Here’s a law firm’s press release worth reading. Why? Because it actually provides an appellate law citation. In this case, it’s from the New York Court of Appeals, which makes the decision binding case law in New York.
The case determined that, in the state of New York, emergency department physicians have no legal duty to detain an intoxicated patient and prevent them from leaving the emergency department.
I’d note that this case only applies to New York and the facts of the case only apply to the legal duties and obligations relating to an emergency department physician. But this is a case that applies regularly to EMS, assuming we deal with intoxicated patients. The laws applying to EMS are likely different than the physician patient relationship and will definitely differ in other states. It’s a case that’s eventually going to happen to EMS and this appellate case potentially might give us some clues as to how courts, at least in New York, might view the issue.
But the legalities of dealing with an intoxicated person are much more relevant to EMS legal issues than constant crowing about the supposed illegality of EMS providers making a diagnosis, whether EMS stickers on your car create a duty to act, or any of the other legal nonsense that EMS legal discussions regularly devolve into.