Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, And for this week's selects,
Speaker 1: I've chosen how Good Samaritan Laws work. We dive into
Speaker 1: the weird, wacky, wild, extremely patchwork world of good Samaritan laws,
Speaker 1: laws that are meant to protect people who lend aid
Speaker 1: or help to other people in need. Sometimes as people
Speaker 1: in need are not too happy with the help that
Speaker 1: they get, and it creates all sorts of problems. So
Speaker 1: check out this really interesting episode and this week's select enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
Speaker 1: And this is Stuff you should Know. Just a trio
Speaker 1: of helpful types who like to go around the world
Speaker 1: and escort people through crosswalks and get sued for it.
Speaker 1: Escorting someone to a busy intersection against the light right,
Speaker 1: and then you get to the other side and hold
Speaker 1: out your hand, say lay some bread on me, sucker.
Speaker 1: All these are bad ideas, they really are, they really are.
Speaker 1: But I mean we're full of those, aren't we, Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just brimming with them. That's our log line
Speaker 1: to ten plus years of bad ideas, all right, or
Speaker 1: oh god, you've been listening to us this whole time?
Speaker 1: Are you crazy? Oh boy, So you're feeling pretty good
Speaker 1: about this one, because I gotta tell you I am. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if folks listen to our I think, dare
Speaker 1: I say it was a good episode on the very
Speaker 1: sad case of Kitty Genovese in New York. That was
Speaker 1: a good episode. You can go back and listen to that.
Speaker 1: And that's a pretty good setup because in that, just
Speaker 1: to recap very quickly, in the mid sixties, a young
Speaker 1: woman was was raped and killed in a very busy
Speaker 1: area of New York City, and uh, it was very
Speaker 1: famous because many many people um supposedly heard the attack,
Speaker 1: watched the attack, perhaps didn't do anything, made the news,
Speaker 1: and created something that they study still today. And uh
Speaker 1: in psychology classes called the bystander effect. Yeah, this this
Speaker 1: idea of responsibility diffusion where if you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of people standing around no one, everybody just assumed somebody
Speaker 1: else will help, and they don't help. Yeah, Joshua Clark
Speaker 1: or some help. Sure, leave it up to him. And
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there like, well, obviously Chuck's gonna help. He's
Speaker 1: a better person than me, and then we're both just
Speaker 1: staying there and do nothing. Yeah, in the meantime, Jerry's
Speaker 1: just laying there with like a jolly rancher in her throat, right,
Speaker 1: But everybody knows she can't talk anyway, so she can't
Speaker 1: call for help. It's very hard to tell sometimes that
Speaker 1: Jerry's in need of assistance, or if she's just being Jerry, right,
Speaker 1: or if she even exists. However, article says that, um,
Speaker 1: the bystander effect in this case in particular, led to
Speaker 1: the first good Samaritan laws in our country. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is not true, because two years before that, right here
Speaker 1: in Georgia, our first laws went into effect. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: one I found that was the earliest was in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, five years before Kitty Geneviz was murdered, and
Speaker 1: that was in California, and that protected doctors who were
Speaker 1: administering aid in emergency situations. Hippie liberal elitist out there
Speaker 1: right the left coast. But but it's a weird thing
Speaker 1: to tie together the bystander effect and good Samaritan laws
Speaker 1: because they don't actually go together. They're not that you
Speaker 1: like you want them to fit together, but when you
Speaker 1: lay them side by side, you're like, oh, these are
Speaker 1: these are two different types of sea monkeys. I thought
Speaker 1: they were husband and wife, but they're not. Oh I
Speaker 1: see the correlation. I want to. My brain just won't
Speaker 1: quite make the the connection. Like if someone had race
Speaker 1: down to help Kitty Genevise and render her aid and
Speaker 1: not been a bystander, then they could You know that
Speaker 1: falls into the good Samaritan laws. It does, but really
Speaker 1: it falls more under like the duty to act laws,
Speaker 1: like you'll get in trouble if you if you are
Speaker 1: just a bystander if you don't do something, whereas a
Speaker 1: good Samaritan law basically says, if you do do something
Speaker 1: and you help Kitty Genevise or somebody who's in trouble
Speaker 1: and you make their situation worse, you can't be sued
Speaker 1: for for rendering eight because you were acting in good faith.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of there, but it's not quite. It
Speaker 1: doesn't click. I got you, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I hear you, all right, Okay, I just really wanted
Speaker 1: to get that off of my chest. Well, uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just kind of said it like those those laws
Speaker 1: are in place now as protections generally, um, for American
Speaker 1: that they happened all over the world. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: a few of the laws here and there, but uh,
Speaker 1: all fifty states and Washington, d C. The the District
Speaker 1: of Columbia have some sort of laws on the books,
Speaker 1: uh that that you can basically be protected potentially and
Speaker 1: not held responsible for your actions even if they cause harm.
Speaker 1: But because it's state law if you're not American, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how it works in all countries, but they
Speaker 1: the laws and from states to state on the same
Speaker 1: thing can vary wildly. Yeah, and certainly in this case,
Speaker 1: it's what they call a patchwork of state laws in
Speaker 1: need of a federal law for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So because there's so many different laws in so many
Speaker 1: different states. Um, you know, if the actions that you
Speaker 1: you perform in one state might get you you know,
Speaker 1: you might get your mug on the front page of
Speaker 1: the paper being celebrated, and in another state your mugs
Speaker 1: on the front page of the paper because you just
Speaker 1: got sued, you know. So we'll we'll dive into that
Speaker 1: a little more. But first let's talk about where the
Speaker 1: name for the laws come from. Chalk. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: this story from my church going days as a kid.
