Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Are good samaritan laws effective?

Episode Date: July 3, 2021

Good samaritan laws have been around for many years, helping to provide legal protections for people who try to help other people. But do they work? Listen to this classic episode and decide for yourself today! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's selects, I've chosen how Good Samaritan laws work. We dive into the

weird, wacky, wild, extremely patchwork world of Good Samaritan laws, laws that are meant to protect people who lend aid or help to other people in need. Sometimes those people in need are not too happy with the help that they get, and it creates all sorts of problems. So check out this really interesting episode and this week's select. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, just a trio of helpful types who like to go around the world and escort people through

crosswalks and get sued for it. Escorting someone through a busy intersection against the light. Right, and then you get to the other side and hold out your hand and say, lay some bread on me, sucker. All these are bad ideas. They really are. They really are, but I mean, we're full of those, aren't we, Chuck? Yeah. I mean, just brimming with them. That's our logline. 10 plus years of bad ideas. Or, oh, God, you've been listening to us this whole time. Are you crazy? Oh, boy. So you're feeling pretty good about this one because I got to tell you I am.

Yeah. I mean, if folks listen to our, I think, dare I say, it was a good episode on the very sad case of Kitty Genovese in New York. That was a good episode. You can go back and listen to that, and that's a pretty good setup because in that, just to recap very quickly, in the mid-60s, a young woman was raped and killed in a very busy area of New York City, and it was very famous because many, many people supposedly heard the attack, watched the attack, perhaps didn't do anything, made the news, and created something that they study still today in psychology classes called the bystander effect.

Yeah. This idea of responsibility diffusion, where if you have a bunch of people standing around, no one, everybody just assumes somebody else will help and they don't help. Yeah. Joshua Clark or some help? Sure. Leave it up to him. And I'm sitting there like, well, obviously Chuck's going to help. He's a better person than me. And then we both just stay in there and do nothing. Yeah. In the meantime, Jerry's just laying there with like a jolly rancher in her throat. Right. But everybody knows she can't talk anyway, so she can't call for help. It's very hard to tell sometimes if Jerry's in need of assistance or if she's just being Jerry.

Right. Or if she even exists. However, our article says that the bystander effect in this case in particular led to the first Good Samaritan laws in our country. Yeah. That is not true because two years before that, right here in Georgia, our first laws went into effect. Yeah. The one I found that was the earliest was in 1959. Yeah. Five years before Kenny Genevies was murdered. And that was in California. And that protected doctors who were administering aid in emergency

situations. Those hippie liberal elitists out there. Right. The left coast. But it's a weird thing to tie together the bystander effect and Good Samaritan laws because they don't actually go together. They're not that you, like you want them to fit together, but when you lay them side by side, you're like, oh, these are, these are two different types of sea monkeys. I thought they were husband and wife, but they're not. Oh, I see the correlation. I want to. My brain just won't quite make the connection. Like if someone had raced down to help Kenny Genevies and render her aid and not been a bystander,

then they could, you know, that falls into the Good Samaritan laws. It does. But really it falls more under like the duty to act laws. Like you'll get in trouble if you, if you are just a bystander, if you don't do something, whereas a Good Samaritan law basically says if you do do something and you help Kenny Genevies or somebody who's in trouble and you make their situation worse, you can't be sued for, for rendering aid because you were acting in good faith. So it's kind of there, but it's not quite, it doesn't click. I got you. You know what I'm saying? I hear you. All right. Okay. I just really wanted to get that off of my chest.

Well, so yeah, you just kind of said it. Like those, those laws are in place now as protections generally for American. They happen all over the world. We'll talk about a few of the laws here and there, but all 50 states and Washington DC, the, the District of Columbia have some sort of laws on the books that, that you can basically be protected potentially and not held responsible for your actions, even if they cause harm. But because it's state law, if you're not American, I'm not sure how it works in all countries, but they, the, the laws in from state to state on the same thing can vary wildly. Yeah. And certainly in this case. It's what they call a patchwork of state laws in need of a federal law for sure.

