Negligence
"Rescue Doctrine" - "Fireman's Rule" - Volunteer Ambulance Attendant
Where a volunteer ambulance attendant was fatally injured by a car while treating persons injured in an earlier accident, the attendant's survivors could bring suit in negligence against the parties who caused the first accident under the "rescue doctrine" and the "fireman's rule" would not be extended to bar their suit.
Summary Judgment for defendants is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.
Facts
Decedent was a volunteer ambulance attendant for a Fire District. A multi-car accident occurred on an icy interstate highway and decedent responded to the call for help. Shortly after decedent arrived at the scene and while he was beginning to treat the injured persons, another car slid on the ice and fatally injured him. Decedent's survivors sued the persons involved in the original accident as well as the driver of the car that killed him. The trial court held that the negligence of the persons involved in the original accident was not the proximate cause of decedent's injuries and that the "rescue doctrine" was not applicable because of the "fireman's rule."
Negligence
In any action for negligence, the plaintiff must establish the existence of a duty on the part of the defendant to protect plaintiff from injury, failure of the defendant to perform that duty and, that plaintiff's injury was proximately caused by defendant's failure....The duty owed is generally measured by whether or not a reasonably prudent person would have anticipated danger and provided against it....
"If two or more persons are guilty of consecutive acts of negligence closely related in time, there is a question as to whether the initial act of negligence was the proximate cause of the injury or whether there was an `efficient, intervening cause.'...Identifying those within the range of foreseeability who may be injured by an act of negligence is somewhat an exercise in subjectivity."
"Rescue Doctrine"
"The rescue doctrine is legal shorthand for a particular factual situation in which courts find the foreseeability requirement is satisfied. In those factual circumstances where one is injured while attempting a rescue, the negligence creating the peril requiring rescue is held to be the proximate cause of the rescuer's injury. More succinctly, danger invites rescue, and the wrong that imperils the victim is a wrong to the rescuer."
"Fireman's Rule"
The crucial question...is whether the `fireman's rule' prohibits plaintiffs' recovery. The rule provides that a fireman brought in contact with an emergency situation solely by reason of his status as a fireman who is injured while performing fireman's duties may not recover against the person whose ordinary negligence created the emergency....The rule excludes firemen from the benefit of the rescue doctrine in most cases....
"No Missouri case has applied the fireman's rule to ambulance attendants. Defendants argue that the rule applies to all persons who are `professional rescuers.' They would include within that class anyone having public duties that may take them to the scene of an emergency....
"Firemen and police officers generally cannot recover for injuries attributable to the negligence that required their assistance because the relation between those persons and the public specifically calls them to confront certain hazards on behalf of the public....Firemen and policemen are hired, trained and compensated to deal with dangerous, but inevitable, situations....The public...has provided, though workers' compensation laws, benefits available to police officers and firemen which fairly spread the costs of injuries to the public as a whole rather than imposing the burden upon individuals....The most persuasive and most nearly universal rationale for the fireman's rule is public policy....
"Unlike firemen and policemen, ambulance attendants are not clothed with either the duty or the authority to control traffic, effect arrests, fight fires or enter collapsing buildings to save lives....[S]ociety does not expect ambulance attendants to throw themselves in harm's way....
"Accordingly, we decline to extend the fireman's rule to an ambulance attendant on the scene of an emergency who undertakes a rescue of persons endangered by the negligence of another."
Judgment is reversed and the case remanded.
Krause, etc., et al. v. U.S. Truck Company, Inc., et al. (Missouri Lawyers Weekly No. C4-19 _12 pages) (Holstein, J.) Appealed from circuit court, Clay County, Elliott, J. (Gary R. Bradley, Robert L. Langdon and N. R. Bradley, Lexington, Mo., for appellants) (Sylvester James, Sr., Robert A. Horn, James P. Barton, W. James Foland, Joseph J. Roper, Thomas A. Sheehan, Paul Hasty, Jr., and Bradley S. Russell, Kansas City, Mo., for respondents) (John B. Reddoch and Scott J. Sullivan, Liberty, Mo., for intervenor-respondents).
© Copyright 1990 Lawyers Weekly Inc., All Rights Reserved.
