Rep. Doug Quelland

Donating defibrillators: Law removes liability, gets to ‘heart of the matter’
What the new law does: Prevents individuals and nonprofits that donate defibrillators from being held liable for any injuries that result from their use; barring gross negligence or willful misconduct.

Good Samaritans and nonprofit organizations are now free to donate defibrillators without being held liable for injuries or deaths that may occur when the donated machines fail or malfunction.
This immunity does not affect manufacturer liability, and it results from a new bill, H2091 (Chapter 124), that passed 28-1 in the Senate, 56-2 in the House and was signed into law by Governor Napolitano on April 17.
“This bill, I think, went to the heart of the matter,” said Rep. Doug Quelland, R-10, the bill’s sponsor.
“It got something covered and now we have people who are not afraid to donate defibrillators to schools, apartment complexes, atriums of malls, public libraries and churches.”
Mr. Quelland, chairman of the House Committee on Health, learned about lawsuits against defibrillator donators while researching frivolous malpractice cases.
He dug deeper, speaking with the paralegals of the attorneys trying the defibrillators cases, and was disgusted by his findings.
“(These ambulance chasers) were just trying to find people with deep pockets so they could settle out-of-court and make another hundred thousand dollars a year,” he said.
People and organizations who donate the life-saving machines have nothing to do with their creation, application or maintenance, and there is no basis for their liability, he added.
“People want to give these things away but they’re not going to if they’re going to get sued,” he said.
“Why are we looking a gift horse in the mouth here?”
Ventricular fibrillation is a state of disordered electrical activity in the heart that causes weak, unsynchronized pumping and death in the absence of immediate treatment.
Defibrillators reset the heart to a normal rhythm, which can end cardiac arrest.
H2091 passed without difficulty and its passage was validated less than two months later when Rep. Ray Barnes, R-7, was resuscitated with a defibrillator after he collapsed on the floor of the House with an irregular heartbeat last June, Mr. Quelland added.
“When I saw it work on Ray Barnes, it definitely shook my consciousness into the realization that these defibrillators are really worth it,” he said. “This bill is going to do nothing but improve the quality of life for a lot of people.”
— By Daniel Raven, Arizona Capitol Times correspondent