Ohio's Good Samaritan Law Now Protects Non-Medical Rescuers: Carter v. Reese

Published October 11, 2016 · Ohio Supreme Court

Dennis Carter had just hooked up a trailer at a loading dock in Fairfield, Ohio, when he slipped climbing onto the dock and his leg wedged between the dock and the trailer. He felt no pain at first. He yelled and banged on the dock door for ten minutes before anyone heard him. The man who finally came, Larry Reese, was not a paramedic or a trucker. He was a bystander who wanted to help.

Mr. Carter told him exactly what to do: get in the cab, pull forward about a foot, and whatever you do, don't put it in reverse. Mr. Reese climbed in, realized he did not know how to drive the rig, revved the engine three times, and released the air brake. The trailer rolled backward and broke Mr. Carter's leg. Paramedics arrived four minutes later. The leg had to be amputated above the knee.

On August 30, 2016, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that Mr. Reese owes the Carters nothing. Carter v. Reese, 148 Ohio St.3d 226, 2016-Ohio-5569, is a case every injured person should understand, because it changes who can be held responsible when a rescue goes wrong.

The statute

Ohio's Good Samaritan law, R.C. 2305.23, says that no person shall be liable in civil damages "for administering emergency care or treatment at the scene of an emergency" outside a hospital or doctor's office, "unless such acts constitute willful or wanton misconduct." The immunity does not apply to someone who expects to be paid for the help.

For forty years most Ohio lawyers read that statute as protecting doctors, nurses and trained first responders who stop to give medical aid. The bill that originally created it was titled as an act "relative to the liability of physicians and nurses for emergency treatment," and a footnote in a 1975 Supreme Court decision described it the same way. Under that reading, an untrained bystander who volunteered to help and then made things worse was held to the ordinary standard of reasonable care.

What the Court decided

The Court, in an opinion by Justice O'Donnell, read the statute as written and reached two conclusions.

First, the words "no person" mean any person. The General Assembly knows how to limit immunity to physicians and nurses when it wants to; it did so in the very next section of the Revised Code, which protects volunteer team doctors at school athletic events. It did not do so here. Ohio now joins the majority of states whose Good Samaritan laws cover everyone.

Second, "administering emergency care" is not limited to medical care. The statute says "emergency care," not "emergency medical care," and the Court declined to add a word the legislature left out. The phrase, the Court held, includes "rendering medical and any other form of assistance to the safety and well-being of another" when an unforeseen situation calls for immediate action.

Applied to the loading dock: a man pinned between a trailer and a wall is an emergency. Trying to move the truck to free him is emergency care. The Carters never alleged that Mr. Reese acted willfully or wantonly. So the statute bars the claim, and summary judgment for Mr. Reese was affirmed.

The decision was 4-3. Chief Justice O'Connor, joined by Justice Lanzinger, agreed that the statute protects any person but objected to the majority's definition of "emergency" as requiring an unforeseen combination of circumstances, and would have left the question of whether the statute applied to a jury rather than deciding it on summary judgment. Justice Pfeifer dissented separately.

Why this matters for injured people

Let me be direct about who this decision hurts. It hurts the person who was already in danger and then was injured more seriously by a well-meaning helper. Before Carter, that person could pursue a negligence claim against the helper and, more to the point, against the helper's homeowner's or auto insurance. After Carter, that claim is gone unless the helper's conduct was willful or wanton, which is a very high bar. Ordinary carelessness, even carelessness that costs a man his leg, is not enough.

There is a reasonable policy on the other side: the legislature wants people to stop and help without fear of being sued. I do not quarrel with that goal. But the result is that the cost of a botched rescue now falls entirely on the victim, and that makes it more important than ever to look past the rescuer to the people who created the emergency in the first place.

The real claim is usually against whoever created the hazard

In nearly every rescue case I have seen, the bystander is the least responsible party in the room. The question I ask is why the emergency happened at all.

Consider the facts of Carter in general terms. A driver is required to climb from the ground onto a loading dock across a gap beside a trailer. Who designed that dock? Was there a ladder, a step or a dock plate? Was the surface slick? Were the trailer brakes and the tractor brakes set in a way that allowed the rig to roll? Was the driver trained on the equipment? Those questions point toward the property owner, the shipper, the trucking company and the equipment manufacturer, none of whom are protected by the Good Samaritan statute. Loading-dock injuries are a recurring part of our truck and commercial vehicle practice for exactly that reason.

The same analysis applies to crash scenes. If a passerby pulls you from a wrecked car and aggravates a spinal injury, Carter likely protects the passerby. It does nothing to protect the driver who caused the crash, and your damages from the crash include the aggravation that followed from it. A negligent driver is responsible for the foreseeable consequences of the harm he set in motion, and a clumsy rescue is one of them.

Two more points. The statute does not protect someone who gives the help for pay, or expecting pay, from the person being helped, so a tow operator or contractor you hire at the scene is held to the ordinary standard. And paid police officers and firefighters remain covered by the statute while performing their duties, which overlaps with the separate immunity rules for government employees that I discussed in an earlier post on the reckless-conduct standard.

If you were hurt on the job

Mr. Carter was working when he was injured, which means workers' compensation covered his medical care and part of his wages. Comp does not pay for pain and suffering or the full loss of a career, and it does not bar a claim against a third party who caused the injury. I explained how that two-track recovery works for drivers in a post on work-vehicle crashes. The property owner who controls a dangerous dock or the company that supplied defective equipment is a classic third party.

What this means for you

If you were hurt and someone who tried to help made it worse, do not assume there is no claim, and do not assume the claim is against the helper. After Carter v. Reese, the helper is very likely immune. The parties who created the danger are not. Our personal injury and premises liability practices focus on identifying those parties and the insurance behind them, and the evidence that proves their responsibility disappears quickly.