Court Opinion

ID: 9796036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:46:21.466373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:44:32.291422
License: Public Domain

BAXTER, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
Health and Safety Code section 1799.1021 states that “[n]o person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission.” (Italics added.) Nothing in this clear statement limits or qualifies the kind of emergency aid—medical or nonmedical—that an uncompensated lay volunteer may provide without fear of legal reprisal from the person he or she tried to help.
A statute’s plain language is a dispositive indicator of its meaning unless a literal reading would lead to absurd consequences the Legislature did not intend. (E.g., Miklosy v. Regents of University of California (2008) 44 Cal.4th 876, 888 [80 Cal.Rptr.3d 690, 188 P.3d 629]; Metcalf v. County of San Joaquin (2008) 42 Cal.4th 1121, 1131 [72 Cal.Rptr.3d 382, 176 P.3d 654]; Coalition of Concerned Communities, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles (2004) 34 Cal.4th 733, 737 [21 Cal.Rptr.3d 676, 101 P.3d 563].) The plain meaning of section 1799.102 does not produce absurd results; on the contrary, it implements sound and logical public policy. The statute protects from the threat of civil litigation a layperson who, acting as a “Good Samaritan,” reasonably perceived that another human being needed immediate emergency assistance and intervened, despite possible personal risk and danger, to provide it. The purpose, of course, is to encourage persons not to pass by those in need of *335emergency help, but to show compassion and render the necessary aid. There is no reason why one kind of lay volunteer aid should be immune, while another is not.
Yet the majority imposes an arbitrary and unreasonable limitation on the protection this statute affords to Good Samaritans. The majority rewrites section 1799.102 to insert the word “medical” at two crucial points where it does not appear—once before the word “care” and again before the word “emergency.” Thus, the majority concludes, the statute affords immunity only for emergency medical care rendered by an uncompensated layperson at the scene of a medical emergency.
Under the majority’s distorted statutory reading, an uncompensated lay volunteer—whether or not trained in the rudiments of first aid—is immune for any incompetent and injurious medical assistance he or she renders to a person in need of medical treatment, but is fully exposed to civil liability for emergency rescue or transportation efforts intended to prevent injury to an endangered victim in the first instance, or to ensure that a victim in need of immediate medical treatment can receive it.
Thus, in the majority’s view, a passerby who, at the risk of his or her own fife, saves someone about to perish in a burning building can be sued for incidental injury caused in the rescue, but would be immune for harming the victim during the administration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation out on the sidewalk. A hiker can be sued if, far from other help, he or she causes a broken bone while lifting a fallen comrade up the face of a cliff to safety, but would be immune if, after waiting for another member of the party to effect the rescue, he or she set the broken bone incorrectly. One who dives into swirling waters to retrieve a drowning swimmer can be sued for incidental injury he or she causes while bringing the victim to shore, but is immune for harm he or she produces while thereafter trying to revive the victim.
Here, the result is that defendant Lisa Torti has no immunity for her bravery in pulling her injured friend from a crashed vehicle, even if she reasonably believed it might be about to explode, though she would have been immune if, after waiting for someone else to undertake the physical and legal risk of rescue, she then caused harm by attempting to administer to the victim’s injuries at the roadside.
I cannot believe the Legislature intended results so illogical, and so at odds with the clear statutory language. I therefore respectfully dissent from the majority’s interpretation of section 1799.102.
*336In a grudging understatement, the majority admits section 1799.102 is “certainly susceptible” to the “plain language” interpretation that all unpaid volunteer emergency aid rendered in good faith at the scene of an emergency is immune. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 327.) Yet the majority raises numerous objections against this construction, even though it conforms both to the statutory language and to sound reason. None of the majority’s arguments is persuasive.
First, the majority points to the location of section 1799.102 in a statutory division (div. 2.5) of the Health and Safety Code, entitled the Emergency Medical Services System and the Prehospital Emergency Medical Care Personnel Act (§ 1797 et seq.; hereafter Act), that is primarily devoted to emergency medical services. This indicates, the majority concludes, that by using the term “emergency care” in section 1799.102, the Legislature meant only to immunize emergency medical care at the scene of a medical emergency.
