Abrams v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 28 March 2003
• Docket Number: No. 1-01-1954.,1-01-1954.
• Citation: 338 Ill. App.3d 179,272 Ill.Dec. 893,788 N.E.2d 197
• Parties: Patricia ABRAMS, Individually and as Special Administrator of the Estate of Georgia Sabrina White, deceased, and Dorothy Brown, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, a municipal corporation, Defendant-Appellee (Henrietta Young, Gregory Jones, Defendants).
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

788 N.E.2d 197

338 Ill. App.3d 179

272 Ill.Dec. 893

Patricia ABRAMS, Individually and as Special Administrator of the Estate of Georgia Sabrina White, deceased, and Dorothy Brown, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, a municipal corporation, Defendant-Appellee (Henrietta Young, Gregory Jones, Defendants).

No. 1-01-1954.

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Fifth Division.

March 28, 2003.

Deer & Stone, P.C., Chicago (Matthew B. Karchmar, of counsel), for Appellant.

Mara S. Georges, Corporation Counsel of the City of Chicago, Lawrence Rosenthal, Deputy Corporation Counsel; Benna Ruth Solomon, Chief Assistant Corporation Counsel; and David Graver, Assistant Corporation Counsel, for Appellee.

Presiding Justice CAMPBELL delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiff Patricia Abrams, individually and as the special administrator of the estate of Georgia Sabrina White, appeals an order of the circuit court of Cook County granting summary judgment to the defendant City of Chicago (City) in a personal injury action. Plaintiff Dorothy Brown did not sue the City; she and defendants Henrietta Young and Gregory Jones are not parties to this appeal.

The record on appeal shows that in deposition testimony, plaintiff claimed that at 1:30 and 1:40 a.m. on November 18, 1997, she telephoned the City's 911 service, asking for an ambulance because she had gone into labor with her seventh pregnancy. Plaintiff testified that she told the operators that her contractions were 10 minutes apart and that she did not have a vehicle. According to plaintiff, the operators told her it was not an emergency case and hung up on her.

A Chicago Fire Department (CFD) event query record shows that a call was received from plaintiffs address at 1:47 a.m. on November 18, 1997, which lasted 1 minute and 22 seconds, was handled by a person with the initials "VH," and given a priority of 1. Vicki Hernandez, a licensed emergency medical technician and paramedic, testified that she was the "VH" referred to in the CFD record. Hernandez had been in training with the Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) since April 1997. Hernandez had no specific recollection of the 1:47 a.m. telephone call.

Hernandez stated that a priority 1 code meant an ambulance was to be sent. Hernandez also noted that the CFD record showed that the disposition of the call was "Advised," which meant that an ambulance was not going to be sent and would be a priority 3 call. According to Hernandez, she was not responsible for entering the priority code; this was supposed to be done by the computer based on the disposition.

Hernandez testified that OEC used a system of flip cards to determine whether to send an ambulance in response to a telephone call. Hernandez believed she had a good knowledge of flip card No. 26— the card relating to pregnancy, childbirth and miscarriage—on November 18, 1997. The record shows that flip card No. 26 provided in part as follows "In general, primagravida patients (initial pregnancy) progress through labor much slower than multigravida (second-plus pregnancy). Therefore labor pains two minutes apart in a third pregnancy are considered more urgent than in a first pregnancy. When pains are less than two minutes apart in first pregnancy or less than five minutes apart in second-plus pregnancy, birth is considered imminent.

NOTE: Presentation of the cord, hands, or feet is a dire emergency. Often the only chance for survival of the infant is at the hospital.

WHEN IN DOUBT—SEND

KEY QUESTIONS PRE-ARRIVAL INSTRUCTIONS 1. Hemorrhage or not? a. DO NOT try to prevent birth. 2. Pain or not? b. DO NOT try to cross legs. 3. Frequency of pains? (How many c. DO NOT sit on toilet. Minutes apart? How long?) d. Lay down and take deep breaths with pains. 4. Months pregnant? (Trimester?) e. Keep baby warm. 5. Pushing or crowning? f. Turn baby on side. 6. Baby conscious and breathing? g. Save all tissue passed. 7. Number of pregnancies? h. Look for and direct apparatus to victim. DETERMINANT RESPONSE Bleeding in third trimester. Syncope (fainting) in pregnancy. Priority I Greater than four months pregnant with pains less than five minutes apart. If pregnant and hemorrhaging. Delivery or post-partum. Pains greater than five minutes apart if private transport is immediately available. Priority III If pregnant but no hemorrhage or pain. Priority III"

Hernandez initially testified that if a woman called with contractions more than five minutes apart with no complications, but no way to get to a hospital, an ambulance would not be sent because it was not indicated on the flip card. Hernandez later testified that she did not know whether she would send an ambulance in such a case. Hernandez testified that the phrase "when in doubt, send" appears on all of the flip cards. Hernandez also stated that she could ask her watch commander in cases where she was unsure.

