Maine’s highest court has rejected a man’s appeal that argued he’s immune from prosecution under Maine’s Good Samaritan law.

First enacted in 2019, the law was created to encourage people to call for help when they believe someone has overdosed, by providing immunity from drug-related arrests and prosecution. The law has been updated more than once, most recently in 2024 to exclude immunity for people charged with operating under the influence.

Two years before that update, a woman noticed a car had been pulled over near a highway exit for a couple of hours. She called police and told an officer that she was concerned about a “medical event.”

Police believed the driver, Billy Beaulieu, was under the influence and charged him with OUI. Beaulieu pleaded not guilty in October 2023, and then asked that his case be dismissed because he believed the Good Samaritan law applied to his situation.

Beaulieu’s attorney argued that a stranger had called for help out of concern for his well-being, and suggested that if the case wasn’t dismissed, it might deter others from calling for help.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court disagreed. In a ruling issued Tuesday, the justices said the phrase “medical emergency” wasn’t specific enough to imply the woman suspected Beaulieu of overdosing.

“Whether or not Beaulieu actually experienced an overdose, the witness’s request that the police check on Beaulieu’s vehicle was based on her suspicion of a ‘medical event,’ a term that encompasses far too wide a range of circumstances to satisfy the threshold requirement for immunity that the call be for a suspected drug overdose,” the justices wrote. “No reasonable interpretation of ‘medical event’ supports Beaulieu’s argument that it necessarily refers to a drug overdose.”