Ilczyszyn v. Sw. Airlines Co.
| Decision Date | 08 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | A158352 |
| Parties | Kelly ILCZYSZYN et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO., Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Balaban & Spielberger, Andrew J. Spielberger, West Hollywood, Daniel K. Balaban, Los Angeles; Esner, Chang & Boyer, Holly N. Boyer, Shea S. Murphy, Pasadena; Greene, Broillet & Wheeler, Browne Greene, El Segundo; Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis, Larsen & Lucey, Luke Ellis, San Francisco; Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Fredrick and Aaron M. Panner for Plaintiffs and Appellants.
The Ryan Law Group, Timothy J. Ryan, Rebekka R. Martorano, Sacramento; Sidley Austin, Jonathan F. Cohn, Joshua J. Fougere ; Ryan Law Partners, Andrew B. Ryan ; Coddington, Hicks & Danforth and Richard G. Grotch, Redwood City, for Defendant and Respondent.
East, J.* Southwest Airlines passenger Richard Ilczyszyn tragically suffered a massive pulmonary embolism1
while locked inside an airplane lavatory during the final stages of a flight from Oakland to Orange County. Rather than treating Ilczyszyn's circumstances as a medical emergency, the flight crew perceived him to be a security threat. As a result, he did not receive medical care until after the flight had landed and the other passengers had disembarked. By then, he had gone into cardiac arrest. Although he was resuscitated, he later died in a hospital. Ilczyszyn's widow Kelly, together with his three children, sued defendant Southwest Airlines Co. (Southwest) alleging that the flight crew's failure to provide medical assistance caused his death. Following a lengthy trial, the jury found that Southwest was negligent but found against plaintiffs on the issue of causation.
On appeal, plaintiffs assert that the trial court erred in ruling at the outset of trial that Southwest was immune from liability under both title 49 United States Code section 44941 ( section 44941 )2 of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, and Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b) for any act or omission occurring after the flight crew decided to treat Ilczyszyn's medical emergency as a security threat. Plaintiffs contend these statutory immunities apply only to the actual disclosure of a security threat, and not to conduct associated with such disclosures. They also maintain that the immunity is inapplicable here because the gravamen of their case was based solely on the flight crew's negligent failure to identify the medical emergency and provide aid. They argue that the court's alleged error limited both the admissibility of their evidence and the scope of their arguments, making it impossible for them to prove the element of causation.
We conclude that the trial court properly applied section 44941 immunity. Accordingly, we affirm.
I.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On September 19, 2014, Ilczyszyn was traveling by air from Chicago to his home in Orange County. After arriving at the Oakland International Airport, he boarded Southwest flight No. 4640 (Flight 4640), a connecting flight from Oakland to John Wayne Airport. The one-hour flight took off at around 9:15 p.m. At some point during the flight, Ilczyszyn left his seat and went to a lavatory in the back of the plane. While inside the lavatory, he suffered a massive pulmonary embolism
.
The flight attendants became aware that Ilczyszyn was in the lavatory and attempted to communicate with him through the closed door. Although he was making crying sounds, he was unresponsive. After the flight attendants tried unsuccessfully to access the lavatory by pushing on the folding door, the airplane's captain assessed the situation as a security threat and initiated security protocols. He contacted Southwest ground operations and requested that law enforcement officers meet the plane at the arrival gate.
After the airplane landed, Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies spoke with the flight attendants and decided to deplane the passengers before accessing the lavatory. By then, Ilczyszyn had gone into cardiac arrest
. When the deputies forced the lavatory door open, they found him unconscious with no pulse. After receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), he recovered a stable heart rhythm. By this time, he had already suffered severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen. He died in a hospital the following day. An autopsy report listed the cause of death as pulmonary thromboembolism due to deep venous thrombosis.
On April 20, 2015, plaintiffs filed a wrongful death action against Southwest and the flight crew on Flight 4640, including pilots Captain Joseph Walker and First Officer Christopher Krawec, and Flight Attendants Cynthia L. Jenkins, Christina Green, Jenna A. King, and Kristina Lynn Klotz. Plaintiffs alleged the flight crew was aware that Ilczyszyn was experiencing a medical emergency but decided to treat him as a disruptive passenger, leaving him unattended and delaying medical treatment by falsely reporting to law enforcement personnel that he had barricaded himself in the lavatory.
In December 2017, Southwest filed motions for summary judgment, asserting that it and the individual employee defendants were entitled to the federal immunity for reporting suspicious behavior under section 44941. Southwest also argued that plaintiffs’ claims were barred by Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b), which provides immunity for reports of suspected criminal activity made to law enforcement. Southwest further asserted that its employees’ conduct did not cause Ilczyszyn's death.
In June 2018, the trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Walker and Krawec after determining that the pilots’ security-related reports were subject to section 44941 immunity and were also privileged under Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b). However, the court denied summary judgment as to the flight attendants and Southwest.3 Among other things, the court found that "Southwest has not established as a matter of law that all of its alleged liability derive[d] from the ‘disclosure’ to law enforcement of a suspected security threat." The court also found that there were triable issues as to causation, based on the likely testimony from competing medical expert witnesses.
Before trial, Southwest filed motion in limine No. 4. Southwest invoked section 44941 decision to deplane the passengers before accessing the lavatory. Southwest also urged that plaintiffs should be barred from asserting that its employees had a duty to further assess or investigate Ilczyszyn's situation once they became suspicious that he posed a security threat. Alternatively, Southwest contended that this evidence should be excluded under Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b).
In opposition, plaintiffs argued that section 44941 applies to "disclosures" only, and not to actions taken as a result of such disclosures. They also asserted that Civil Code section 47 does not bar recovery for personal injuries arising from tortious conduct. They stressed that their case was not based on any disclosure or statement. Instead, their claim was that had the flight attendants made a proper assessment of Ilczyszyn's condition a security threat never would have been declared and the plane would have been met at the arrival gate by paramedics, not law enforcement. Following several hearings and two rounds of supplemental briefing, the court granted the motion in part.
First, the trial court divided the facts of the case into four temporal phases. Phase 1 consisted of the period of time during which the flight attendants discovered Ilczyszyn in the bathroom and tried to assess his situation. Phase 2 consisted of the period between when Captain Walker first spoke to the flight attendants and when he declared a security threat. Phase 3 consisted of the period during which the plane was in "lockdown." The final phase, Phase 4, consisted of the period after the plane landed and law enforcement took control of the situation.
The trial court determined that Southwest was immune from liability for conduct occurring after Phase 1, that is, "after the flight attendants made their initial report to the captain of the potential security threat posed by Mr. Ilczyszyn which formed the basis for the captain's subsequent orders [to initiate security protocols]." The court concluded that evidence of such conduct would be inadmissible as it was "irrelevant to the jury's consideration." As to Phase 1 itself, the court ruled that plaintiffs would be "entitled to present ... their version of the evidence related to the initial assessment [of Ilczyszyn] and make any reasonable arguments that flow from any misassessment ... during that very first interval of time."
In their opening argument, plaintiffs’ counsel contended that the Southwest flight crew negligently assumed Ilczyszyn was a security threat rather than a person suffering a medical emergency, asserting that the crew's failure to provide him with basic aid and oxygen after he fell ill was a substantial factor in causing his death. Below, we summarize the extensive evidence introduced at trial.
On the evening of Ilczyszyn's flight, Jenkins was...
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