OH Court: Good Samaritan Law Applies to Everyone

Aug. 30, 2016
Judges also dismissed a suit filed by a trucker against the man who tried to help him.

Ohio’s Good Samaritan law protecting people from legal liability for rendering aid applies to anyone who provides assistance -- medical or otherwise – at the scene of an emergency, the Ohio Supreme Court declared today.

The court ruled 4-3 that the law applies to more than medical professionals and first responders and is not restricted to medical care, but also applies to other situations in which an uninjured person immediately needs help.

The ruling came as the court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against a man who attempted in 2012 to help a trucker who was uninjured, but trapped between the rear of his tractor-trailer and a loading dock in Fairfield.

The man who was sued did not know how to drive the truck, allowing the trailer to roll backward and break the leg of the trucker, whose leg later was amputated above the knee. The trucker then sued the man who attempted to help him for damages.

The man asserted the Good Samaritan law as a defense while the truckers’ lawyers argued it applied only to medical professionals and trained first responders.

Justice Terrence O’Donnell wrote that lawmakers did not limit legal protections to health care workers and police officers, firefighters and EMTs when they wrote the law.

The law also does not define “administering emergency care,” meaning Good Samaritan protections also extend to providing assistance to someone who needs help, but is not injured – such as the truck driver in the Fairfield case, O’Donnell said.

Justices Sharon L. Kennedy, Judith L. French, and William M. O’Neill joined in O’Donnell’s majority opinion.

In a dissent, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor was joined by Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger in objecting to defining an emergency as events involving “an unforeseen combination of circumstances” and would send the case back to a jury to determine if an emergency existed.

The majority’s ruling would place foreseeable injuries – such as a concussion suffered by a football player – beyond the protection afforded by the Good Samaritan law, she wrote.

In a separate dissent, Justice Paul E. Pfeifer wrote that the man sued by the trucker should not be protected by the Good Samaritan law because while the trucker was trapped, he was not injured and did not require immediate help – but rather competent help by someone who could drive the truck.

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@RandyLudlow

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©2016 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)

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