However, it is well established that “ ‘[tjitle or chapter headings are unofficial and do not alter the explicit scope, meaning, or intent of a statute.’ ” (Wasatch Property Management v. Degrate (2005) 35 Cal.4th 1111, 1119 [29 Cal.Rptr.3d 262, 112 P.3d 647].) The Health and Safety Code itself contains an express codification of this principle. (§ 6 [“Division, part, chapter, article, and section headings do not in any manner affect the scope, meaning, or intent of the provisions of this code.”].)
Indeed, contrary to the conclusion the majority seeks to draw, the very fact that the statutes in division 2.5 refer so frequently and specifically to “emergency medical services” (see, e.g., §§ 1797.1, 1797.5, 1797.72, 1798.175, 1799.100, 1799.106, 1799.110, 1799.111)2 and “emergency medical care” (e.g., §§ 1797.274, 1799.110) (all italics added) suggests that omission of the word “medical” in the immunity provision at issue here was not inadvertent, but purposeful.
This omission makes eminent sense in context. While most of division 2.5 is concerned in detail with the organized provision of emergency medical services by public agencies, and by entities and individuals trained, certified, and employed in that particular field, section 1799.102 has both a broader and a narrower reach. It applies to uncompensated “emergency care” provided “at *337the scene of an emergency” by any “person,” regardless of the individual’s training in either emergency medical care or nonmedical emergency rescue procedures. {Ibid.) In this context, there is no reason to distinguish between medical and nonmedical assistance provided by the volunteer as the basis for immunity.
Moreover, despite its title, division 2.5, by its express terms, is not only concerned with the provision of emergency care of a strictly medical nature. As an apt case in point, section 1799.107 provides a qualified immunity from civil liability to public agencies and “emergency rescue personnel” for acts undertaken by such personnel, “within the scope of their employment to provide emergency services.” (Id., subd. (b), italics added.) Such “ ‘emergency services’ ” are defined to encompass acts in addition to the provision of emergency medical treatment, expressly including, “but . . . not limited to . . . rescue procedures and transportation, or other related activities necessary to insure the health or safety of a person in imminent peril.” (Id., subd. (e), italics added.)
The majority suggests, however, that by making section 1799.107’s broad definition of “emergency services”—which clearly includes both medical and nonmedical emergency aid—applicable “[fjor purposes of this section” {id., subd. (e)), the Legislature signaled its intent that a strictly medical definition of “emergency care” should apply elsewhere in the statutory scheme. Such is not the case.
The legislative history of section 1799.107 indicates a much narrower purpose, one not at all inconsistent with the plain meaning of section 1799.102. As originally adopted in 1980 (Stats. 1980, ch. 1260, § 7, p. 4261 et seq.), the Act included section 1799.102 in its current form, but did not include section 1799.107. As to emergency personnel in particular, the only statutory tort immunities at that time were contained in Government Code section 850.4, which immunized public employees and entities for injury (other than motor vehicle injury) caused while fighting fires, or by the condition of fire protection equipment or facilities, and in section 1799.106 (part of the Act), which then, as now, provided a qualified immunity to law enforcement officers, firefighters, and certain certified emergency medical technicians for “emergency medical services” provided “at the scene of an emergency.” (Italics added.)
Thereafter, a Court of Appeal decision held that Government Code section 850.4 provided an immunity only for firefighting activities, and thus did not *338immunize firefighters who had rescued a camper pinned under a fallen tree. (Lewis v. Mendocino Fire Protection Dist. (1983) 142 Cal.App.3d 345, 346-347 [190 Cal.Rptr. 883].) In response, the Legislature adopted section 1799.107 (Stats. 1984, ch. 275, § 1, pp. 1462-1463), specifying that all “emergency rescue personnel,” including firefighters, have a qualified immunity for both first aid and medical service at the scene of an emergency and all other emergency rescue and transportation activities necessary to ensure the well-being of an endangered person.
