THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501010063
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Dr. Mariann H. Johnson was driving to a medical conference when she came upon a horrifying scene: A car upside down in a small lake off Laskin Road, its tires sticking up out of the water.
Inside the car, a driver and passenger were trapped.
On impulse, Johnson - a family physician from Richmond - waded into the 5-foot-deep water, dived under and pulled out the driver. Without the doctor's help, the woman surely would have drowned.
But the rescue was not without cost. Johnson ruptured a disc in her lower back, missed eight months of work and underwent two surgeries.
Now she is fighting back against the 18-year-old woman who is alleged to have caused the accident. Johnson is suing, seeking $1 million.
The lawsuit filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court poses an unusual legal issue: Can a good Samaritan who rescues someone of her own volition hold someone else responsible for, in effect, forcing her to perform the rescue?
The doctor's lawyer, Carlton F. Bennett of Virginia Beach, says that issue was resolved centuries ago. It is part of English common law, and it is known as the ``rescue doctrine.''
``It's rare, but not new,'' Bennett said. ``The principle is this: If you are a negligent driver and you cause an accident, it's foreseeable that someone is going to come along and rescue the person you hurt.''
So far, there is no reply to the lawsuit. A lawyer representing the teenage driver has declined tocomment.
Dr. Johnson also has declined to discuss the rescue and lawsuit, but court documents and police records describe how the accident happened on Aug. 6, 1993 - at Laskin Road and Linbay Drive, near Hilltop - and Johnson's role in the rescue.
It began when an 18-year-old woman, Rachel A. Renner of Goldfinch Lane, tried to turn off the Laskin feeder road onto the main road. In doing so, she crashed her car into another going 35 mph on the main road, police reported.
That second car smashed into two more cars going the other way, then flipped over and landed upside down in the lake. The driver and a passenger were trapped in an air pocket inside the car.
``They thought they were dead,'' Bennett said.
They got lucky. The driver - 61-year-old Marcia J. Mitchell, a writer from South Dakota - was rescued by the passing physician. Mitchell suffered a concussion and head cuts, and now has nightmares and ringing in the ears, Bennett said. She is also suing Renner.
The passenger in the submerged car - 71-year-old Thomas Mitchell - was rescued by an employee from the nearby Sugar Plum Bakery. He suffered only superficial injuries, Bennett said.
Police gave Renner a ticket for failure to yield.
Now Johnson claims that the violation forced her to make the rescue.
The lawsuit asserts that Renner ``owed a duty of reasonable care to the plaintiff and others who would come upon the scene of this accident, which would invite the plaintiff and other passersby the necessity for the rescue of Marcia Mitchell and her husband.'' MEMO: A lawsuit tells only one side of a dispute. The other side has three
weeks to file a response.
KEYWORDS: RESCUE ACCIDENT TRAFFIC INJURIES
LAWSUITS by CNB