Ciechon v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 10 August 1982
• Docket Number: No. 80-2397,80-2397
• Citation: 686 F.2d 511
• Parties: Eva CIECHON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 511

686 F.2d 511

Eva CIECHON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 80-2397.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Oct. 27, 1981.

Decided Aug. 10, 1982.

Maureen J. Kelly, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants.

Linda R. Hirshman, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before CUMMINGS, Chief Judge, SPRECHER, ^* Circuit Judge, and GRANT, Senior District Judge. ^**

CUMMINGS, Chief Judge.

This appeal raises the issues of whether the City of Chicago violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process by discharging Eva Ciechon from her position as a career paramedic with the Chicago Fire Department. The district court granted summary judgment on Ciechon's constitutional claims and ordered her reinstatement. We affirm.

I

The following synopsis is based on the record and the district court's findings:

Plaintiff Eva Ciechon has been a permanent career service paramedic with the Chicago Fire Department since 1976. When this litigation was commenced, Ciechon had worked for the Fire Department for approximately three years. During that time she had maintained an unblemished personnel record and had received several letters of appreciation from people she had assisted.

The events which were the basis for the Fire Department's dismissal of Ciechon occurred on January 16, 1979. Chicago was still trying to cope with record-setting snow conditions as the result of a blizzard. Two days earlier, on January 14, 1979, Fire Commissioner Richard Albrecht had issued an order to all paramedics to report for duty before their scheduled shifts in order to provide additional personnel to assist in delivering emergency care during the severe snow conditions.

Ciechon responded to Commissioner Albrecht's order and reported to her assigned firehouse at 5:30 p. m. on January 14, fourteen hours before her scheduled shift. Ciechon worked for those fourteen hours plus her regular shift, a total of thirty-eight hours, on Ambulance # 44. For the first fourteen hours, Ciechon worked with paramedics Liz Wills and Richard Ritt; Ciechon and Ritt worked the remainder of the time. The paramedics worked as a team rather than according to defined individual responsibilities. On each run the paramedics divided the work of interviewing and assessing patients, administering treatment, and filling out necessary forms. The division of work was made without explicit instructions from one paramedic to another and varied on the runs.

At 10:30 p. m. on January 16, having made twenty-six runs in twenty-seven hours, Ambulance # 44 was dispatched on an inhalator call to the John Ciebien apartment at 1827 W. Evergreen Avenue. The personnel on the ambulance on that run were paramedics Ciechon and Ritt, ambulance driver Ed Altman, and candidate firefighter James Dziedzic. Dziedzic had been assigned to the ambulance to provide extra manpower because of the snow conditions. Altman was forced to park the ambulance about a block away from the Evergreen address because of the snow. Ciechon got out of the ambulance and asked Ritt and Dziedzic to bring oxygen, which they did.

The two paramedics and the other two members of the ambulance team were led to the second-floor apartment of the Ciebiens by Mary Ciebien. Mary's mother had called the paramedics because her 66-year-old husband, John Ciebien, was having difficulty breathing. When the paramedics entered the apartment, Mr. Ciebien was seated at the dining-room table. Ciechon asked him what was wrong, and he replied that he had been out shoveling snow and chopping ice and now was having difficulty breathing. Ciechon checked his pulse and respiration. He had no pain and seemed alert. He also said he had experienced this problem before. Paramedic Ritt listened to Mr. Ciebien's lungs and inquired about medication he was taking while Ciechon talked to the family.

The family volunteered the information that Mr. Ciebien had suffered a collapsed lung a year before which had required hospitalization. The family did not know what had caused the collapsed lung. Mr. Ciebien requested oxygen, but Ciechon refused to give oxygen because, based on her medical training, she felt it was inadvisable to give oxygen to a patient with a history of a collapsed lung of unknown origin. As she put it, it might do more harm than good. Several times she and Dziedzic urged Mr. Ciebien to go to "the hospital" and plaintiff instructed Altman to try to move the ambulance closer to the apartment so that Ciebien could be transported. However, he refused to be transported to the hospital. Ciechon feared that if oxygen were administered and complications occurred, the snow conditions would make it difficult to return quickly to the apartment. She explained to the family that she could not force him to go, and explained several times to the family why oxygen could not safely be administered. The ambulance crew finally left the apartment, telling the family to keep Mr. Ciebien sitting up and to call again if there was any change in his condition.

