The old common-law rule was simple: you had no duty to help a stranger. Minnesota changed that. Our statute tells you, in so many words, that you have to help. So walk past someone in trouble here and you’ve committed a crime?
No. And the reason is a little funny.
The duty is real. It’s been on the books since 1983. But the penalty is a petty misdemeanor, and Minnesota’s own criminal code says a petty misdemeanor “does not constitute a crime”. So the Legislature made it unlawful to ignore a stranger in grave danger, and then, by definition, declined to call it criminal. That’s a law written with its fingers crossed.
But that’s not the half most people need. The half that matters is the protection it gives the person who does stop.
So what does Minnesota’s duty to assist actually say?
It’s three sentences, in Minn. Stat. § 604A.01, subdivision 1:
A person at the scene of an emergency who knows that another person is exposed to or has suffered grave physical harm shall, to the extent that the person can do so without danger or peril to self or others, give reasonable assistance to the exposed person. Reasonable assistance may include obtaining or attempting to obtain aid from law enforcement or medical personnel. A person who violates this subdivision is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.
Strings attached. You have to be at the scene. You have to know someone is exposed to or has suffered grave physical harm. And the duty runs only as far as you can help without danger or peril to yourself or anyone else. Nobody’s required to run into a burning building.
The second sentence is the one I’d want every Minnesotan to know: reasonable assistance “may include obtaining or attempting to obtain aid from law enforcement or medical personnel.” Often the most help you can safely give is a 911 call, and the statute says that can count. You don’t need to know CPR. You need a phone.
How much trouble are you in if you just keep walking?
Not much, as the law measures trouble.
Section 609.02, subdivision 4a, defines a petty misdemeanor as “a petty offense which is prohibited by statute, which does not constitute a crime and for which a sentence of a fine of not more than $300 may be imposed.” The Rules of Criminal Procedure put it even more bluntly: “A petty misdemeanor is not considered a crime.” No jail is possible. A “crime”, under subdivision 1 of the same section, is conduct for which a person may be sentenced to imprisonment.
Compare two other states. Rhode Island’s duty-to-assist law reads almost word for word like Minnesota’s, and it also calls the offense a “petty misdemeanor”. Then it allows imprisonment of up to six months, a fine of up to $500, or both. Same label, different animal. Vermont went the other way. Its 1968 statute fines a willful violation not more than $100, and it lets you off entirely if the help “is being provided by others.” Minnesota’s statute has no such exception. On its words, if ten people are standing around, the duty sits on each one who knows.
I couldn’t find a published Minnesota appellate decision in which anyone was prosecuted, or held liable in a civil suit, for failing to help under subdivision 1. I searched CourtListener’s Minnesota appellate collection under the current section number, the old one, and the statute’s own phrases, and I read every hit. Every one involved something else.
When walking away really is a crime
Minnesota does put people in jail for not helping. It just picks who.
If you’re the driver in a crash, § 169.09, subdivision 3(a), says you “shall render reasonable assistance to any individual injured in the collision.” Violating subdivision 3 is a misdemeanor, which is a crime. And a driver who didn’t cause a fatal collision but fails to stop and remain at the scene can be sentenced to up to three years under subdivision 14.
If you fire a gun and know or have reason to know you hit someone, § 609.662 requires you to immediately investigate and render immediate reasonable assistance. If the person suffered death or great bodily harm, the penalty runs up to two years in prison, a $4,000 fine, or both. Even a witness to a shooting who knows someone was hurt has the same duty: up to 364 days, $3,000, or both for a companion of the shooter, and up to 90 days, $1,000, or both for anyone else. There’s an affirmative defense if you reasonably perceived that helping carried a significant risk of bodily harm.
So a bystander’s duty costs a fine. A driver’s, a shooter’s, or a shooting witness’s can cost jail. I can live with that line.
The half that protects you when you do stop
Subdivision 2 is why this statute shows up in courtrooms:
(a) A person who, without compensation or the expectation of compensation, renders emergency care, advice, or assistance at the scene of an emergency or during transit to a location where professional medical care can be rendered, is not liable for any civil damages as a result of acts or omissions by that person in rendering the emergency care, advice, or assistance, unless the person acts in a willful and wanton or reckless manner in providing the care, advice, or assistance.
