State laws vary widely. Many states do not impose a legal duty to render aid, unless you are involved or caused the incident, or owe some sort of pre-existing or custodial duty to the victim, such as a parent, Scoutmaster, employer, etc. On-duty emergency workers obviously have a legal duty to respond, but off-duty emergency or medical personnel almost never do (contrary to myth). Oklahoma apparently imposes a legal duty, which I'm guessing may be an incident to issuance of a driver's license. You can also create a duty by beginning or appearing to render aid, since this may lead others to assume their assistance is not needed.

State "Good Samaritan" also vary widely in their scope of application and degree of immunity conferred.

Agreed Jeff. As I understand CA law, the "duty to act" for EMS workers applies... but only if one is identified as such. So, people with a star of life or FF helmet sticker technically "need" to act. Of course, if it's one's day off and they're NOT identified (by Joe Schmoe saying, "Hey, that's the EMT that took care of me in my accident), then it's perfectly ok to keep driving and give the "EMT salute."

"...leave California now..."

Already gone, and not a moment too soon...

That's good. I am trying to figure the line charge budget to get the initial perforation started. Then on to autotrader.com for a big enough bull dozer and it's a done deal.

Yikes.
That's just scary.

I'll take the contrary view - in the case at hand the defendant was found not to have acted within the realm of reasonable care. She yanked the victim out of the car, without a plausible risk to the victim's life such as imminent fire, aggravating a spine injury. Nothing about this decision seems contrary to the samaratin law as I understand it: know your limitations, act within your training, do no harm (and don't improvise). One of the justices seems to have pointed out, she doesn't get a free ride for her lack of training (or potentially, for being drunk) and rendering ineffective and injurious assistance. A reasonable person - whether EMT or bystander - happening upon the accident scene would have left the victim in the car, called 911, and at most attempt to support / keep her head still until assistance arrived.

I'd have to read the actual case to understand if it chills the samaratin law in some way.

Lono, you make a good point, however, in the article it mentions that she DID fear the car would catch fire (though no others mentioned it).

My big qualm with this ruling is that, apparently, the court decided that the injuries sustained were the result of being pulled from the car, not hitting the pole at 45 mph. Gee, judges, and clairvoyent physicians, huh?

Who's to say this lady's injuries weren't exactly the same today as the second after the impact? The news article (as I skimmed it) doesn't mention whether the injuries truly were resulting from being manipulated after the accident.

Obviously, we don't have all the information. Still, the fact that the court is infringing on this law leads me to think twice about helping someone.

I would like to see the driver's and passenger's BAC. I bet it would have something to do with hitting a pole "out of the blue".

I see the problem as the judicial drawing of a distinction between "rescue" and "medical care," and denial of the protection of CA's "Good Samaritan" law to "rescuers," not the particular facts of the case.

"Torti testified in a deposition that she saw smoke and liquid coming from Watson's vehicle and feared the car was about to catch fire. None of the others reported seeing signs of an imminent explosion." She may well have acted negligently, but the jury will have to decide that.

The larger issues are whether there is really a meaningful difference between rescue and medical aid in an emergency, and whether this decision will have an undue chilling effect on the gratuitous rendition of emergency assistance to those in peril.

I can tell you it will keep anyone I help in the future from getting ANY identifying information about me. I think back to those folks on the side of I35 just this Thanksgiving weekend. Hope nobody collected my tag number.