APPELLATE SUMMARY
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
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CHICAGO, Ill. — Decedent’s estate was not entitled to damages in its claim against a fire protection district for its paramedics’ performance in treating decedent because Illinois paramedics are immune from negligence in the performance of their duties unless they are found to be guilty of willful and wanton misconduct, which was not present in the decedent’s case.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a U.S. district court jury verdict. Magistrate Judge Morton Denlow of the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, presided in the trial court.
Decedent Shirley Johnson, a woman in her 50s and weighing about 300 pounds, had a severe allergic reaction to peanuts while eating at a Chinese restaurant. Her husband drove her to the nearby Provena Immediate Care Center. When they arrived, a nurse saw that the decedent was slumped in the passenger seat and already comatose, was having serious difficulty breathing and her skin was turning blue.
A physician was summoned and he diagnosed anaphylactic shock. He instructed his staff to call 911, inject the decedent with epinephrine and get his equipment for treating a patient whose airway is blocked. A team of five paramedics employed by defendant Algonquin/Lake-in-the-Hills arrived at the center about three minutes after the decedent and they moved the decedent to their ambulance.
The physician told the paramedics that the decedent needed to be intubated immediately and he offered to perform the procedure. The paramedics declined his offer and said “we’ll take care of it from here.” The paramedics went to work administering a medicine like epinephrine called Benadryl.
They didn’t try to administer epinephrine even though standard procedures called for it to be used before Benadryl in a case of anaphylactic shock. The paramedics initially were unable to intubate the decedent because her jaws were clenched shut but eventually were able to insert an “oral airway. When the ambulance arrived at an emergency room, 29 minutes had elapsed since the paramedics had arrived at the immediate care center. The staff of the emergency room discovered that the endotracheal tube was in the decedent’s esophagus instead of her trachea. By the time the decedent was reintubated, she had suffered severe, irreversible brain damage. She died about two and one-half years later.
The decedent’s estate sued the Algonquin/Lake-in-the-Hills Fire Protection District. The jury awarded the decedent’s estate $1 million and both sides appealed. The defendant argued that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law and the estate argued that it was entitled to a larger damages award.
The appeals court reversed. The case was brought under the Illinois Emergency Medical Services Systems Act, which provides that a licensed emergency medical services provider such as the defendant “who in good faith provides emergency ... medical services ... in the normal course of conducting their activities ... shall not be civilly liable as a result of their acts or omissions ... unless such acts or omissions constitute willful and wanton misconduct.”
The appeals court said that the definitions of “willful and wanton” in previous Illinois decisions are not uniform and contain general statements that “often make a poor match with specific facts.”
In this case, the appeals court said, the decedent’s estate’s best evidence was the paramedics’ failure to detect that the final effort at intubation had failed. But the court said that “no one supposes an incorrect insertion itself, in a moving ambulance, negligent.” And even if the paramedics failed to detect the misplacement of the tube was negligent, such a failure wouldn’t constitute willful and wanton misconduct “without circumstances of aggravation,” the appeals court said.
In response to another of the estate’s arguments, the appeals court found that administering epinephrine at the first opportunity might not have made a difference to the decedent’s breathing because anaphylactic shock had shut down her airway.
The appeals court, therefore, concluded that the decedent’s estate “has no case as a matter of law.” The court ordered the district court to enter judgment for the defendant.
Edward Fagocki v. Algonquin/Lake-in-the-Hills Fire Protection District, No. 06-1522. Judge Richard A. Posner wrote the court’s opinion with Judges Joel M. Flaum and Daniel A. Manion concurring. Released July 13.