Legislative history documents make clear that section 1799.107’s purpose was simply to countermand the holding of Lewis. (See, e.g., Sen. Com. on Judiciary, analysis of Sen. Bill No. 1120 (1983-1984 Reg. Sess.) as amended July 1, 1983, pp. 2-3; Assem. Com. on Judiciary, analysis of Sen. Bill No. 1120 (1983-1984 Reg. Sess.) as amended Aug. 16, 1983, p. 1.) There is no indication of any legislative intent to imply that “emergency care,” as used in section 1799.102, conferred immunity on uncompensated lay volunteers for a narrower range of emergency aid at the scene of an emergency. As indicated above, there would be no logical reason to do so.3
The majority stresses that a major purpose of the Act is to maximize the public availability of training in emergency medical services, and to encourage laypersons to obtain such training so they can assist others at the scene of a medical emergency. (§§ 1797.5, 1799.100.) This general policy suggests, in the majority’s view, that the Legislature sought only to immunize such emergency medical assistance.
But the declared immunity is for “emergency care,” not “emergency medical care,” and it simply is not linked to the emergency assister’s completion of emergency medical training. The immunity applies regardless of whether the uncompensated layperson rendering assistance has been trained in emergency first aid. Thus, there is no basis to infer that the Legislature intended a quid pro quo—a limited immunity in return for the person’s completion of a specified kind of training program.
*339Indeed, any direct connection that previously existed in the legislative scheme among emergency medical training, emergency medical assistance, and the immunity for “emergency care” has been severed. As the majority notes, former section 1767, the predecessor of section 1799.102, specifically provided that “[i]n order to encourage people to participate in emergency medical services training programs and to render emergency medical services to others, no person who in good faith rendered] emergency care at the scene of an emergency” would be civilly hable for such actions undertaken in good faith. (Former § 1767, as added by Stats. 1978, ch. 130, § 8, p. 345.)
But as the majority must also acknowledge, the Legislature omitted the introductory “[i]n order to” phrase from section 1799.102, as adopted in 1980. The current immunity provision, unlike its predecessor, contains no language suggesting that the narrow purpose of the immunity is to encourage public participation in emergency medical service training, or to render emergency aid that is specifically medical in nature.4
The inference thus arises that no such link is now intended. We are left with the logic that medical or nonmedical emergency aid may be the priority need in a particular emergency situation. Activities of a nonmedical nature may be essential in order to save a victim from injuries that would require medical attention, or to place an injured victim in a position where medical care can be administered. All such actions thus deserve equal encouragement, and there is no reason to believe the Legislature thought otherwise when it adopted section 1799.102. If actual training in emergency medical services is not a prerequisite of immunity for uncompensated laypersons who provide emergency aid—and section 1799.102 makes clear that it is not—then there is no reason to construe the clear and unqualified immunity for “emergency care” to refer only to emergency medical care.
Next, the majority suggests that, for purposes of section 1799.102, the “scene of an emergency” at which the statutory immunity applies has a special and limited meaning. The majority points to the definitional portion of the Act, which includes a section, far removed from section 1799.102, defining an “emergency” as “a condition or situation in which an individual has a need for immediate medical attention, or where the potential for such need is perceived by emergency medical personnel or a public safety agency.” (§ 1797.70.)
*340But the Act makes clear that its definitions apply only “[u]nless the context otherwise requires.” (§ 1797.50.) That exception must apply here, for the definition set forth in section 1797.70 makes little sense in the context of section 1799.102.
Section 1797.70’s definition of “emergency” well suits those portions of the Act dealing with trained emergency medical personnel and the emergency medical services they furnish. However, if applied literally to section 1799.102, this definition would greatly undermine the incentive for uncompensated laypersons, as first responders, to proffer even emergency medical assistance. By its terms, section 1799.102 purports to encourage any “person,” acting in “good faith,” to provide necessary emergency help, and it does not require that the volunteer possess any particular training or expertise. Yet, under section 1797.70’s definition of “emergency,” section 1799.102 would afford immunity to a good faith lay volunteer only if his or her untrained perception of a need for immediate medical attention proved, in hindsight, to be correct, or if the volunteer waited for public agency representatives or emergency medical personnel to arrive and perceive such a need.
