Maine Good Samaritan Law: Immunity, AED Use, and Overdose Calls

Maine’s Good Samaritan Law protects people who voluntarily help during an emergency from being sued for injuries that happen while they’re trying to help, as long as they act in good faith and don’t behave recklessly or with gross negligence. The core rule sits in Title 14, Section 164 of the Maine Revised Statutes, and separate statutes add specific protections for using an AED, giving naloxone during an overdose, and calling 911 when someone is overdosing on drugs.¹

What the Law Protects You From

Section 164 shields “any person” who voluntarily gives first aid, emergency treatment, or rescue assistance to someone who is unconscious, ill, injured, or in need of rescue. That covers the ordinary situations people picture: pulling someone from a car wreck, starting CPR on a stranger who has collapsed, helping a neighbor out of a burning house, keeping an injured hiker stable until paramedics reach the scene.¹

The protection reaches further than casual bystanders. It also covers members and employees of nonprofit volunteer and governmental ambulance, rescue, and emergency units, even when the organization charges a service fee and even when the responder draws a salary. In a state that relies heavily on volunteer fire and rescue, that matters: a volunteer EMT responding off-duty carries the same shield as a passerby who stops to help.¹

Two limits are built in. The immunity does not apply when first aid or emergency treatment is given on the premises of a hospital or clinic; different liability rules take over inside a medical facility. And nothing in the statute allows anyone to force care on someone who objects on religious grounds.¹

Three Conditions You Have to Meet

Three things have to line up before the statute protects you.

First, your help has to be voluntary. The statute’s phrase is “voluntarily, without the expectation of monetary or other compensation from the person aided or treated.” If you’re being paid by the person you’re helping, or you have a contractual duty to respond in that moment, you’re outside the statute.

Second, the situation has to be an emergency. The person you’re helping must be “unconscious, ill, injured or in need of rescue assistance.” Routine, non-urgent help doesn’t trigger the law.

Third, you have to act in good faith. Honest effort is protected even when it goes imperfectly. What isn’t protected is conduct the statute describes as willful, wanton, reckless, or grossly negligent.¹

Nothing in the statute requires medical training, certification, or any particular qualification. The protection is available to a first-aid instructor and to someone with no training at all.

Conduct That Strips the Protection

The statute names four kinds of conduct that take you outside its shield.¹

Willful misconduct is the clearest case: intentionally doing something harmful under the cover of helping. Wanton conduct means acting with conscious indifference to a known, serious risk — being aware your actions could cause real harm and doing them anyway. Reckless behavior is taking an action any reasonable person would see as creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk, like moving someone with an obvious spinal injury when nothing is forcing you to move them. Gross negligence is a severe departure from what a reasonable person would do, such as attempting a medical procedure you have no idea how to perform when calling 911 and keeping the person stable was the obvious choice.

The hard line is between ordinary mistakes, which stay protected, and gross negligence, which doesn’t. An imperfect Heimlich that cracks a rib is a different thing from attempting a tracheotomy with a pocket knife because you once saw it in a movie. The bar for losing immunity is set high enough that honest, reasonable effort stays covered even when the outcome is bad.

Do You Have to Stop and Help?

No. Maine does not impose a general legal duty on bystanders to help someone in danger. You can walk past an accident scene without stopping and face no criminal charge or civil suit for that choice. The Good Samaritan Law removes the fear of being sued for helping; it doesn’t create an obligation to help.

Separate duties can exist based on specific relationships or roles — a parent toward a child, a lifeguard toward swimmers in an assigned area — but those come from other areas of law, not from Section 164.

Using an AED

Maine has a dedicated statute for automated external defibrillators. Under Title 22, Section 2150-C, people involved with AEDs receive civil immunity for actions taken in response to a suspected sudden cardiac arrest, unless their conduct amounts to gross negligence or willful or wanton misconduct.²

The protection covers anyone who uses, attempts to use, or even fails to use an AED during a perceived cardiac emergency. It also reaches the person or entity that bought the device, the property owner where it’s kept, the prescribing physician, and the people who design or run AED programs and training. In practical terms, grabbing the AED off the wall at a gym and using it on someone in cardiac arrest won’t expose you to liability, even if the outcome isn’t what you hoped for.²

Giving Naloxone During an Overdose

Title 22, Section 2353 provides both civil and criminal immunity for administering naloxone (often sold as Narcan) in good faith and with reasonable care to a person believed to be experiencing an opioid-related overdose.³

The statute protects several groups. Healthcare professionals and pharmacists who store, dispense, or prescribe naloxone are immune from civil and criminal liability and cannot be disciplined professionally for doing so. People specifically authorized under the statute to possess and administer naloxone get the same protection. And a person who is not specifically authorized — any bystander — is covered when administering naloxone in good faith to someone they believe is overdosing. Municipalities and overdose prevention programs that keep naloxone on hand are protected as well.³

Calling 911 During an Overdose Without Being Arrested

A separate statute addresses a different fear: that calling 911 for an overdose will get you or others at the scene arrested. Title 17-A, Section 1111-B gives immunity from arrest, prosecution, and probation or parole revocation to “protected persons” when a medical professional or law enforcement officer is dispatched to a suspected drug-related overdose.⁴

A protected person includes the caller who requests medical assistance, anyone rendering aid at the scene when responders arrive, and the person actually overdosing. The immunity lasts for the duration of the emergency response and ends when the medical professional or law enforcement officer leaves the scene.⁴

The scope is broader than many people assume. It covers any violation of law discovered during the emergency response, not just drug possession, except for a specific list of excluded crimes. Those excluded crimes are serious offenses such as assault, robbery, arson, kidnapping, sexual assault, crimes against children, sex trafficking, OUI, and attempts or conspiracies to commit them. Drug possession and other drug offenses are not on the excluded list, so a person who calls 911 for an overdose is protected from prosecution for drugs found at the scene.⁴

Recent decisions from Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court have narrowed how the immunity works in practice. In a 2025 ruling, the court held that the caller must actually suspect a drug-related overdose, and the content of the call itself must reflect that suspicion, though no particular wording is required. The court also said the emergency response must be to the location of a genuine “medical emergency,” not merely a “medical event.”⁵

Those rulings have a direct practical lesson. If you call 911 and describe symptoms without mentioning that you suspect an overdose, the immunity may not apply. When you call, say clearly that you think the person may be overdosing.

When the Person Refuses Help

Section 164 cannot be used to force emergency treatment on someone who objects on religious grounds. Outside that specific protection, general consent principles apply.¹

If someone is unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate, the law presumes they would consent to emergency care. A conscious person who tells you not to help has the right to refuse, and giving aid over an explicit objection can create liability rather than avoid it. If the person is alert and tells you to stop, stop. If they’re unconscious and in danger, you can act.

1
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 14 – Immunity From Civil Liability
2
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 22 – Automated External Defibrillators; Immunity From Civil Liability
3
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 22 – Naloxone Hydrochloride or Another Opioid Overdose-Reversing Medication
4
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 17-A – Immunity From Arrest, Prosecution and Revocation and Termination Proceedings When Assistance Has Been Requested for Suspected Drug-Related Overdose
5
Maine Judicial Branch. State v. Beaulieu, 2025 ME 4