Joe the Good Samaritan comes along and decides to help. He decides that the quickest way to get you out of the car would be to amputate both your arms and legs. That way, your torso would just slide out of the seat, quick and easy.

You see where I'm going with this?

So, like I said, don't go wasting your outrage just yet. In my somewhat-expert opinion, the odds of Van Horn convincing a jury of 12 ordinary people that Torti acted unreasonably under the circumstances is, well, I'd rather bet on a lottery ticket. And rest assured, there would be no lawsuit here if there wasn't a big, fat insurance company on the hook for the legal expenses.

Having said that, I think a nice thank-you card would have been more appropriate here.

But then again, I'm not a paraplegic.

Grace and Peace,
Raffi


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Parables of a Prodigal World by Raffi Shahinian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.