Speaker 1: That really stood out to me back then, because uh,
Speaker 1: well it's in Luke and the story is is that
Speaker 1: a Jewish man was assaulted and robbed on the road
Speaker 1: and left for dead basically, and some people passed by
Speaker 1: without rendering aid. A Jewish priest and a levite, which
Speaker 1: is an assistant priest basically assistant to the priest. Do
Speaker 1: you have the impression that the priest and the levite
Speaker 1: were together, or that the priests passed and then at
Speaker 1: some point later on the levite passed. You know what
Speaker 1: this is going back a lot of years, dude. But
Speaker 1: if my memory is telling me that they were two
Speaker 1: separate things, Okay, I knew that question would pay you all.
Speaker 1: But I might be wrong, But my my old I
Speaker 1: still have some old church memories rattling around in this
Speaker 1: dusty noggin. He just saw like smoke come out of
Speaker 1: my ears. I thought that was a flower. Oh sure, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gluten free though, Oh are you? No, Emily is so,
Speaker 1: But by default I sometimes I am right, sure, No,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. You know that goes. But finally,
Speaker 1: as the story goes, a Samaritan. Um, that is, a
Speaker 1: person from Samaria who were bitter enemies of the Jews,
Speaker 1: came by, and what did he do? He said, Hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you look like you're having a pretty rotten day. Let
Speaker 1: me help you out, that's right. And he did. He
Speaker 1: not only said here, let me let me pick you
Speaker 1: up and get you out of this dusty road. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take you to an inn. And not only
Speaker 1: am I gonna do that, I'm gonna pay for your
Speaker 1: room at the end. And then I'm gonna say it,
Speaker 1: bid you a good day and good health. Audios enemy.
Speaker 1: And he did. Imagine this chuck this good Samaritan story.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that the actually took place, That this
Speaker 1: is a real story that happened, right, it's not just
Speaker 1: a parable. Imagine if you were that guy, that Samaritan
Speaker 1: who did this thing, this act of goodwill, and two
Speaker 1: thousand years later, people around the world are still talking
Speaker 1: about it. How great would that happy? You know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes after our show ends, no one's going
Speaker 1: to talk about it, right, you know, just like all
Speaker 1: of this the talk shows, we've been on the kiss
Speaker 1: of death that we have, Uh, but yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean every even if you are like the most
Speaker 1: atheistic agnostic human on earth. You've heard of the story
Speaker 1: of the Good Samaritan. It's just one of those things
Speaker 1: that is is transcended religion into pop culture. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I had never known that at the time. Like you said,
Speaker 1: the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other um And
Speaker 1: apparently I looked it up. They really really did not
Speaker 1: like each other. It wasn't just like over religious stuff,
Speaker 1: it was over political stuff too, and how those things intertwined.
Speaker 1: So they really did not get along. So not only
Speaker 1: did this guy help somebody in need, he helped an
Speaker 1: an enemy in need. So I think he does deserve
Speaker 1: to be to be commemorated for eons over that. Sure,
Speaker 1: But that's where the name of the law comes from.
Speaker 1: Good Samaritan laws are when you stop and help somebody,
Speaker 1: whether it's your enemy or your friend, um, in an
Speaker 1: emergency situation, typically you are you should not be penalized
Speaker 1: if your good intentions cause further harm, right, which seems
Speaker 1: very much like a no brainer, But it is complicated.
Speaker 1: The more you read into this stuff, the more you're like, man,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nuance to to the variations of
Speaker 1: these laws. Yeah, the more you read into it, the
Speaker 1: more you're like, I am going to end up second
Speaker 1: guessing myself the next time I'm faced with an emergency situation.
Speaker 1: Like I hadn't thought about it before, but it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could totally get sued for helping somebody out, depending
Speaker 1: on where you are. Yeah, I've never come across this,
Speaker 1: not even close. What an emergency situation I have I have, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. I was one of many at an accident.
Speaker 1: I witnessed the accident. It was like one of those
Speaker 1: things where you see it happening, you just see it
Speaker 1: in slow motion and you're just like trying to will
Speaker 1: it to stop with your body and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It was a man who got tebowed by another car
Speaker 1: that he didn't see coming. Um and uh. I was
Speaker 1: one of the people on the scene kind of helping out.
Speaker 1: It didn't even occur to me that that that that
Speaker 1: man could be Like these people hurt me, you know,
Speaker 1: in in helping I didn't touch the guy or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but I mean other people were, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, we called for help and all that, so
Speaker 1: I think we did it about as good as you can,
Speaker 1: but nothing about the situation was like, well I need
Speaker 1: to I need to watch out for my legal exposure here,
Speaker 1: like something real quick, right where what state in my end?
Speaker 1: Let me just check out what's going on as this,
Speaker 1: like you know, person is bleeding in the street right exactly,
Speaker 1: But it is nuanced and and after reading some of
Speaker 1: these examples, I I you know, I get both sides
Speaker 1: of the coin for sure. So I mean, for example,
Speaker 1: like there are a couple of things that all of
Speaker 1: this patchwork of of um of Good Samaritan laws will
Speaker 1: will have in common basically two as this article states.
Speaker 1: One is that you can't be compensated for helping out.
Speaker 1: And that's a pretty literal reading of the law. I
Speaker 1: think it's meant to exempt emergency workers, paramedics, doctors, like
Speaker 1: they they've got their their whole own set of laws
Speaker 1: governing their actions or inactions, right, so to keep them
Speaker 1: from giving preferential treatment. I think it's mostly to say
Speaker 1: this is meant to um. This is this is my
Speaker 1: interpretation of it, UM. But from what I've seen with
Speaker 1: Good Samaritan laws, it's it's totally in the eye of
Speaker 1: the beholder. But the the that's to say, like, this
Speaker 1: covers non medical professionals, is who we're talking about, And
Speaker 1: to to define that, they're saying this is this covers
Speaker 1: somebody who isn't compensated for their assistance, and that's been
Speaker 1: transmuted into you can't be compensated for your assistance or
Speaker 1: else that that leaves you exposed to legal action later.