Yeah. For sure. So because there's so many different laws in so many different states, you know, if the actions that you, you perform in one state might get you, you know, it might get your mug on the front page of the paper being celebrated. And in another state, your mugs on the front page of the paper, because you just got sued, you know. So we'll, we'll dive into that a little more, but first let's talk about where the, the name for the laws come from Chuck. Yeah. I remember this story from my church going days as a kid that really stood out to me back then because well, it's in Luke. And the story is, is that a Jewish man was assaulted and robbed on the road and left for dead basically. And some people passed by without

rendering aid a Jewish priest and a Levite, which is an assistant priest, basically, or assistant to the priest. Do you have the impression that the priest and the Levite were together or that the, the priest passed and then at some point later on, the Levite passed? You know what? This is going back a lot of years, dude. But if my memory is telling me that they were two separate things. Awesome. Okay. I knew that question would pay off. But I might be wrong, but my, my old, I still have some old church memories rattling around in this dusty noggin. You just saw like smoke come out of my ears. I thought that was flour. Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, I'm gluten free though. Oh, are you? No. Emily is so, but by default,

I sometimes am. Right. Sure. No, I know what you mean. You know how that goes. But finally, as the story goes, a Samaritan that is a person from Samaria who were bitter enemies of the Jews came by and what did he do? He said, Hey, buddy, you look like you're having a pretty rotten day. Let me help you out. That's right. And he did. He not only said, here, let me, let me pick you up and get you out of this dusty road. I'm going to take you to an inn. And not only am I going to do that, I'm going to pay for your room at the inn. And then I'm going to say, I bid you a good day and good health. Adios, enemy. And he did. Imagine this, Chuck, this good Samaritan story. It's entirely possible that this actually took place,

that this is a real story that happened, right? It's not just a parable. Sure, it may have. Imagine if you were that guy, that Samaritan who did this thing, this act of goodwill. And 2000 years later, people around the world are still talking about it. How great would that be? Yeah, like 20 minutes after our show ends, no one's going to talk about it. Right. It'll be just like all of the talk shows we've been on. It's the kiss of death that we have. But yeah, for sure. I mean, even if you are like the most atheistic, agnostic human on earth, you've heard of the story of the good Samaritan. It's just one of those things. It is transcended religion into pop culture. Yeah. And I had never known that at

the time, like you said, the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. And I looked it up. They really, really did not like each other. It wasn't just like over religious stuff. It was over political stuff too, and how those things intertwined. So they really did not get along. So not only did this guy help somebody in need, he helped an enemy in need. So I think he does deserve to be commemorated for eons over that. Sure. But that's where the name of the law comes from. Good Samaritan laws are when you stop and help somebody, whether it's your enemy or your friend in an emergency situation, typically, you should not be penalized if your good intentions cause further harm. Right. Which seems very much like a no brainer, but it is complicated.

The more you read into this stuff, the more you're like, man, there's a lot of nuance to the variations of these laws. Yeah. The more you read into it, the more you're like, I am going to end up second guessing myself the next time I'm faced with an emergency situation. Like I hadn't thought about it before, but it's like, yeah, you can totally get sued for helping somebody out depending on where you are. Yeah. I've never come across this, not even close. What an emergency situation? Yep. I have, I have. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I was one of many at an accident. I witnessed the accident. It was like one of those things where you see it happening, you just see it in slow motion and you're just like trying to will it to stop with your body

and it doesn't work. It was a man who got t-boned by another car that he didn't see coming. And I was one of the people on the scene kind of helping out, but it didn't even occur to me that man could be like, these people hurt me, you know, in helping. I didn't touch the guy or anything like that, but I mean other people were and, you know, we called for help and all of that. So, I think we did it about as good as you can, but nothing about that situation was like, well, I need to, I need to watch out for my legal exposure here. Right. Or Google something real quick. Like where, what state am I in? Let me just check out what's going on. Yep. As this like, you know, person is bleeding in the street. Right. Exactly. But it is nuanced and, and

after reading some of these examples, I, you know, I get both sides of the coin. For sure. So, I mean, for example, like there are a couple of things that all of this patchwork of, of, of Good Samaritan laws will, will have in common. Basically two, as this article states, one is that you can't be compensated for helping out. And that's a pretty literal reading of the law. I think it's meant to exempt emergency workers, paramedics, doctors, like they, they've got their whole own set of laws governing their actions or inactions. Right. So to keep them from giving preferential treatment. I think it's mostly to say this is meant to, this is, this is my interpretation of it.

