Good Samaritan law

First Aid & CPR Trinidad & Tobago

The Good Samaritan: compassion and protection

Drawn from the Bible (Luke 10:25-37), the parable of the Good Samaritan tells of a traveller left for dead who is rescued by a stranger that tends to him and sees to his care. Beyond its religious context, it carries a universal message: the moral duty to help others in danger, through compassion and altruism.

Inspired by this principle, many so-called Good Samaritan laws have been enacted around the world to protect those who assist in good faith during an emergency from legal action. The exact scope of that protection, however, varies from one jurisdiction to another: here is what the law applicable to your region provides.

Statute citation

Governing act No dedicated Good Samaritan statute. Trinidad and Tobago is a common-law jurisdiction; liability rests on negligence principles, with no specific rescuer-protection enactment and no general statutory duty to rescue.
Scope of protection No dedicated statutory protection for the volunteer rescuer and no duty to intervene. The intervener is judged against the common-law reasonable-person standard and is liable only for negligence. No specific AED-protection statute.
Duty to rescue No
AED liability protection No
No legal duty to rescue

Your protection under the law

In Trinidad and Tobago there is no dedicated Good Samaritan statute to protect the rescuer: liability rests on the common-law principles of negligence. Someone who intervenes in good faith and acts reasonably, by the standard of the prudent person, is not exposed simply for having helped. Only clear negligence could, in theory, give rise to liability.

No duty to act, but every reason to

Trinidadian law places no duty on anyone to intervene: coming to someone's aid remains a matter of conscience, not legal compulsion. A person who decides to act in good faith and with judgment need not fear the harshness of the courts. It is therefore not the law that holds people back from helping, but the uncertainty of knowing what to do at the decisive moment.

Why training matters

In cardiac arrest, the chance of survival falls by roughly 10% with each minute without CPR: the bystander becomes the first link in the chain of survival, long before help arrives. In Trinidad and Tobago, where highway traffic and the geography of two islands can both lengthen response times, those first minutes belong to whoever knows how to act. And with no explicit protective legal framework, it is competence that reassures and makes it possible to act with confidence. To get trained is to prepare yourself to do the right things on the day someone close by desperately needs them.