That covers ordinary negligence. If you stop, try to help, and get it wrong, you generally aren’t liable for civil damages over the mistake. You lose the protection only if your conduct was “willful and wanton or reckless”. That’s a much higher bar than carelessness, and it’s the same kind of line Minnesota courts draw when deciding which claims a signed liability waiver can’t release. I wrote about that at /news/minnesota-liability-waivers-exculpatory-clauses/.
The biggest string is money. The immunity applies only to someone acting “without compensation or the expectation of compensation,” and it doesn’t apply to a person helping during regular employment who receives or expects compensation for it. Volunteers keep it. Payments, expense reimbursements, and pension benefits to members of volunteer organizations don’t count as compensation, and the statute expressly names volunteer firefighters, volunteer police officers, volunteer ambulance attendants, and volunteer ski patrollers.
Place matters too. The “scene of an emergency” is outside a hospital or other institution with hospital facilities, and outside the office of a person licensed to practice the healing arts under the chapters the statute lists (147, 147A, 148, 150A, and 153). It expressly includes areas exposed to a hazardous-materials release, and “ski areas and trails.” Grabbing the defibrillator off the wall counts as emergency care, unless the person it’s about to be used on objects.
It reaches more than individuals, too: “person” includes “any partnership, corporation, association, or other entity.”
Professional rescuers are a different story. The pay limit means an on-duty paramedic isn’t using this statute. Whether an injured peace officer or public safety officer can recover from the person whose carelessness created the emergency is governed by a separate statute, which I covered at /news/minnesota-firemans-rule/.
Does it cover driving someone to the hospital?
Yes. The Minnesota Court of Appeals decided that in December 2002, on facts that are hard to read.
In January 1998, a 13-year-old girl apparently dislocated her knee when her snowmobile hit a drainage culvert in a ditch along Highway 19, west of New Prague. A passing motorist stopped, tried to call 911, and couldn’t get a signal. So she offered to drive the girl to the hospital in New Prague, with a quick stop at her house less than a quarter mile away so the girl’s friends could park their snowmobiles and ride along. She started a U-turn. A tractor-trailer going over the speed limit hit the passenger side of her van. The girl died.
The family settled with the truck driver and pursued a claim against the motorist’s insurer, which won summary judgment under the Good Samaritan law. The court of appeals affirmed:
We hold that transportation of an injured person by non-emergency personnel is a protected activity under the immunity provisions of the Good Samaritan law.
Swenson v. Waseca Mutual Insurance Co., 653 N.W.2d 794, 799 (Minn. Ct. App. 2002). Reading the statute any other way, the court said, “would have the perverse effect of discouraging an entire class of responses to emergency circumstances.” The planned stop at her house didn’t matter either; the court treated it as a minimal delay that did nothing to lessen the emergency.
The case settled one more thing, and to my mind it’s the most useful point in Minnesota Good Samaritan law. The duty in subdivision 1 kicks in only when someone faces “grave physical harm”. The immunity in subdivision 2 doesn’t require that. A dislocated knee was enough. In the court’s words, “The language of subdivision 2 of the Good Samaritan statute does not require grave or life-threatening injuries”. And it gave the reason: the other reading “would require good Samaritans to determine the severity of an injury before offering assistance.” Id. at 800.
So the protection is bigger than the obligation. The law makes you help in fewer situations than it protects you for helping in.
Who doesn’t get the protection?
The person who already owed a duty.
In April 1986, a 17-year-old with a known heart condition was visiting his girlfriend’s family. He became ill. The girlfriend called 911. Her father canceled the call; he said the young man told him he was fine. About 25 minutes later the young man was found pale and clammy on a couch, an ambulance was called, and he stopped breathing shortly before it arrived. He survived with severe and permanent brain damage. The trial court gave the girlfriend’s parents summary judgment under the Good Samaritan statute.
The court of appeals reversed. Tiedeman ex rel. Tiedeman v. Morgan, 435 N.W.2d 86 (Minn. Ct. App. 1989). The statute, it explained, addresses “the historic Good Samaritan law topic of volunteering assistance to one with whom a person has no special relationship.” Id. at 88. A host already owed a guest a duty of care under a line of Minnesota cases the court traced back to 1907. The court put the history in one line: “Until modified by statute in 1983, no duty to volunteer assistance existed.” Id. at 88. An immunity meant to get strangers to step in doesn’t wipe out a duty somebody already had. “It was error to relieve respondents of liability under a statute which does not deal with the duty of care applicable under the circumstances of this case.” Id. at 89.