But from what I've seen with Good Samaritan laws, it's, it's totally in the eye of the beholder. But they, the, that's meant to say like, this covers non-medical professionals is who we're talking about. And to, to define that, they're saying, this is, this covers somebody who isn't compensated for their assistance. And that's been transmuted into, you can't be compensated for your assistance or else that, that leaves you exposed to legal action later. So when you were sort of kidding around at the beginning though, but if, if you saved, let's say you performed the Heimlich at a restaurant and the person's like, man, you just saved my life. Here's a, here's a Thinsky. Don't take that $5 bill. No. And also throw it back

in their face and say, this is what your life is worth. Right. Exactly. And they say, yeah, I don't really love myself. Well, then, then you introduce them to a good analyst and go about your day. Sure. Analyst. What is that? What am I, a New Yorker in the 70s? You sound like Kerry Green. Nobody says analyst anymore. It was weird. I think that's what Bob Newhart was. Was he? I think, I think, yeah, he did consider himself an analyst. That seems like an antiquated term though. Yes. Now it's therapist, right? Or shrink. Yeah. Yeah. Shrink, head shrinker, I think is the preferred term. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't been in a while. Oh yeah. Ah, years. It's good. Yeah. Good to go talk to people. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I got it all figured

out now. Oh, well that's good. Your cured is what they call that. Yeah, they cured me. I hope they gave your shrink an award. Yeah. Do you know what the cure is? What? Is not really thinking about things too much. Yeah, that's a good advice. No, I'm just kidding because people have real problems, but I never had the real problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think like even if you don't have like real problems, if you don't have like, you know, some sort of chemical imbalance or a diagnosable condition, just about anybody can benefit from time to time to go. Absolutely. Just talk. Yeah. It's not even necessarily the counselor helping you. It's just being in a situation where you're talking out loud and talking through your problems to find out what you actually think

it's very helpful. Yeah. I mean, I do that at my doctor and my dentist and they're like, dude, we don't want to hear this. Go see an analyst. You're like, well, no, I'm knocking out two birds with one stone. So, all right, let's go over just a couple of these. I mean, like we said, they're different everywhere, but there was one other thing, Chuck. Okay. So I said that there were two things in common and one of them is you can't be compensated. Oh, sure. The other one, almost across the board with any, any law you're going to find is that you can't act recklessly, recklessly or negligently. Wow, that's tough to get out. You would not hold up in court. No. I'd be like, give me my $5 as your lawyer. Or maybe that's your defense. You're like, your honor,

I can't even say, yeah, those are two important factors for these laws for sure. Yeah. Like, that's, that's what they all have in common generally, right? That's right. But from there, like if you go to Oklahoma, let's say, you're only given protection. If you are untrained, like you're just a regular person, right? You're not a medic, let's say, or a doctor. And only if you're giving CPR or trying to stop blood loss, right? That's weirdly specific. I've seen that, like, that that's, that's, you could say that that was the third thing that they all have in common. Like if you're administering CPR or something really basic that any person would want to do or try to do, you're probably protected by a good Samaritan law. Yeah. And

defibrillators are covered in a lot of these laws since those have really gotten, I guess, just more common, like the, you know, the, and I looked into buying one of those. They're expensive, though. Yeah. You looked into buying one. Yeah. Just carry around with you? No, not to carry around, but to, to have, like not in my car. I got you. So you could, I mean, you could help somebody stranded on the side of the road with a jumper cable or get their ticker going again. The key I've heard is that when you're, when you're setting them up to be defibrillated, you have to shout hot stuff right before you engage it. I thought they would be like 300 or 400 bucks. How much are they? I don't, I mean, thousands of dollars. Oh, really? I can't remember how many thousands, but it was

enough to where I just kind of closed the browser and went and looked at it. Ain't it cool news or something? Well, you know, God bless those malls in America for having them every 10 feet and keeping us all safe. Sure. I'm sure their insurance helps pay for that. I guess you're cynic. Here's another one in Vermont. You can be fined actually if you are a bystander and don't do anything. I kind of love this one. Yeah. This is, this is what I think the law should be. You know, get a penalty unless you're jumping in there. Yeah. And I mean, obviously not putting your own life in jeopardy. Like this is not like if you see somebody getting mugged, you have to like go wrestle the gun away from the guy or jumping into the frozen Potomac River. Sure.