Speaker 1: So when you were sort of kidding around at the beginning, though,
Speaker 1: but if you saved, Let's say you perform the Heimli
Speaker 1: at a restaurant and the persons like, man, you just
Speaker 1: save my life. Here's a here's a finsky. Don't take
Speaker 1: that five dollar bill and also throw it back in
Speaker 1: their face and say this is what your life is worth,
Speaker 1: right exactly? And they say, yeah, I don't really love myself. Well,
Speaker 1: then then you introduced them to a good analyst and
Speaker 1: go about your day. Analysts. What is that? What do
Speaker 1: I New Yorker in the seventies, You sound like Carrie Green.
Speaker 1: Nobody says analyst anymore. It was weird. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what Bob Newhart was, was he? I think I
Speaker 1: think yeah, he did consider himself as an analyst. That
Speaker 1: seems like an antiquated term. Though, yes, now it's therapist,
Speaker 1: right or shrink Yeah yeah, shrink head shrinker, I think
Speaker 1: is the preferred term. Yeah, I don't know, I would
Speaker 1: have been in a while. Oh yeah, years. It's good.
Speaker 1: It's good. Good to go talk to people, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, yeah, but I got it all
Speaker 1: figured out now. Oh well, that's good. You're cured is
Speaker 1: what they call that. They cured me. I hope they
Speaker 1: gave your shrinking award. Do you know what the cure is?
Speaker 1: What is not really thinking about things too much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good, that's good advice. Now, I'm just kidding
Speaker 1: because people have real problems, but I never have had
Speaker 1: the real problems. Yeah yeah, yeah, but I think like
Speaker 1: even if you don't have like real problems, if you
Speaker 1: don't have like, you know, some sort of chemical imbalance
Speaker 1: or diagnosable condition, just about anybody can benefit from time
Speaker 1: to time to go just talk. It's not even necessarily
Speaker 1: the counselor helping us. Just being in a situation where
Speaker 1: you're talking out loud and walking through your problems to
Speaker 1: find out what you actually think. It's very helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I do that at my doctor and my
Speaker 1: dentist and they're like, dude, we don't want to hear this.
Speaker 1: Go see see an analyst. You're like, well, I know
Speaker 1: I'm knocking out two birds of once time. So uh
Speaker 1: all right, let's go over just a couple of these.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we said, they're they're different everywhere. But
Speaker 1: there was one other thing, chuck, Okay, So I said
Speaker 1: that there were two things in common, and one of
Speaker 1: them as you can't be competition. The other one, almost
Speaker 1: across the board with any any law you're gonna find
Speaker 1: is that you can't act recklessly, recklessly negligently. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: tough to get out. You would not hold up in court.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, give me my five dollars as your lawyer,
Speaker 1: or maybe that's your defense. You're like your honor, I
Speaker 1: can't even says and nigluch um. Yeah, those are two
Speaker 1: important uh factors for these laws for sure. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's what they all have in common generally, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. But from there, like if you go to Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: let's say, you're only um given protection if you are untrained,
Speaker 1: Like you're just a regular person, right, You're not a
Speaker 1: a medic let's say, or a doctor, and only if
Speaker 1: you're giving CPR or trying to stop blood laws. Right,
Speaker 1: that's weirdly specific. I've seen that, like, um, that that's
Speaker 1: that's you could say that that was the third thing
Speaker 1: that they all have in common, Like, if you're administering
Speaker 1: CPR or something really basic that any person would want
Speaker 1: to do or try to do, Um, you're probably protected
Speaker 1: by a good Samaritan law. Yeah, and defribrillators are covered
Speaker 1: in a lot of these laws. Since those have really
Speaker 1: gotten I guess just more common, like the you know,
Speaker 1: the and I looked into buying one of those. They're
Speaker 1: expensive though, Yeah, you looked into buying one. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: carry around with you, No, not to carry around, but
Speaker 1: to to have of like not in my car. I
Speaker 1: got you. Um, so you could yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: could help somebody stranding on the side of the road
Speaker 1: with a jumper cable or get their ticket going. Again.