This cannot be what section 1799.102 intended. It seems more sensible to infer that, in section 1799.102, “emergency” has its normal, commonsense meaning as a sudden occurrence or unexpected situation that demands immediate action. (See, e.g., Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dict. (11th ed. 2004) p. 407, col. 1; Webster’s 3d New Intemat. Dict. (2002 ed.) p. 741, col. 2; 5 Oxford English Dict. (2d ed. 1989) p. 176, col. 1; American Heritage Dict. (2d college ed. 1985) p. 448, col. 2.)
The majority notes that section 1799.102, which immunizes “emergency care at the scene of an emergency,” does itself refer to “medical care” at one point, when it provides that “[t]he scene of an emergency shall not include emergency departments and other places where medical care is usually offered.” From this, the majority infers that “emergency care” and “medical care” are equivalent terms within the section, and that the “scene of an emergency” means the scene of a medical emergency other than an emergency medical care facility.
Again, however, the inference is not persuasive. Section 1799.102’s obvious and logical purpose is to encourage volunteers, even if untrained, to render whatever immediate aid appears necessary at an emergency scene where no other help may be available. Consistent with that aim, the Legislature may well have seen no need to immunize a lay volunteer for emergency *341aid of any kind given at a place devoted to the provision of emergency medical care. An emergency occurring at such a location is most likely to be medical. Personnel trained to respond to such an emergency are readily at hand, and any response is best left to them. Indeed, the facility’s staff is likely to be better trained and equipped than a lay volunteer to handle even the nonmedical aspects of an emergency occurring at such a scene.
The majority asserts that if section 1799.102 were construed to provide immunity for both medical and nonmedical emergency care, the statute would render several other immunity provisions superfluous. But a close examination of the statutes the majority cites does not support this conclusion. Section 1799.107 affords “public entities]” and “emergency rescue personnel” a qualified immunity when they provide “emergency services” (id., subd. (b)), but the immunity does not apply when their actions were performed with gross negligence (ibid.). Thus, emergency rescue personnel, unlike the unpaid volunteers protected by section 1799.102, are held to minimal standards of care in keeping with their training and their compensated professional status.
The immunity in Government Code section 50086, also cited by the majority, extends beyond the scene of an emergency when the person immunized has first aid training and was asked to participate in a search and rescue operation. Similarly, the immunity provided by Harbors and Navigation Code section 656, subdivision (b) applies to the peculiar dangers of boating and marine navigation, but it is not strictly confined to “emergency” situations.
Finally, the majority insists we should not lightly imply a broad exception to the common law rule that one who voluntarily comes to the aid of another is liable for his or her negligence in doing so. I do not find this premise a persuasive reason for ignoring the plain language of section 1799.102.
At the outset, I dispute the majority’s suggestion that an interpretation of section 1799.102 to include both medical and nonmedical “emergency care at the scene of an emergency” would “largely gut” the common law rule. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 333.) The rule applies, of course, in every case where one person decides to come to the aid of another, while section 1799.102 applies only to emergency aid at an emergency scene. Further, I submit, the emergency to which the statute applies must be one that would be perceived as such by a reasonable person who confronts the circumstances.
In such extreme situations, where prompt aid by a first responder may be the difference between life and death, the Legislature has every reason to be *342concerned that the harshness of the common law rule would discourage citizens from providing necessary emergency assistance to their neighbors. Thus, the Legislature could well conclude that it should immunize persons willing, under such stressful and potentially dangerous circumstances, to provide, without compensation, any form of help that might serve to alleviate the emergency.