But that if you see someone in need and you just keep walking by, you should, you should suffer some sort of consequence for that. You should act. I mean, this is a, this is a very slippery slope right here because compelling people to act. That's, that's a big, that's a big infringement on personal liberty. Yeah. But at the same time, it's kind of like, come on. Yeah. You know, if you have to invigorate somebody's humanity with a little bit of law here or there, I'm kind of in favor of that. One of my favorite stories that I can ever see on any news program is when you see a group of people coming together to like, and saving people is great too, but like to pull a goat out of a river or something.

And there's like the guy with the truck and another guy's like, I got rope and this lady comes up and's like, I'm a goat whisperer. Right. And they all like, you see like six or eight strangers come together to, to rescue like an animal. Yeah. But they tied the, they tied the knot too tight and accidentally pull the goat in too. And then the goat sews. Yep. That's how it goes. And then Michigan, just forget about it. Like it is so convoluted and weird in Michigan. Yeah. They protect people who declined to offer assistance, but then they also protect like, what is it? Ski patrol. Yeah. What else? There's like three very weirdly specific. If you're a block parent, which means that you, your house is designated as a safe place,

you know the safe place signs that you see on 7-Elevens and stuff. I've never noticed those. It's if you're a little kid and some, some stranger danger guy in a trench coat is following you, you can run into a thing that has a safe place. I've never noticed those. And they will protect you and call the cops and call your parents. In Michigan, I guess you can volunteer as a person who's house is a safe place. Oh, cool. And you're, you're exempted through good Samaritan laws. Right. But you show up and they're like, you're in a house, state fan. Right. You can't come in. So potential assistors, medical personnel, block parent volunteers, and national ski patrol in Michigan. Or if you're giving CPR or using an emergency defibrillator.

Again, I think that's pretty well. That's like covered almost across the board. That's like the one area that they just want to make sure that everyone wants, you know, would jump in on. Yeah, I think so. And I think that's one of the reasons why they make them so prominent in public. I mean, it's not like you have to break glass and there's like a fire hose that you have to know how to get off and turn the thing on. Like it's meant for the public to go grab and use not just for emergency personnel because using a defibrillator in a timely manner has such an impact on the survival rate from a heart attack that you want people walking around knowing how to use one and ready to use one in an emergency situation.

Argentina, this is tricky. Yeah. You could face jail time for either putting a person in Jeopardy or abandoning a person to their fate. That's a real fine line. It is for sure. Like I think if you, yeah, it is a tricky one. I went back and reread it too. And I'm like, nope, that's, it's a tricky one for sure. But I'd like the idea of abandoning to them to their fate if they need help, like somebody on a mountain or something like that. Yeah. And just being like, sorry, chump and walking along. I like that idea that you have to do something for them. Oh, okay. I thought you were saying, like the idea of just saying, well, it's kind of in God's hands.

No, that's Michigan. Michigan protects that. Right. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's man. All right. Let's take a break and we're going to talk about a very interesting case from California about 15 years ago, right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush, boyband or each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking,

this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, dude, we're back and we're in California. And during the ad break, we got on the way back machine and it's 2004. Yeah. Oh, wait, I was still living there. Oh, yeah. We're going to run into you. I've arranged it.

I just didn't know you. I'm like, who's that guy? I got in touch with past Chuck and I said, you're going to want to meet somebody special. You're like, just wait for that beard you're going to have one day. I'm like, what? I don't, I can't grow a beard. Yeah. And he'll be like, well, at least I got all my teeth. That checks out. Oh, the salad days. All right. So this case is really interesting. Lisa Torti and Alexandra Van Horn were makeup artists that worked together. Friendly acquaintances as coworkers, but I didn't get the picture that they were like best buddies or anything.