Speaker 1: The key I've heard is that when you're when you're
Speaker 1: setting them up to be defibrillated, you have to shout
Speaker 1: hot stuff right before you engage it. I thought they
Speaker 1: would be like three or four hundred bucks. How much
Speaker 1: are they? I don't I mean thousands of dollars. I
Speaker 1: can't remember how many thousands, but it was enough to
Speaker 1: where I just kind of closed the browser and went
Speaker 1: and a coold News or something. Well, you know, God
Speaker 1: bless those malls in America having them every ten feet
Speaker 1: and keeping us all safe. Sure, I'm sure their insurance
Speaker 1: helps pay for that. I guess you, cynic Uh. Here's
Speaker 1: another one in Vermont. You can be fined actually if
Speaker 1: you are a bystander and don't do anything. I kind
Speaker 1: of love this one. Yeah, this is this is what
Speaker 1: I think the law should be. You know, get a
Speaker 1: penalty unless you're jumping in there. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: obviously not putting your own life in jeopardy. Like this
Speaker 1: is not like if you see somebody getting mugged you
Speaker 1: have to go wrestle the gun away from the guy,
Speaker 1: or jumping into the frozen Potomac River. Sure, but that
Speaker 1: if you see someone in need and you just keep
Speaker 1: walking by, you should you should suffer some sort of
Speaker 1: consequence for that. You should act um that. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a very slippery slope right here,
Speaker 1: because compelling people to act, that's that's a big that's
Speaker 1: a big infringement on personal liberty. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, come on, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have to invigorate somebody's humanity with a little bit of
Speaker 1: law here there, I'm kind of in favor of the UM.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite stories that I can ever see
Speaker 1: on any news program is when you see a group
Speaker 1: of people coming together to like, and saving people is
Speaker 1: great too, but like to pull a goat out of
Speaker 1: a river or something, and there's like the guy with
Speaker 1: the truck and another guy's like, I got rope, and
Speaker 1: this lady comes up and it's like I'm a goat whisperer. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they all like you see like six or eight
Speaker 1: strangers come together to to rescue like an animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they tied the best, they tied the not too
Speaker 1: tight and accidentally pull the goat in two and then
Speaker 1: they got susy. That's how it goes. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: Michigan just forget about it, like it is so convoluted
Speaker 1: and weird. In Michigan, UM, they protect people who declined
Speaker 1: to offer assistance, but then they also protect like what
Speaker 1: is it ski patrol um? What else? There's like three
Speaker 1: very weirdly specific If you're a block parent, which means
Speaker 1: you your house is designated as a safe place. You know,
Speaker 1: the safe place signs that you see on seven elevens
Speaker 1: and stuff. I never noticed. It's if you're a little
Speaker 1: kid and you some some stranger, danger guy in a
Speaker 1: trench coat is following you, you can run into a
Speaker 1: thing that has a safe ace and they will protect
Speaker 1: you and all the cops and call your parents. In Michigan,
Speaker 1: I guess you can volunteer as a person whose house
Speaker 1: is a safe place and you're you're exempted through Good
Speaker 1: Samaritan laws, right, but you show up and they're like,
Speaker 1: you're in a house state fan, right, you can't come
Speaker 1: in uh so potential as sisters, medical personnel block parent
Speaker 1: volunteers and National Ski Patrol in Michigan, or if you're
Speaker 1: giving CPR or using an emergency defibrillator. Again, I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty well. That's like covered almost across the board.
Speaker 1: That's like the one area that they just want to
Speaker 1: make sure that everyone once you know, we would jump
Speaker 1: in on. Yeah, I think so. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they make them so prominent
Speaker 1: in in public. I mean, it's not like you have
Speaker 1: to break glass and there's like a fire hose that
Speaker 1: you have to know how to get off and turn
Speaker 1: the thing on, like it's meant for the public to
Speaker 1: go grab and use, not just for emergency personnel, because
Speaker 1: using a defibrillator in a in a timely manner has
Speaker 1: such an impact on on the survival rate from a
Speaker 1: heart attack that you want people walking around knowing how
Speaker 1: to use one and ready to use one in in
Speaker 1: an emergency situation. Argentina, this is tricky. Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: uh face jail time for either putting a person in
Speaker 1: jeopardy or abandoning a person to their fate. It's a
Speaker 1: real fine line, it is, for sure. Like I think
Speaker 1: if you yeah, it is a tricky one. I went
Speaker 1: back and rewad it too, and I'm like, nope, that's
Speaker 1: it's a tricky one. But I'd like the idea of
Speaker 1: abandoning to them to their fate if they need help,
Speaker 1: like somebody on a mountain or something like that, and
Speaker 1: just being like sorry, chump and walking along. I like
Speaker 1: that idea that you you have to do something for them,
Speaker 1: you're saying, right, You like the idea of just saying, well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of in God's hands. Now. That's Michigan, Michigan
Speaker 1: protects that. Right. Should we take a break, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all right. Let's take a break, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about a very interesting case from California about fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago right after this. All right, dude, we're back and
Speaker 1: we're in California And during the ad break we got
Speaker 1: in the way back machine and it's two thousand four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wait, I was still living there. Oh yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna run into you. I've arranged it. I just didn't
Speaker 1: know you. I'm like, who's that guy? I got in
Speaker 1: touch with past Chuck and I said, you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to meet somebody special. You're like, just wait for that beard.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have one day a right, Like what, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I can't grow beard. Yeah, and he'll be like,
Speaker 1: well at least I got all my teeth. That checks out.