As I have indicated, the majority’s interpretation creates a less rational exception to the common law rule, because it would immunize lay volunteers only for the very kinds of help—i.e., medical assistance in medical emergencies—that most clearly require special training and expertise such persons are unlikely to possess. I am not convinced the Legislature had such an aim, contrary to the plain language it used in section 1799.102.
I therefore conclude that this statute protects from civil liability any person who, without compensation, renders emergency assistance of any kind during a situation he or she reasonably perceives to be an emergency. Accordingly, I believe, defendant Torti could not be denied summary judgment under section 1799.102 simply for the reason that any emergency assistance she rendered to plaintiff Alexandra Van Horn at the scene of the accident was not “medical” in nature.
On the other hand, I am not persuaded that defendant Torti has satisfied all the prerequisites for immunity under section 1799.102. The statute requires that the assistance must have been given “at the scene of an emergency.” (Ibid.) Counsel for plaintiffs suggested at oral argument that there were factual disputes raising questions about whether defendant Torti actually and reasonably believed there was an “emergency” situation that required her to extricate plaintiff Van Horn from the accident vehicle before qualified emergency rescue personnel arrived at the scene to undertake that task. I agree with this assessment.
As the majority recounts, “Torti testified at deposition that she saw smoke and liquid coming from [the] vehicle, and she removed plaintiff [Van Horn] from tíie vehicle because she feared [it] would catch fire or ‘blow up.’ . . . Others testified, on the other hand, that there was no smoke or any other indications that the vehicle might explode and that Torti put [Van Horn] down immediately next to the car.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 325.) These ambiguities raise, in my view, triable issues whether Torti rendered, or actually and reasonably believed she was rendering, “emergency care at the scene of an emergency.” (§ 1799.102, italics added.)
*343Accordingly, I conclude defendant Torti was not entitled to summary judgment under the auspices of section 1799.102.5 On that basis, I, like the majority, would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.
Chin, J., and Corrigan, J., concurred.
The petition of respondent Lisa Torti for a rehearing was denied February 11, 2009. Baxter, J., Chin, J., and Corrigan, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 All further unlabeled statutory references are to the Health and Safety Code.

 Section 1797.72 defines “ ‘[e]mergency medical services,’ ” for purposes of division 2.5 of the Health and Safety Code, to mean “the services utilized in responding to a medical emergency.” (Italics added.) As the majority indicates, the Act does not define the distinct term “emergency care.”

 The majority posits that it was logical for the Legislature to immunize a broader range of emergency aid in section 1799.107 than in section 1799.102, because the former statute governs trained emergency service personnel, while the latter applies to any person. But any suggestion that the Legislature intended greater immunity for trained personnel is belied by the fact that section 1799.102 offers absolute immunity for “good faith” “emergency care” rendered by any “person” at an emergency scene, while section 1799.107—similarly to several other immunity statutes covering trained emergency personnel—affords only a qualified immunity that does not extend to acts, medical or nonmedical, performed by emergency service personnel “in bad faith or in a grossly negligent manner.” {Id., subd. (b); see also discussion, post.)

 The majority suggests the language that appeared in former section 1767, but was deleted from section 1799.107, was simply “moved” to section 1797.5. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 332.) To be sure, section 1797.5 states a legislative intent to encourage the training of persons “to assist others at the scene of a medical emergency.” What is critical, however, is that this policy is no longer stated as the purpose of the immunity granted in section 1799.102 to any “person” who renders “emergency care at the scene of an emergency.”

 The majority asserts there are no triable issues against Torti as to whether she acted at “the scene of an emergency,” because there is no dispute that Van Horn, having been injured in the accident, was in immediate need of medical attention. This conclusion, however, flows from the majority’s erroneous premise that “the scene of an emergency,” for purposes of section 1799.102, is any situation, but only a situation, in which someone has the need for immediate medical help. If, as I believe, the purpose of section 1799.102 is to immunize generally a good faith “emergency” response to an “emergency” situation, then “the scene of an emergency” must be construed as a situation calling for the particular kind of emergency response that was provided.