Yeah, I would guess the lawsuit implies that they weren't. So they went out as a group of not just those two, but a bunch of people from work, went out for some drinks in the LA area. One of them, Alexandra Van Horn was headed back and crashed her car, a pretty bad crash. I think it was like 45 miles an hour into a telephone bowl. Yeah, really? Yeah. Geez. Like all the airbags deployed. Lisa Torti was, I saw this, got out of her car, saw smoke, saw liquid and was like, I think this car might explode and need to do something quick and pulled Alexandra Van Horn from the car, which seems like it had a hand in paralyzing her. Yeah. I mean, that's one thing you want to really be careful doing

is moving somebody and you probably don't want to move them at all. But again, Lisa Torti thought that Alexandra Van Horn's car was about to blow up. So she decided that she was better off trying to get her out of the car. And in court, Van Horn said that Torti yanked her from the car like a rag doll. Torti said, the smoke, the smoke and I mean, looking back on it, it's probably, it was Annie Freese on a hot, hot motor, but even still, she acted in good faith. And so California's Good Samaritan Laws, she said, you can't sue me. I was trying to help you in an emergency situation. Sorry, the Good Samaritan Laws cover this. And by the way, I'm no longer speaking to you. Yeah, probably so. It went all the way to the California Supreme

Court where they ruled that she could sue her friend and co-worker because protection at that time at least for the Good Samaritan Law was only for those administering medical care, not rescue care. Well, so the law said that it was emergency care and the court interpreted that to mean medical care. Oh, gotcha. Which was like, what? And the legislature even said like, no, that's not at all how we meant it. Interesting. Yeah. In fact, they amended the law the next year to say specifically medical or non-medical emergency care, but that vagueness got, got least authority sued. Yeah. And I was, it's hard to find out sometimes final results of legal cases. We've like had that problem. I feel like a lot over the years. Yeah,

the media, they have a short attention span. Well, it's that. And I think sometimes these things are just still dragging out. Oh, really? You think it's still going on? I think so, because I found an article from like three years ago, because I was just trying to find out what happened with the lawsuit. And apparently, the woman who pulled the woman being sued, Torti, had two different insurance companies, one of which said, I'm not getting involved in this. The other of which said, you know what, I'm going to, we're going to agree to defend you against the lawsuit. It was settled for $4 million. Wow. And then the one insurance company that agreed to help defender sued the other insurance company and said, you got to pony up half of this.

And the last thing I saw was a district court judge ruled for the defendant's insurance company. In other words, the one that said, I don't want any part of this. Okay. You don't have to pay. But then it said an appellate panel reversed that decision on Wednesday. And that's literally the last thing I could find. Wow. Wow. That is still dragging on. Holy cow. Chuck, nice research. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. There may be something newer out there, but there are probably tricks that legal scholars know that I don't know about researching this stuff. I mean, what does that say, Chuck, that like an insurance company can just be like, where your insurance company, but we're not touching this one?

Well, it was complicated though, because it was insurance. It wasn't like just insurance for me walking around if I want to help someone. It was car insurance. So it was, it all came down to whether or not it was considered a use of a car by her opening that door and unbuckling her seat belt and pulling her out, whether that was using the car. I got you. Very complicated. A little more sense though. It's just, you know, how like convoluted that stuff gets though. It does for sure. Like legally. But that whole like, so the whole legality of this whole thing, that made that whole Lisa Tourty and Alexandra Van Horn case. I mean, I heard about that when that was going on. Everybody heard about that case because it was like, well, wait a minute, she was trying

to help and now she's getting sued and why are, why are friends fighting that whole kind of thing? And that was 2004. And then two years later, China started to rise as a great power of anti-good Samaritanism. Big time. In a lot of different cases. And all of it started in 2006, in the case of Peng Yu, who was a man who got off of a bus in China and saw that an older woman had fallen and broken her hip. And so she had been trying to get on the bus. Peng Yu was coming off of the bus and he went to go help the lady. Well, the lady later said that he was the one who caused her to fall and sued him. And he was like, I'm just an innocent bystander. He was being a good Samaritan helping this lady. Well, the court said, no, Peng Yu, we've decided that

you probably did cause the fall. Otherwise, why else would you have helped the lady? That's crazy. And there's more nuance to it. There were a couple of things. Peng Yu said he was the first one off the bus and the court said, well, then you were probably the person to bump into the lady and knock her down. And also, why did you give her 20 Yuan, which is about 30 bucks if you didn't feel responsible? And then thirdly, if you were acting heroically, why didn't you go apprehend the person who knocked her down? Why would you go help? So there's a little more to it than just like nobody would possibly help someone out of the goodness of their heart. So you're guilty. But that's kind of how I got played up in the popular