Plaintiff testified she awakened her sister, Dorothy Brown. According to plaintiff, Brown then telephoned 911 and was told that it was not an emergency. Plaintiff testified that she then decided to call Capitol Ambulance, which informed plaintiff that they did not have an available car and that it would be two to three hours before they could send a car for plaintiff.

Brown testified that plaintiff awakened her after the first 911 call, she told plaintiff to call again, and she was present for the second call. Brown testified that she then telephoned 911, was told that it was not an emergency, and she was given the telephone number of an ambulance service. Brown believed the name of the service was Capitol. Brown testified that she then called Capitol Ambulance and was told they did not have an ambulance available. According to Brown, Capitol Ambulance did not indicate that they would have an ambulance available later.

A CFD event query record shows that a call was received from plaintiffs address at 1:53 a.m. on November 18, 1997, which lasted 48 seconds, was handled by a person with the initials "AC," and was disposed of as "Advised," though again showing a priority code of 1. Antoinette Cacioppo testified that she was the "AC" referred to in this CFD record. Like Hernandez, Cacioppo had been in training with the OEC since April 1997. According to Cacioppo, 911 call takers had to be licensed emergency medical technicians. Cacioppo was also aware of the "when in doubt, send" policy.

Plaintiff testified that after being refused by Capitol Ambulance, she telephoned her friend, Henrietta Young, who agreed to leave work to take her to the hospital. According to plaintiff, Young arrived approximately five minutes later to transport plaintiff and Brown to the hospital. Plaintiff testified that Young generally drove at the speed limit and obeyed traffic signals, but she went through a red light at King Drive and Pershing, holding down her car horn.

At the intersection of King Drive and Pershing, Young's car became involved in a collision with a car driven by Gregory Jones. Plaintiff estimated that Jones had been traveling between 75 and 80 miles per hour. In a handwritten statement, Jones admitted that he had a beer, two double shots of rum, and crack cocaine before getting behind the wheel of his car. The collision ejected Brown from Young's car. Plaintiff testified that her head went into the windshield of the car. Plaintiff testified that she lapsed into a coma for two weeks shortly after delivering her child, Georgia Sabrina White; when she regained consciousness, she learned that the child was dead. Plaintiff also required surgery to have her right ovary removed and a rod and screws put in her right leg. Plaintiff was in a wheelchair for a year. It has been recommended that plaintiff undergo surgery to put a plate in her forehead.

Daniel Bull, the 911 dispatcher who dispatched fire equipment to the scene of the collision at 2:19 a.m., testified that he would have sent an ambulance to plaintiff in the first instance, as private transportation was unavailable.

An affidavit by Dr. Frank Baker, submitted by plaintiff as an expert in emergency medical care, opined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the applicable standard of care required the CFD to dispatch an ambulance in this case, and that the CFD's failure to do so demonstrated a conscious disregard for plaintiffs safety. The Baker affidavit also opined that, had an ambulance been sent, the transportation by trained professionals probably would not have resulted in the collision that injured plaintiff and caused her child to be stillborn.

Abrams filed suit against the City, Young and Jones on November 18, 1998. Brown was added as a plaintiff bringing claims against Young and Jones a year later. On December 3, 1999, Abrams voluntarily dismissed her claim of ordinary negligence against the City, leaving allegations of willful and wanton misconduct. Abrams' claim against Young was dismissed with prejudice on December 5, 2000, as the result of a settlement with the estate of Georgia Sabrina White.

The City filed its motion for summary judgment on December 14, 2000, arguing that the City owed no duty to transport plaintiff and that its failure to do so was not the proximate cause of plaintiffs injury and her child's death. On April 20, 2001, the trial court entered an order granting the City's motion on the issue of proximate causation. The order stated that it was "final appealable pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 304(a) and the case continues as to defendant Gregory Jones." Abrams filed a notice of appeal to this court on May 14, 2001.¹ Abrams and Brown voluntarily dismissed their claims against Jones on June 4, 2001.

I

First, there is the question of jurisdiction. The City argues that the order at issue does not fall within the scope of Rule 304(a). Plaintiff relies on cases such as Kucharski v. Floro, 191 Ill.App.3d 1032, 139 Ill.Dec. 98, 548 N.E.2d 483 (1989), to argue that the language quoted above was...