That pre-existing-duty idea runs through Minnesota tort law. It’s the same special-relationship question that decides whether a business answers for an attack on its premises, which I wrote about at /news/minnesota-negligent-security-premises/.
What if you caused the emergency?
You’d expect the immunity to have an exception for somebody who caused the trouble. The text doesn’t have one. Its exceptions are the ones above: pay, regular employment, willful and wanton or reckless conduct, and the scene-of-emergency limits.
But look at what the immunity covers: liability “as a result of acts or omissions by that person in rendering the emergency care, advice, or assistance”. My reading is that a driver who causes a crash and then helps the person he hit is protected for how he helped. The crash is another matter. Helping is still the right thing to do. And for a driver, it’s also the law.
Other Good Samaritan laws in chapter 604A
Section 604A.02 gives the same civil immunity to a shooting witness who renders the aid § 609.662 requires, without compensation, unless the witness acts in a willful and wanton or reckless manner.
The overdose law works differently, and it’s the one I’d most want a young person to know. Under § 604A.05, a person acting in good faith who seeks medical assistance for someone experiencing a drug-related overdose may not be charged or prosecuted for possessing, sharing, or using a controlled substance under the listed sections. The strings are real: the evidence has to have come from seeking help, and the person has to provide a name and contact information, remain on the scene until assistance arrives or is provided, and cooperate with the authorities. The person who overdosed gets a similar immunity under subdivision 2. Section 604A.06 does much the same for the first person who calls 911 or a first responder for a sexual assault victim in need of help, covering listed drug offenses and, for anyone under 21, alcohol offenses.
Those last two aren’t about civil lawsuits at all. They’re about getting people to pick up the phone. The same chapter also holds the recreational-use statute that protects landowners who let the public on their land, which I covered at /news/minnesota-recreational-land-use-liability/.
Make the call
The second sentence of subdivision 1 is the one worth memorizing: reasonable assistance may include getting police or medical help on the way. You don’t have to be a hero. When you can’t safely do anything else, Minnesota asks one thing of you. Make the call.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC represents people across Minnesota hurt by someone else’s carelessness: car and truck crashes, pedestrian and bicycle injuries, premises cases, and wrongful death claims. Whether a Good Samaritan defense applies, and whether the person raising it owed a duty before the emergency started, can decide whether there’s an injury claim at all. Read about our personal injury practice, then send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 604A.01, subd. 1 (duty to assist; reasonable assistance may include obtaining aid; petty misdemeanor), subd. 2(a) (civil immunity; willful and wanton or reckless exception; regular-employment exclusion), subd. 2(b) (scene of an emergency), subd. 2(c) (definition of person), subd. 2(d) (compensation), subd. 2(e) (automatic external defibrillators); Minn. Stat. § 609.02, subd. 1 (crime), subd. 4a (petty misdemeanor; not a crime; $300); Minn. R. Crim. P. 23.06 (petty misdemeanor not considered a crime); Minn. Stat. § 169.09, subd. 3(a) (driver must render reasonable assistance), subd. 14(a)(1), (c) (penalties); Minn. Stat. § 609.662, subds. 2–4 (shooting; duty to render aid; witness duty; defense); Minn. Stat. § 604A.02 (immunity for aid to shooting victim); Minn. Stat. § 604A.05, subds. 1–2 (overdose medical assistance); Minn. Stat. § 604A.06, subds. 1–2 (aid to sexual assault victims); R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-56-1 (duty to assist; petty misdemeanor; six months, $500); 12 V.S.A. § 519(a), (c) (Vermont duty; exception where others are assisting; $100 fine); Swenson v. Waseca Mut. Ins. Co., 653 N.W.2d 794, 795–96, 799–800 (Minn. Ct. App. 2002), review denied (Minn. Feb. 26, 2003); Tiedeman ex rel. Tiedeman v. Morgan, 435 N.W.2d 86, 87–89 (Minn. Ct. App. 1989), review denied (Minn. Mar. 29, 1989). This article is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.