media, both in China and in the rest of the world. And so Peng Yu became this cautionary tale, like if you see somebody hurt in the street, don't help them because they will sue you. And people started to do that. And so people in China until in a few really big cases, sensational cases, did just that. They stopped helping people who clearly needed help and people were dying as a result. Yeah. I mean, there were, I mean, there's just one case I can't even talk about. I know. But it was just awful. You know, people not helping people clearly in need became sort of an epidemic in China until they finally changed some law in what just last year, I think. Yeah. A National Good Samaritan Law in 2017 that does offer protections. But you said that one article

that was like, it's out of hand in China now in the other way. Right. Because this one, Donald Clark, a law professor who actually specializes in Chinese law at GW, said that in China, you can like see someone choking in a restaurant and attempt a tracheotomy with a butter knife with no training and be covered and you can't be sued, which is, I think everyone would agree, that's a little too far. Yeah. No matter what you do, you cannot be held viable for acting as a Good Samaritan, even if it's the most reckless, negligent thing you can imagine. Trying something you're not familiar with at all, you can't be sued. And so some people said, well, not only does this article 184, this new law cover, it goes too far in covering people,

protecting people. It doesn't address the problem, which is this culture of distrust that's been kind of fostered by these judges who are ruling in favor of people who are accusing the Good Samaritans that have helped them of actually causing their injury and creating this chilling effect and helping people. I mean, people literally, elderly people getting hit by cars and being left in the street as people walk around them and then being hit by another car and killed later on, like a half hour later. Like this was happening, this was going on, and people wouldn't go anywhere near these people because they were afraid that they were going to get sued. And it was mostly because judges in the court system were saying they were siding with

people with zero evidence whatsoever, just basically on a suspicion of someone's good intentions. Yeah. I mean, that original case when they said, what was the man's name again? Peng Yu. Peng Yu. They had no evidence whatsoever. It's not like it was on closed caption television or anything like that. It was just, like you said, the judge going, seems to me like it's pretty weird that you would have helped had you not been the one that actually knocked her off to begin with. Right, exactly. So, I mean, it's good that China has this good Samaritan law and it's a very broad law and it probably needs to be walked back a little bit, but they also need to go after the judges or the, I guess, kind of the sentiment or thought

process of judges that kind of just says, why would you help somebody out if you weren't the one that caused the accident? Until they do that and until they go after this group, Peng Shi, which are basically crooks, people who like lay down in front of cars and pretend they got hit, and then sue the people and are frequently found, like they're ruled in favor of their case, until that is rooted out that people are still going to be distrustful of helping people who are in need. Yeah. And that, even the Van Horn case, I mean, I know she was trying to help, but like, you're not supposed to move people, you know? Like, everyone kind of knows that and this woman ended up paralyzed and if it was a direct result of that,

then, I don't know, that's a tough one, you know? Well, they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I know. That's kind of like where that lies. Yeah, I mean, I feel bad for both parties, for sure. For sure. Because the tortie, who was legitimately trying to help, she wasn't like, well, let me do something that might really hurt my coworker further. She thought that car was going to blow up. Yep. You know? So let's get her out of there. Right, exactly. It wasn't like, you know, she'd always harbored some deep resentment of her, so this is her chance to paralyze her. Yeah. You know? Not funny at all, except for the way that you said it. So there's another big push in Good Samaritan laws in the United States. It's interesting how they're kind of like refined as

things go on, but there's this thread, the sentiment that runs through them that's like, okay, we need to make sure that people don't hesitate in helping their fellow human in need. Yeah. A lot of these, I mean, it's labeled as special interest Good Samaritan laws, but these are great. Like, it makes a lot of sense, especially, well, they all do, but this one about the food donation. Right. In the mid-1990s, there was a realization that a lot of food was going to waste 14 billion pounds specifically of food going to landfills when people in America needed that food. And, you know, you've heard stories about grocery stores or can't be held libel, so they just have to throw that stuff away. Right. So they passed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan

Food Donation Act, which is to provide some protections in case you donate food and someone gets sick from eating that food. Right, exactly. So I remember back when grocery stores did have to throw that away before that law, and it was just so wasteful and so just morally wrong. So they passed that one, 96, good year for passing laws, I guess. And then there's even newer kind of push of Good Samaritan laws that are protecting college kids who drink too much, even though they're underage. They might be worried, oh man, I'm going to get expelled or kicked out of college if I call for help. And so apparently that some of them weren't calling for help. And so some universities, I think it's up to 30, 240 universities in 35 states now have something called