Speaker 1: Oh the salad days. Um. All right, So this case
Speaker 1: is really interesting. Uh. Lisa Torti and Alexandra Van Horne
Speaker 1: were makeup artists that worked together. Um, friendly acquaintances as
Speaker 1: co workers, but I didn't get the picture that they
Speaker 1: were like best buddies or anything. Yeah, we guess the
Speaker 1: lawsuit implies that they wanted so they went out as
Speaker 1: a as a group of not just those two, but
Speaker 1: a bunch of people from work went out for some
Speaker 1: drinks in the l A area. One of them, Alexandra
Speaker 1: Van Horn, was headed back and crashed her car pretty
Speaker 1: bad crash. I think it's like fort into a telephone bowl. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like all the air bags deployed. Uh. Lisa Torti
Speaker 1: was I saw this, got out of her car, saw smoke,
Speaker 1: saw liquid and was like, I think this, this car
Speaker 1: might explode. I need to do something quick, and pulled
Speaker 1: Alexandra Van Horn from the car, which seems like it
Speaker 1: had a hand in in paralyzing her. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: that's one thing you want to really be careful doing
Speaker 1: is moving somebody and you probably don't want to move
Speaker 1: them at all. But again, Lisa Torty thought that Alexandra
Speaker 1: Van Horne's car was about to blow up, so she
Speaker 1: decided that she was better off trying to get her
Speaker 1: out of the car, and in court, Van Horne said
Speaker 1: that Torty yanked her from the car like a rag
Speaker 1: doll um. Torty said, the smoke, the smoke, and and
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back on it, it's probably it was
Speaker 1: Annie Freeze on a hot hot motor. But even still
Speaker 1: she acted in good faith and so California's Good Samaritan laws,
Speaker 1: she said, you can't sue me. I was trying to
Speaker 1: help you, UM, in an emergency situation. Sorry, the Good
Speaker 1: Samaritan laws cover this. And by the way, I'm no
Speaker 1: longer speaking to you. Yeah, probably so. Uh. It went
Speaker 1: all the way to the California Supreme Court, where they
Speaker 1: ruled that UM she could sue her for end and
Speaker 1: co worker because protection at that time, at least for
Speaker 1: the Good Samaritan law was only for those administering medical care,
Speaker 1: not rescue care. Well, so the law said that it
Speaker 1: was emergency care, and the court interpreted that to me
Speaker 1: medical care, which was like what in the legislature even
Speaker 1: said like, no, that's not at all how we meant it. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: In fact, they amended the law the next year to
Speaker 1: say specifically medical or non medical emergency care. But that
Speaker 1: vagueness got UM got least a tority suit. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I was. It's hard to find out sometimes final results
Speaker 1: of legal cases. We've had that problem, I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot over the years. Yeah. The media they have
Speaker 1: a short attention span. Well, it's that and I think
Speaker 1: sometimes these things are just still dragging out. Oh really,
Speaker 1: you think it's still going on? I think so because
Speaker 1: I found an article from like three years ago, because
Speaker 1: I was just trying to find out what happened with
Speaker 1: the lawsuit, and apparently, um, the woman who pulled the
Speaker 1: woman being sued TORTI had two different insurance companies, one
Speaker 1: of which said I'm not getting involved in this, the
Speaker 1: other of which said, you know what I'm gonna We're
Speaker 1: gonna agree to defend you against the lawsuit. It was
Speaker 1: settled for four million dollars, and then the one insurance
Speaker 1: company that agreed to help defender sued. The other insurance
Speaker 1: company said, you got a pony up half of this,
Speaker 1: and um, the last thing I saw was a district
Speaker 1: court judge ruled for the defendants insurance company, in other words,
Speaker 1: the one that said I don't want any part of this.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay. But then it said, uh,
Speaker 1: an appellate panel reversed that decision on Wednesday. And that's
Speaker 1: literally the last thing I could find. Wow. Wow, that
Speaker 1: is still dragon on Holy Couch Chuck Research. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know. There may be something newer
Speaker 1: out there. But uh, there are probably tricks that legal
Speaker 1: scholars know that I don't know about researching this stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that say, Chuck, that that like
Speaker 1: an insurance company can just be like where your insurance company,
Speaker 1: but we're not, we're not touching this one. Well, it
Speaker 1: was complicated though, because it was it was insurance. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like just insurance for me walking around if I
Speaker 1: want to help someone. It was car insurance. So it
Speaker 1: was it all came down to whether or not it
Speaker 1: was considered a use of a car by her opening
Speaker 1: that door and unbuckling her seatbelt and pulling her out,
Speaker 1: whether that was using the car. I got very complicated,
Speaker 1: a little more sense though. It's just you know how
Speaker 1: like convoluted that stuff gets though. It does for sure,
Speaker 1: but that whole like so the whole legality of this
Speaker 1: whole thing um that that made that whole lesa torty
Speaker 1: in Alexandro van Horn case, I mean I heard about
Speaker 1: that when that was going on. Everybody heard about that
Speaker 1: case because it was like, well, wait a minute, she
Speaker 1: was trying to help and now she's getting sued and
Speaker 1: fire her friends fighting that whole kind of thing. That
Speaker 1: was two thousand four, and then two years later China
Speaker 1: started to rise as a great power of anti good
Speaker 1: samaritanism UM in a lot of different cases, and all
Speaker 1: of it started in two thousand six in the case
Speaker 1: of Pang You, who was a man who got off
Speaker 1: of a bus in China and saw that an older
Speaker 1: woman had fallen and um broken her hip, and so
Speaker 1: she had been trying to get on the bus. Paying
Speaker 1: You was coming off of the bus, and um he
Speaker 1: went to go help the lady. Well, the lady later
Speaker 1: said that he was the one who caused her to
Speaker 1: fall and sued him, and he was like, I'm just
Speaker 1: an innocent by stander. He was being a good samaritan
Speaker 1: helping this lady. Well, the the court said, no, Pang You.
Speaker 1: We we've decided that um you probably did cause the fall. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: why else would you have helped the lady. That's era
Speaker 1: and there's more nuance to it. There were there were
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Paying You said he was the
Speaker 1: first one off the bus. In the court said, well,
Speaker 1: then you were probably the person to bump into the
Speaker 1: lady and knock her down, and also why did you
Speaker 1: give her twenty you on um, which is about thirty
Speaker 1: bucks if if you didn't feel responsible, and then thirdly,
Speaker 1: if you were acting heroically, why didn't you go apprehend
Speaker 1: the person who knocked her down? Why would you go help?