After the paramedics left, Mr. Ciebien's condition suddenly worsened. Mrs. Ciebien called the emergency number 911 and requested that the paramedics return. ¹ When the ambulance arrived, Ciechon directed Dziedzic and Altman to bring the stretcher to the apartment. When they entered the apartment Mr. Ciebien already seemed dead. Nevertheless the paramedics and the other two comprising the ambulance crew transported him to St. Elizabeth's Hospital where he was officially pronounced dead.

Within a few days of Mr. Ciebien's death, his family contacted the Chicago Mayor's Office of Professional Standards and the local CBS television network affiliate to complain about the service the paramedics had provided. Captain John Ormond, Supervisor of the Chicago Fire Department's Bureau of Emergency Medical Services, investigated the complaint. The Ciebien family claimed without support that on the first run the paramedics had done nothing: no medical equipment was brought to the apartment; no oxygen was administered, despite the repeated requests of the family; no vital signs were checked, and the paramedics refused to take Mr. Ciebien to the hospital. Ormond interviewed Ciechon and Altman about the two runs, and they both stated that Mr. Ciebien's condition had been assessed, that he had refused to be transported to the hospital, and that the oxygen they brought had not been administered because of the perceived danger of such treatment in light of Ciebien's history of a collapsed lung. Ormond also interviewed Ritt informally at another firehouse, and Ritt confirmed Ciechon's and Altman's versions of the incident. Altman, Ciechon and Ritt all submitted written reports on the incident which were consistent with what they had told Ormond.

A second set of interviews was then conducted by Captain Ormond together with Dr. Paul Mesnick, Medical Director for the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services. They interviewed the Ciebien family, Ciechon, and Altman, but not Ritt. Again the family and the ambulance crew differed in their accounts of what had occurred on the ambulance run.

On February 13, 1979, Ciechon was suspended for thirty days because of the Ciebien run and was charged with (1) failure to bring proper equipment to the scene of an emergency; (2) failure to perform patient assessment; and (3) failure to complete medical information report forms. After thirty days Ciechon was suspended indefinitely. The following further charges were added on March 5, March 29, April 16, and April 24, 1979: (1) failure to offer transport to the closest hospital; (2) failure to perform investigatory steps, including a physical examination, necessary to assess the patient's condition; (3) failure to communicate with the supervisory hospital; and (4) failure to provide treatment. On April 30 1979, shortly before the hearing on these charges, the chairman of the Personnel Board notified Ciechon that the Board would seek her discharge. ² No charges were filed against any other member of the ambulance crew.

On May 2, 1979, Ciechon brought this action under Section 1 of the 1871 Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. § 1983) in the Northern District of Illinois, alleging violations of due process and equal protection arising from her suspension. The defendants were the City of Chicago, the Commissioner of its Fire Department and the four members of the City's Personnel Board. A temporary restraining order was granted reinstating Ciechon to the city payroll pending an administrative hearing and decision on the charges against her by the Chicago Personnel Board.

Hearings on the charges were held in May and June of 1979. The hearing officer dismissed the charges of failure to offer transport and failure to complete medical forms, but found the evidence sufficient to support the remaining charges. He concluded that both suspensions of Ciechon were proper and recommended discharge from her position as a career paramedic. The Personnel Board adopted the hearing officer's recommendations on November 30, 1979.

On February 5, 1980, the City filed a motion in the district court for leave to discharge Ciechon in accordance with the Personnel Board's decision. Ciechon filed an amended complaint on February 15, 1980, alleging that her discharge violated equal protection of the laws because she had been singled out for discipline while no action had been taken against her co-paramedic, Ritt. She also claimed that the investigatory procedures, the charging process, and the administrative hearing violated her constitutional right to due process of law. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment and submitted a transcript and all exhibits of the administrative hearing as the basis for the respective motions. On May 4, 1980, the district court held in favor of Ciechon and ordered her reinstatement with back pay. A decision awarding her attorneys'...