911 Lifeline or 911 Good Samaritan Law, where if you call for help for yourself or for somebody else who's had too much to drink and it's like a medical emergency, you won't get in trouble for having been drinking underage. But it's laid the groundwork for a larger law about opioid abuse that we really kind of need. That's a Good Samaritan law that protects people who are calling for somebody who's overdosing on heroin, where under normal circumstances they might hesitate because they're on heroin themselves and they don't want to get busted for it. Yeah, it's called Naloxone. And this is basically, it comes with like an EpiPen now. And it's something that cops have in their emergency kits. And just like an EpiPen is something that a civilian can use.

You don't have to have medical training. If someone is overdosing on an on heroin or some other kind of opioid, you just inject this thing and that can save their life. And so junkies don't want to call the ambulance or the cops or whatever, just the same as an underage college kid doesn't want to call the cops. So they're often described as medical amnesty laws. And it's great, you know, this is exactly, and it's making a difference. That was one study in 2002 at Cornell about the alcohol one. And they said there was a rise from 22% to 52% of counseling sessions attended by students in 2004, because students weren't afraid, you know, I'm 19 years old or whatever, and I need help. So they, you know, it's shown that it's working. And I think the same

is going on with this Naloxone drug. Right. Yeah. So like the Naloxone kind of has its own protection where whether you're somebody who's on heroin or not, if you administer that, you could be a medical professional. It's like such a new thing that they've realized they need a specific Good Samaritan law for that to cover anybody who's administering Naloxone. Like if they do some damage or whatever, they were still trying to help. But then also if you're like on heroin yourself, just calling 911, you can have immunity in some states from getting busted for heroin for being on it yourself. Right. So like, hey, we're going to save you and you're under arrest. Right, which I guess is still in some states, it's still a possibility. You don't,

like you don't want people worrying about whether they're going to get popped themselves and then saying, well, I can't really call for shorty juju over here, which is I guess a heroin user's name. Yeah. You know, so the heroin user who's overdosing, who would otherwise live, dies because they're the person they shot up with like is too worried about getting busted themselves. Because the last thing a heroin addict or drug addict might do in the throes of that drug is think, let me call a cop or an ambulance. Right. You know what I need? A police officer. They might help. Right. They say, like as far as advice goes, for good Samaritans,

this article, you know, counsels people to think sensibly. Most states do have laws to protect people that if you're doing something reasonable to try and help, which all goes back to, you know, in the split second, it's kind of tough, but that all goes back to what you're saying, like reasonable maneuvers to help somebody. Yeah. Like, I mean, it's not necessarily like, like don't try the tracheotomy. Right. Right. Right. So yeah. So that kind of ties into a second point. Like don't try things you're not trained to do. And it just kind of ties into reasonable, like is trying to administer CPR, a reasonable thing if you come upon somebody who's not breathing. Yes. Totally reasonable. Is it, is it, you know, unreasonable to try to like get

their heart going by pumping their arms up and down and accidentally dislocating their shoulder? It's probably not going to be protected by a good Samaritan law. Yeah. But how much can you get sued for for a broken collarbone? Probably a lot, especially if the person's like a ping pong player or a professional illustrator. Yeah. He rode my ping pong crew here. Right. Exactly. You like ping pong? Love it. We need to do an episode on ping pong. I love ping pong too. I'm surprised we've never squared out, squared off. I am as well, Chuck. Well, we've never been in the same room as a ping pong table. That's

probably why. That's what I was thinking. I was going to make a camp joke, but you beat me to the truth. You got anything else? Oh, yes, I do. There's one thing that came up if you don't mind talking about it, the Seinfeld thing. Do you remember? I think you might be able to talk about it. Do you remember how that? Yeah. The final episode, right? Right. Yeah. Which is like the least funny episode of Seinfeld ever. But it had like a weird message when the gang gets put in jail for watching a guy, I think it was Jonathan Pinnett, get carjacked by somebody with a gun and just sitting there making fun of them while they're videotaping it, right? Yeah. And that kind of ties into good Samaritan laws. A lot of people