Speaker 1: So there's a little more to it than just like
Speaker 1: nobody would possibly help someone out of the goodness of
Speaker 1: their hearts, so you're guilty. But that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I got played up in the popular media, both in
Speaker 1: China and in the rest of the world, and so
Speaker 1: paying you became this cautionary tale like if you see
Speaker 1: somebody hurt in the street, don't help them because they
Speaker 1: will sue you. And people started to do that, and
Speaker 1: so people in China until in a few really big cases,
Speaker 1: sensational cases, did just that. They stopped helping people who
Speaker 1: clearly needed help, and people were dying as a result. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they were. I mean, there's just one case
Speaker 1: I can't even talk about. Uh, but it was just awful,
Speaker 1: you know. People not helping people clearly in need became
Speaker 1: sort of an epidemic in China, uh, until they finally
Speaker 1: changed some law in what just last year, I think
Speaker 1: a national Good Samaritan law in two thousand and seventeen
Speaker 1: that does offer protections. But he's in that one article
Speaker 1: that uh, it was like it's out of hand in China.
Speaker 1: Now in the other way because this this one. Uh.
Speaker 1: Donald Clark, a law professor who actually specializes in Chinese
Speaker 1: law at g W said that in China you can
Speaker 1: like see someone choking in a restaurant and attempt a
Speaker 1: tracheotomy with a butter knife with no training and be
Speaker 1: covered and you won't can't be sued, which is I
Speaker 1: think everyone would agree that's that's a little too far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, you cannot be held liable
Speaker 1: for acting as a good samaritan, even if it's the
Speaker 1: most reckless, negligent thing you can imagine, trying something you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with at all, you can't be sued. And
Speaker 1: so some people said, well, not only does this article
Speaker 1: on this new law um cover it goes too far
Speaker 1: and covering people protecting people, It doesn't address the problem,
Speaker 1: which is this culture of distrust that's been kind of
Speaker 1: fostered by these judges who are ruling in favor of
Speaker 1: people who are accusing the good Samaritans that have helped
Speaker 1: them of actually causing their injury and creating this chilling
Speaker 1: effect and helping people. I mean people literally elderly people
Speaker 1: getting hit by cars and being left in the street
Speaker 1: as people walk around them, and then being hit by
Speaker 1: another car and killed later on, like a half hour later,
Speaker 1: Like this was happening, This is going on, and people
Speaker 1: wouldn't go anywhere near these people because they were afraid
Speaker 1: that they were going to get sued and and and
Speaker 1: it was mostly because judges um in in the court system,
Speaker 1: we're saying they were siding with people with zero evidence whatsoever,
Speaker 1: just basically on a suspicion of someone's good intentions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that original case when they said, uh, what
Speaker 1: was the man's name again? Paying you, paying you? They
Speaker 1: had no evidence whatsoever. It's not like it was on
Speaker 1: uh close caption television or anything like that. It was
Speaker 1: just like you said, the judge going, it seems to
Speaker 1: me like it's pretty weird that you would have helped
Speaker 1: had you not been the one that actually not dropped
Speaker 1: to begin with, right exactly. So, I mean it's good
Speaker 1: that China has this good Samaritan law, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a very broad law and it probably needs to be
Speaker 1: walked back a little bit. But um, they also need
Speaker 1: to go after the judges or the I guess kind
Speaker 1: of the sentiment or thought process of judges that kind
Speaker 1: of just says, why would you help somebody out if
Speaker 1: you weren't, if you weren't the one that caused the accident.
Speaker 1: Until they do that, and until they go after the
Speaker 1: the group um pengshi, which are basically crooks people who
Speaker 1: like lay down in front of cars and pretend they
Speaker 1: got hit um and then sue the people and are
Speaker 1: frequently found like they're ruled in favor of their case.
Speaker 1: Until that is rooted out, that people are still going
Speaker 1: to be distrustful of helping people who are in need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that even the van Horn case. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know she's trying to help, but like you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to move people, you know, like everyone kind of knows that,
Speaker 1: and this woman ended up paralyzed and if it was
Speaker 1: a direct result of that, then I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: it's a that's a tough one, you know. Well they
Speaker 1: say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like where that that lies. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I feel bad for both parties for sure. For
Speaker 1: sure because this the uh twrty it was legitimately trying
Speaker 1: to help. She wasn't like, well, let me do something
Speaker 1: that might really hurt my coworker further, She thought that
Speaker 1: car was going to blow up, you know, so let's
Speaker 1: get her out of there, right exactly. It wasn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, she'd always harbored some deep resentment of her,
Speaker 1: So this is their chance to paralyze her. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: not funny at all for the way that you said it.
Speaker 1: So there's another big push in good Samaritan laws in
Speaker 1: the United States. It's interesting how they're kind of like
Speaker 1: refined as as things go on, but there's this thread,
Speaker 1: the sentiment that runs through them that's like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: need to make sure that people aren't don't hesitate in
Speaker 1: helping their fellow, their fellow human in need. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of these, uh, I mean it's labeled as special
Speaker 1: interest good Samaritan laws, but these these are great, Like
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense, especially well they all do.
Speaker 1: But this one about the food donation um. In the
Speaker 1: mid ninety nineties, there was a realization that a lot
Speaker 1: of food was going to waste fourteen billion pounds specifically
Speaker 1: of food going to landfills when people in America needed
Speaker 1: that food, and uh, you know you've heard stories about
Speaker 1: grocery stores or can't be held liabel, so they just
Speaker 1: have to throw that stuff away. So they passed the
Speaker 1: Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which is to
Speaker 1: provide some protections in case you donate food and someone
Speaker 1: gets sick from eating that food, right exactly. So I
Speaker 1: remember back when when grocery stores did have to throw
Speaker 1: that away before that law, and it was just so
Speaker 1: wasteful and so just morally wrong. So they passed that
Speaker 1: one good year for passing laws, I guess. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there's even newer kind of push of Good Samaritan
Speaker 1: laws that are protecting college kids who drink too much
Speaker 1: even though they're under age. They might be worried, oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get expelled or kicked out of college if
Speaker 1: I call for help. And so apparently that some of
Speaker 1: them weren't calling for help, and so some universities, I
Speaker 1: think it's up to thirty two universities in thirty five
Speaker 1: states now have something called Lifeline or one Good Samaritan law,
Speaker 1: where if you call for help for yourself or for
Speaker 1: somebody else who's had too much to drink and it's
Speaker 1: like a medical emergency. You won't get in trouble for
Speaker 1: having been drinking under age. But it's laid the groundwork
Speaker 1: for um uh, like a larger law about opioid abuse
Speaker 1: that we really kind of need. That's a good Samaritan
Speaker 1: law for UM that that protects people who are calling
Speaker 1: for somebody who's overdosing on heroin. UM where under normal
Speaker 1: circumstances they might hesitate because they're on heroin themselves and
Speaker 1: they don't want to get busted for it. Yeah, what's uh.
