New Jersey\u2019s Charitable Immunity Act generally protects charitable organizations from lawsuits, a fact that is important for an individual to keep in mind should he or she sustain an injury while at, say, the property of a nonprofit organization such as a church or school. However, there are circumstances in which an organization will claim immunity from a personal injury lawsuit when, in fact, they are not entitled to it under the law. Such a situation came to light recently before the New Jersey Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
In the case in question, Kuchera v. New Jersey Shore Family Medical Center, Terry Kuchera was injured on March 7, 2009, when she slipped and fell on an oily substance on the floor of the Jersey Shore Family Health Center in Neptune, N.J., where she had gone for a free eye screening. A trial judge and the state\u2019s Appellate Division ruled that the hospital was immune from liability because it was engaged in a charitable act when Kuchera\u2019s injury occurred. <\/p>\n
Kuchera\u2019s attorney argued that the rulings involved an interpretation of the Charitable Immunity Act that was far too generous, and took her case to the state Supreme Court. Kuchera\u2019s success before the high court would rest on her attorney\u2019s argument that that the hospital was only entitled to partial immunity, which would limit liability up to $250,000.<\/p>\n
Persistence paid off in this case, as the Supreme Court ruled that, indeed, the hospital was covered by limited liability protections for hospitals with a damages cap of $250,000, not complete immunity under the Charitable Immunity Act. <\/p>\n
In its decision, the high court explained that even though Jersey Shore Family Health Center had been engaged in a charitable act when Kuchera suffered her injury, the purpose of the facility where the injury occurred was pivotal to determining limited liability. The court ruled that because the Neptune health care center was \u201cpart of a nonprofit healthcare corporation organized exclusively for hospital purposes,\u201d it still had to exercise due care in the maintenance of the facility.<\/p>\n
The aforementioned case is a good example of why it is important for anyone who has been injured while on another person\u2019s property or an organization\u2019s property to seek legal counsel from an experienced personal injury law firm to determine if there are grounds for a personal injury lawsuit against the property owner.<\/p>\n
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La Ley de Inmunidad de las Organizaciones Ben\u00e9ficas de Nueva Jersey protege, en general, a las organizaciones ben\u00e9ficas frente a demandas judiciales, un hecho que es importante que tenga en cuenta cualquier persona en caso de sufrir una lesi\u00f3n mientras se encuentre, por ejemplo, en las instalaciones de una organizaci\u00f3n sin \u00e1nimo de lucro, como una iglesia o una escuela. Sin embargo, hay circunstancias en las que una organizaci\u00f3n alegar\u00e1\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[189,188,187,88,190],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liability","category-news","tag-appellate-division","tag-charitable-immunity-act","tag-jersey-shore-family-health-center","tag-new-jersey-supreme-court","tag-terry-kuchera"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}