Med Mal News

New Jersey's Supreme Court has ruled, in Murray v. Plainfield Rescue Squad, A-28-10, that although individual members of rescue squads that provide intermediate and basic life support services are by law immune from suit, the squads themselves do not enjoy that same privillege. Squads that provide “intermediate life support services” are defined as those that perform basic life support functions, as well as cardiac monitoring and defibrillation. In Murray, New Jersey's high court overturned lower court holdings that had said these rescue squads are covered by N.J.S.A. 26:2K-29, which provides that “officers and members” of a squad may not be held liable for civil damages for actions taken while rendering “intermediate life support services in good faith” to a patient. In holding that the squads, as entities, were not covered by the law, the Supreme Court relied on the plain language of the statute and noted that wording that would have extended immunity to these rescue squads was stripped from the proposed statute before its 1985 passage. In contrast, legislation covering immunity from suit for members of “advanced services” squads ' those that not only offer basic and intermediate services but also more advanced medical care, such as intravenous therapy, drug administration and trauma care ' also specifically protects those squads as entities from suit for actions taken by their personnel while such care is being rendered. See N.J.S.A. 26:2K-14. The Supreme Court was not persuaded by the squad's contention that it could not be held responsible if none of its members were also liable. “If the Legislature intended to vicariously immunize the Rescue Squad when the Squad members are shielded from civil liability, it would have drafted a statute similar to one found in the New Jersey Tort Claims Act,” that says, “[a] public entity is not liable for an injury resulting from an act or omission of a public employee where the public employee is not liable,” stated the court. The ruling reinstates a claim brought by the family of a man who died of a gunshot wound because the rescue squad that responded to the emergency allegedly delayed his transfer to a hospital and provided him inadequate care.

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