SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - An ambulance company may be liable for the injuries of a young woman who undid the safety belts holding her in a gurney and jumped out the back of the moving vehicle, a California appeals court ruled, rejecting comparisons to a nearly identical case where a woman also jumped out of an ambulance and was hit and killed in traffic.
Saying “ambulance personnel owe a general duty to exercise due care” in transporting patients with known mental problems, California’s First Appellate District Court reversed the dismissal of the lawsuit against City Ambulance of Eureka.
A minor identified as T.L. sued the ambulance company after she was injured falling from the back of the vehicle in the fall of 2017. The plaintiff was being transported from a county clinic to a longer-term facility about four hours away.
The attending physician, Dr. Qyana Griffith, said T.L. “had a history of cannabis disorder, meaning she was devoting `a lot of time trying to obtain’ the substance, to the extent it interfered with day-to-day activities.” But she didn’t report any thoughts of hurting herself or committing suicide. She was on a “5585 hold,” meaning she required evaluation for severe mental illness.
The doctor decided she could be safely transferred by ambulance without restraints, and testified she had never called for restraints because patients must be calm before she would allow them to be moved. A nurse also told the two paramedics the plaintiff was “calm, cooperative, and stable for transport.” The ambulance company’s policy was to use restraints only when a patient is “potentially violent and is exhibiting behavior that is potentially dangerous to self and/or others.”
Fifteen minutes into the ride, T.L. unbuckled two belts, got up from the gurney and jumped out the back doors. The paramedic riding with her said there had “absolutely zero indication” that she would do “something erratic.” In her lawsuit, T.L. submitted an opinion from Scott Jones, an expert on ambulance transport, who stated patients with her diagnosis “are dangerous,” the defendants should have used “soft restraints” to attach her to the gurney and locked the rear door.
The defendants cited another appeals court’s 2004 decision Hernandez v. KWPH, which held ambulance workers have no duty to protect somebody from a “sudden act of self-harm.” In that case, a woman who was transported by ambulance to a hospital suddenly jumped out, ran across a highway, tried to flag down one vehicle and was hit and killed by another.
The court in Hernandez concluded that just because the ambulance employees agreed to take the woman to the hospital, they weren’t responsible for protecting her from “her own suicidal, reckless or irrational subsequent conduct.” To rule otherwise, the court said, would subject paramedics to liability if they restrain patients who later sue them for wrongful detention.
The First Appellate District said T.L.’s case was different, because the ambulance workers were already aware she had a mental health diagnosis that would allow her to be involuntarily restrained.
“We fail to see how this case is any different in character than that against any other entity or person who has provided, or assisted in providing, medical services to a patient,” the court, likening it to another case where a paramedic was held liable for failing to fully examine a prisoner who later died from complications of sickle cell anemia. That case established “fundamental premise that ambulance personnel owe a general duty to exercise due care in performing the medical support services they provide,” the court said.
It will be up to a judge or jury to determine, based on expert testimony, whether the ambulance workers violated their duties, the court concluded.