Speaker 1: It's called an alex O one and this is uh
Speaker 1: basically it comes alast like an EpiPen now, and it's
Speaker 1: something that cops have in their emergency kits. And just
Speaker 1: like an EpiPen is something that a civilian can use.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have medical training. If someone is
Speaker 1: overdosed on an on heroin or some other kind of opioid,
Speaker 1: you just inject this thing and that can save their life.
Speaker 1: And so junkies don't want to call the ambulance or
Speaker 1: the cops or whatever, just the same as an underage
Speaker 1: college kid doesn't want to call the cops. So they're
Speaker 1: often described as medical amnesty laws. Uh and and it's great,
Speaker 1: you know, this is exactly and it's making a difference.
Speaker 1: So was one study in two thousand two at Cornell
Speaker 1: about the alcohol one and they said there was a
Speaker 1: rise from toft of um counseling sessions attended by students
Speaker 1: in two thousand four because students weren't afraid. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm nineteen years old or whatever and I need help,
Speaker 1: so they you know, it's it's shown that it's working.
Speaker 1: And I think the same as is going on with
Speaker 1: this uh uh an alexon drug. Right. Yeah, So like
Speaker 1: the anallexon, it kind of has its own protection where
Speaker 1: whether you're somebody who's on heroin or not, if you
Speaker 1: administer that you could be a medical professional. It's like
Speaker 1: such a new thing um that that they've they've realized
Speaker 1: they need a specific good Samaritan law for that to
Speaker 1: cover anybody who's administering um analex oone, like if they
Speaker 1: do some damage or whatever, they were still trying to help.
Speaker 1: But then also if you're like on heroin yourself just
Speaker 1: calling nine one one, you can have immunity in some
Speaker 1: states from getting busted for heroin for being on it yourself.
Speaker 1: So like Hey, we're gonna save you and you're under arrest, right,
Speaker 1: which I guess is is still in some states it's
Speaker 1: still a possibility, and you don't like, you don't want
Speaker 1: people worrying about whether they're going to get popped themselves
Speaker 1: and then saying, well, I can't really call for you know,
Speaker 1: shorty juju over here, which is I guess the heroin
Speaker 1: users name, you know, so that the heroin user who's overdosing,
Speaker 1: who would otherwise live, dies because they're the person they're
Speaker 1: shot up with, like, is too worried about getting busted themselves.
Speaker 1: Because the last thing a heroin addict or drug addict
Speaker 1: might do in the throes of that drug is thinking,
Speaker 1: let me call a cop or right, you know what,
Speaker 1: I need a police officer. They might help, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: they'd say, like as far as advice goes for good samaritans, Um,
Speaker 1: this article, you know counsels people to think sensibly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most states do have laws to protect people that if
Speaker 1: you're doing something reasonable to try and help, which all
Speaker 1: goes back to you know, the split second is kind
Speaker 1: of tough, but that all goes back to what you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: reasonable maneuvers to help somebody you know, Yeah, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily like, um, like, don't try the tricky otomy,
Speaker 1: right right, right? So yeah, so that kind of ties
Speaker 1: into a second point, like don't try things you're not
Speaker 1: trained to do, and it just kind of ties into
Speaker 1: reasonable Like, is is trying to administer CPR a reasonable
Speaker 1: thing if you come upon somebody who's not breathing, Yes,
Speaker 1: totally reasonable? Um is it? Is it, you know, unreasonable
Speaker 1: to try to like get their heart going by by
Speaker 1: pumping their arms up and down and accidentally dislocating the shoulder.
Speaker 1: It's probably not going to be protected by a good
Speaker 1: Samaritan law. Yeah, but how much can you get suited
Speaker 1: for for a broken collar bone? Probably a lot, especially
Speaker 1: if the person is like a ping pong player or
Speaker 1: a professional illustrator. Yeah, right, exactly. You like ping pong?
Speaker 1: I love it. We need to do an episode on
Speaker 1: ping pong. I love ping pong two. I'm surprised we
Speaker 1: never squared squared off. I am as well, Chuck, Well,
Speaker 1: we've never been in the same room as a ping
Speaker 1: pong table. That's that's that's what I was thinking. I
Speaker 1: was going to make a camp joke, but you beat me.
Speaker 1: To the truth. Uh, you got anything else? Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I do. There's one thing that came up if you
Speaker 1: don't mind talking about it, The sign felt. Do you
Speaker 1: remember how that final the final episode right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is like the least funny episode of Seinfeld ever,
Speaker 1: but it had like a weird message when when the
Speaker 1: gang gets gets put in jail for watching a guy
Speaker 1: I think it was Jonathan Pinnett get carjacked by somebody
Speaker 1: with a gun and just sitting there making fun of
Speaker 1: them while they're videotaping it, right, And that kind of
Speaker 1: raised the site of this It kind of ties into
Speaker 1: good Samaritan laws. A lot of people are like, can
Speaker 1: you actually is there any place in the country where
Speaker 1: you can get get in trouble for that kind of thing?
