How has section 855.4 of the California Medical Code been interpreted in the context of medical malpractice cases?

⁴ One other published case briefly addressed the application of section 855.4. In Sava v. Fuller (1967) 249 Cal.App.2d 281, 57 Cal.Rptr. 312, a state-employed botanist was hired to analyze a plant substance a child may have ingested; the botanist incorrectly concluded that the substance was toxic. The child's parents sued, alleging that the child died as a "proximate result of the incorrect analysis because the treatment by the physician was thereafter based upon the misinformation that ingestion of toxic materials rather than bronchopneumonia was the child's ailment." (Id . at p. 283, 57 Cal.Rptr. 312.) The court rejected the botanist's assertion of immunity under section 855.4, finding simply that "[t]he acts charged here were not within the purview of that section." (Id . at p. 292, 57 Cal.Rptr. 312.)