are like, can you actually, is there any place in the country where you can get in trouble for that kind of thing? And it turns out, no. It kind of falls into that duty to act law where you are in some places like Vermont or I think in California under some circumstances, you are required to report a crime, but you're not required to actually intervene. That was like kind of that big point I made earlier at the beginning of the episode. That's a big distinction, right? Yeah. And not only are you not required to interview, you're not even required to report the crime during the commission of the crime for most duty to act laws. You just can't walk away and pretend you never saw anything. That's the key. That's where you will get prosecuted. So

the Seinfeld gang probably would not have gone to jail. And there's article that I read, quotes a guy who's an attorney in San Diego named somebody Liss. I mean, I wish I could remember the guy's name. Franz Liss? No, not Franz Liss, who's a great, great composer, but a L-I-S-S. Liss. Yeah, his name was Peter Liss. He's a criminal lawyer from San Diego who ended up in this article. He basically says not only should they not have gone to jail, they provided very valuable evidence by recording the entire crime. So let him off the hook. Has there ever been a tougher show to end than Seinfeld? I don't know. Yeah, probably not, but they really chose a very specific, unsatisfying way to do it. What about Sopranos? Everybody hated how that ended.

Yeah, I didn't, I love the Sopranos, but then moved to LA during its run and didn't have TV. So I quit watching it, but I do remember all the hoopla. But Seinfeld's just one of those. I mean, the last episode's stunk, but it's just a hard show to end because you can't, it was the most unsentimental show probably in TV history. Sure. And most shows have a finale that is highly sentimental. Right. And you just, you couldn't do that on Seinfeld. It would not have been true to the show. So I don't know what I would have done. It's a tough one. It is a tough one. Maybe it was the perfect ending and it just wasn't a great episode.

You could make that case for sure, you know. I'd like to hear maybe if someone had a better idea. Okay. Rewrite the Seinfeld finale. Yeah. In 160 characters or less, tweet it to us. Or 240 now? What is that? It's weird. Anyway, I think that's the end of this episode. We kind of let this peter out too, huh? Yep. Okay. If you want to learn more about Good Samaritan Laws, that's actually a tip. Go learn your state and or country's Good Samaritan Laws so you know what to do and you're ever faced with an emergency situation. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This one's great. I'm just going to call it great email. Good. Guys in the spirit of Thanksgiving and this glass of wine I'm drinking,

I wanted to reach out and tell you how thankful I am for you. I've been listening to the show for a few years and your comforting voices, light dad humor and interesting topics have become increasingly important to me. My brother passed away almost two years ago at the age of 24. He was an incredible soul and would have loved your show. I had trouble falling asleep for a while and began playing your podcast when my mind was racing and I needed the distraction. I fell asleep to many interesting topics for months and I greatly appreciate your help through the sad times. Last year I sailed from Seattle to San Diego with my uncle and father. This was the scariest and most exhilarating trip I've ever taken ever. We kept a watch system

two hours on and four hours off. During my first two hour night watch alone, I was scared a poopless. With no land in sight and my life has secured to the boat, I plugged in my headphones and listened to the stuff you should know selects fecal transplants episode. Midway through my watch a pot of porpoises started following and playing with a boat. I could only spot their phosphorescence but I was so darn happy sitting there in the cold and dark listening to you both talk about poop while watching the porpoises create tubes of glitter in the Pacific. Wow. Wow. Can you imagine that dude? Yeah that's amazing. And our voices didn't ruin it. I know. This brought me so much comfort in a time of such great discomfort. Now you've heard it

before and at the risk of sounding sappy, your podcast brings comfort and joy to your listeners and we appreciate you. My brother's birthday is tomorrow and I have been catching up on your latest episodes thinking about the time you helped me get through and I wanted to say thank you. Thanks for being there for me in a weird way and thank you for your friendship and your jokes and your comfort and that is Jane from Seattle. Awesome Jane. Thank you so much for letting us know that story. That's like the deer on the tracks story that Will Wheaton had and stand by me. That's right. That's a pretty cool story. Yeah it's a good one. If you want to get in touch with us like Jane did to let us know one of your coolest stories, you can tweet to us,

you can join us on Instagram, you can hang out with us on Facebook, you can find links to that on our site StuffYouShouldKnow.com and you can send us a good old-fashioned email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different, hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody,

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