Speaker 1: And it turns out no, it's that kind of falls
Speaker 1: into that duty to act law, um where you are
Speaker 1: in some places like Vermont or I think in California,
Speaker 1: under some circumstances, you are required to report a crime,
Speaker 1: but you're not required to actually intervene. And that was
Speaker 1: like kind of that big point I made earlier at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the episode. That's a big distinction, right,
Speaker 1: and not only are you Um, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: required to interview. You're not even required to report the
Speaker 1: crime during the commission of their the crime. For most
Speaker 1: duty to act laws, you just can't walk away and
Speaker 1: pretend you never saw anything. That's the key. Um, that's
Speaker 1: where you will get prosecuted. So the Seinfeld gang probably
Speaker 1: would not have gone to jail. And this article that
Speaker 1: I read quotes a guy who is an attorney in
Speaker 1: San Diego. Um named somebody lists me, and I wish
Speaker 1: I could remember the guy's name. No, not Franz List,
Speaker 1: who is a great, great composer, but a l I
Speaker 1: s s. Yeah, his name was Peter List. He's a
Speaker 1: criminal lawyer from San Diego. Ended up in this article.
Speaker 1: He basically says, not only should they not have gone
Speaker 1: to jail, they provided very valuable evidence by recording the
Speaker 1: entire crime, So let him off the hook. Has there
Speaker 1: ever been a tougher show to end than sign Field.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, probably not, but they really chose
Speaker 1: as a very specific, unsatisfying way to do it. What
Speaker 1: about Sopranos? Everybody hated how that ended? Yeah I didn't. Uh.
Speaker 1: I loved the Sopranos, but then moved to l a
Speaker 1: during its run and didn't have TV, so I quit
Speaker 1: watching it. But I do remember all the hoopla. But
Speaker 1: SEINFELDT is just one of those I mean that the
Speaker 1: last episode stunk, but it's just a hard show to
Speaker 1: end because you can't. It was the most un sentimental
Speaker 1: show probably in TV history. Sure, and most shows have
Speaker 1: a finale that is highly sentimental, and you just you
Speaker 1: couldn't do that on Seinfeld. It would not have been
Speaker 1: true to the show. So I don't know what I
Speaker 1: would have done. It's a tough one. It is a
Speaker 1: tough one. Maybe it was a perfect ending and it
Speaker 1: just wasn't a great episode. You could make that case
Speaker 1: for sure. You know, I'd like to hear maybe if
Speaker 1: someone had a better idea. Okay, right, rewrite the Seinfeld finale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a hundreds and sixty characters are less twoot it
Speaker 1: to us or to forty? Now? What is that? It's
Speaker 1: weird anyway? Uh? I think that's the end of this episode.
Speaker 1: We kind of let this peter out to huh yep. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about good Samaritan laws,
Speaker 1: that's actually a tip. Go learn your state and or
Speaker 1: country's Good Samaritan laws, so you know what to do
Speaker 1: in your ever face with an emergency situation. And since
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for listener mail. Uh, this
Speaker 1: one's great. I'm just gonna call it great email. Uh. Guys,
Speaker 1: in the spirit of Thanksgiving, in this glass of wine
Speaker 1: I'm drinking, I want to reach out and tell you
Speaker 1: I'll thankful. I am for you. I've been listening to
Speaker 1: the show for a few years, and your comforting voices,
Speaker 1: light dad, humor, and interesting topics have become increasingly important
Speaker 1: to me. My brother passed away almost two years ago
Speaker 1: at the age of us, an incredible soul and would
Speaker 1: have loved your show. I had trouble falling asleep for
Speaker 1: a while and began playing your podcast when my mind
Speaker 1: was racing and I needed the distroy action. I fell
Speaker 1: asleep to many interesting topics for months, and I greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate your help through the sad times. Last year, I
Speaker 1: sailed from Seattle to San Diego with my uncle and father.
Speaker 1: This was the scariest and most exhilarating trip I've ever taken. Ever.
Speaker 1: We kept a watch system two hours on and four
Speaker 1: hours off. During my first two hour night watch alone,
Speaker 1: I was scared poop las with no land in sight
Speaker 1: in my life that's secured to the boat. I plugged
Speaker 1: in my headphones and listened to the Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know Selects Fecal Transplants episode. Midway through my watch, a
Speaker 1: pot of porpoises started following and playing with the boat.
Speaker 1: I could only spot their phosphorescence, but I was so
Speaker 1: darn happy sitting there in the cold and dark listening
Speaker 1: to you both talk about poop while watching the porpoises
Speaker 1: create tubes of glitter in the Pacific. Uh. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine that? Dude? That's amazing, and our voices didn't ruin it.
Speaker 1: I know. Uh, this brought me so much comfort in
Speaker 1: a time I'm of such great discomfort. Now you've heard
Speaker 1: it before, and at the risk of sounding sappy, your
Speaker 1: podcast brings comfort and joy to your listeners, and we
Speaker 1: appreciate you. My brother's birthdays tomorrow and I have been
Speaker 1: catching up on your latest episodes thinking about the time
Speaker 1: you help me get through, and I wanted to say
Speaker 1: thank you. Thanks for being there for me in a
Speaker 1: weird way, and thank you for your friendship and your
Speaker 1: jokes and your comfort. And that is Jane from Seattle. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Jane Thank you so much for letting us know that story.
Speaker 1: That's like the deer on the Tracks story that Will
Speaker 1: Wheaton hadn't stand by me. That's right. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: cool story. Yeah, it's a good one. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, like Jane did to
Speaker 1: let us know one of your coolest stories, you can
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