The Appellate Court of Illinois First District Fourth Division (“Illinois Appellate Court”) held in its Order filed on November 2, 2023 that the defendant hospital did not have a duty to warn a non-agent independent contractor EMT of a patient’s violent criminal record, and that the EMT’s negligence claim against the hospital for failing to properly restrain the patient was medical in nature.
Catherine McDermott, an emergency medical technician (EMT), allegedly was battered by Cortez Peters, a patient under the care of The University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC). Specifically, McDermott alleged that Peters was a psychiatric patient at one of UCMC’s hospitals and had a criminal history of aggravated battery, domestic battery, and violations of orders of protection. McDermott further alleged that on June 10, 2019, UCMC contracted with her employer, Medical Express Ambulance Service, Inc. (Medical Express), to transport Peters from one hospital to another and that UCMC employees “prepared Cortez Peters for medical transport *** by securing him to the stretcher with restraints.” According to McDermott, Peters “broke free from the restraints and repeatedly struck *** [her] about her head and body with closed fists while in the ambulance.” McDermott claimed that UCMC was negligent in multiple ways, including, for failing to notify Medical Express of Peters’ “criminal history and hostility and aggressive behavior towards females,” and for failing “to properly apply the restraints to the stretcher to prevent Cortez Peters from posing a danger” to her.
Regarding UCMC’s argument that McDermott was required to file a section 2-622 report, the trial court found that McDermott was not required to file such a report because her claim against UCMC sounded in ordinary negligence rather than medical negligence. According to the trial court, “UCMC has not asserted that Mr. Peters’ mental health problems afford him different physical capabilities than that of an average man of his build.” Accordingly, the trial court reasoned, a jury would not need to hear medical expert testimony and it would be within the ken of a lay juror to
consider McDermott’s claim against UCMC. Based on those findings, the trial court initially denied UCMC’s motion to dismiss and allowed McDermott to file an amended complaint omitting two of her allegations against UCMC and modifying one other.
However, the trial court subsequently sua sponte decided to “revisit” its prior order, and specifically its ruling that McDermott’s failure-to-restrain claim sounded in ordinary negligence. The trial court observed that, “as set forth in decisions not previously cited to by UCMC,” the decision of whether to restrain a hospital patient “involves medical judgment that is not within the ken of the average lay juror.” Accordingly, the trial court concluded that McDermott’s failure-to-restrain negligence claim was medical in nature and, therefore, required compliance with the healing arts malpractice procedures set forth in section 2-622. As a result, the trial court vacated the portion of its prior opinion addressing the necessity of plaintiff’s submission of a physician’s report and ordered McDermott to file a section 2-622 report. McDermott filed a motion for reconsideration, which the court denied.
The Illinois Appellate Court stated: “As for the merits of McDermott’s duty-to-warn claim, we agree with UCMC that
McDermott and UCMC did not have the requisite relationship for such a duty to attach … Under the well-settled law regarding the duty to protect third parties, UCMC had no legal duty to protect a non-employee, non-agent independent contractor like McDermott.”
The Illinois Appellate Court further stated: “The conduct at issue in this case is in the “broad realm of medical, hospital[,] or healing art malpractice.” Indeed, “it has been frequently held in this state and others that the standard of care where an injury allegedly results from a hospital’s failure to provide adequate restraints *** can be established only upon expert medical testimony. Consequently, these cases are treated as medical malpractice actions subject to statutory restrictions for healing art malpractice.””
Source McDermott v. Peters, 2023 IL App (1st) 230852-U.
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