Wilson v. Ill. Dep't of Fin. & Prof'l Regulation, 14 CV 10521
| Decision Date | 18 March 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 14 CV 10521,14 CV 10521 |
| Parties | DR. ROBERT LANCE WILSON, D.O., Plaintiff, v. ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF FINANCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL REGULATION; ANDREW GORCHYNSKY; THOMAS GLASGOW; LEONARD A. SHERMAN; OFFICE OF THE COOK COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER; MITRA B. KALELKAR; EDMUND R. DONAGHUE; THE STATE OF ILLINOIS; DOE DEFENDANTS 1-5; DO DEFENDANTS 6-10; DOE DEFENDANTS 11-20; and DOE DEFENDANTS 21-30, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
The State of Illinois suspended the medical license of Doctor Robert Wilson in October 1998 based on the circumstances surrounding the death of one of his patients. The patient, Henry Taylor, had been admitted to Wilson's hospital with two life-threatening maladies: end-stage renal disease and superior vena cava (SVC) syndrome, a blockage of a major vein that can lead to upper-body swelling and, eventually, suffocation. As Taylor's condition deteriorated and his death appeared imminent, Wilson readied an injection of morphine and potassium chloride intended to ease Taylor's suffering in his final moments. Taylor died before Wilson could fully administer the palliative dose on September 30, 1998. In the days that followed, the Cook County Medical Examiner's (CCME) office performed an autopsy and ruled Taylor's death a homicide by potassium chloride intoxication. No criminal charges were ever filed against Wilson, but the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Responsibility (IDFPR)—the state agency charged with regulating medical licenses—temporarily suspended Wilson's license ex parte on October 9, 1998. Wilson's license was not reinstated until April 2014, when the Circuit Court of Cook County issued a final order reversing the determination of the IDFPR. Over the intervening 15.5 years, Wilson and the IDFPR were embroiled in constant litigation, with Wilson disputing both the autopsy's conclusion and the propriety of his suspension. The Circuit Court's 2014 order marked the fourth time that court had reversed Wilson's suspension. On remand from the first three of those rulings, the IDFPR reinstated its own initial ruling. It did not appeal the Circuit Court's fourth reversal.
Wilson has filed suit against thirty-nine1 defendants, including the State of Illinois and Cook County. All of the individual defendants are current or former employees of the County or State. Wilson raises five claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the defendants violated his constitutional rights to due process, his property interest in his license, and his liberty interest in pursuing his chosen career. He also raises state-law claims for indemnification of the individual defendants by their employers (i.e., the State and County), malicious prosecution, and unreasonable suspension of a medical license, in violation of 225 ILCS 60/46.
The nine named defendants have all moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). In doing so, they have separated into three groups: (1) the "County Defendants" [26], consisting of the CCME; Dr. Mitra Kalelkar, the CCME's former Deputy Chief Medical Examiner; and Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the CCME's former Chief Medical Examiner; (2) the [19], which include the State of Illinois, the IDFPR, its Director Jay Stewart, its former Director Leonard Sherman, and its former Chief Prosecutor Thomas Glasgow; and (3) Dr. Andrew Gorchynsky [22], the former Chief Medical Coordinator for the IDFPR. The defendants' motions rely on, among other things, a statute-of-limitations argument and defenses based on common-law and statutory immunity. For the reasons stated below, the Defendants' motions [19, 22, 26] are granted, and Wilson's second amended complaint [18] is dismissed without prejudice.
The following facts are taken from the plaintiff's second amended complaint [18]. Henry Taylor was admitted to Olympia Fields Hospital in Olympia Fields, Illinois, in September 1998. (Second Am. Compl. at 9.) At that time, Wilson, a cardiologist, had staff privileges at the hospital. (Id. at 9.) Taylor was in dire straits, suffering from end-state renal disease and severe swelling in his right arm. (Id. at 10.) Tests determined that Taylor's swelling was the result of SVC syndrome, a potentially fatal condition blocking the flow of blood from the upper body to the heart. (Id. at 10.) The condition eventually results in swelling of tissue in the neck, which, in turn, compresses the trachea. This is referred to as "airway collapse," and it leads to suffocation, cardiac arrest, and death. (Id.) Doctors relayed this prognosis to Taylor and advised that his SVC syndrome could be treated with artificial ventilation, but Taylor rejected a breathing tube on the morning of September 30, 1998. (Id.) Taylor's doctors recognized that at this stage of SVC syndrome, no medication could reverse the swelling or ease the pressure on Taylor's windpipe. (Id.) As Taylor had refused a breathing tube and previously signed two "do not resuscitate" orders (DNRs), death from suffocation was inevitable. (Id. at 11.) Believing that Taylor would die "within minutes," the doctor treating him paged Wilson, who had treated Taylor in the past. (Id.) Plaintiff arrived at Taylor's bedside at 8:10 a.m. and found him "suffocating to death as his trachea collapsed." (Id.) He explained to Taylor that, without intubation, he would die, but Taylor refused Wilson's repeated requests to insert a breathing tube. (Id.) Within minutes, Taylor's airway completely collapsed and he began "uncontrollably gasping for air." (Id.) Based on Taylor's DNRs, there was nothing Wilson could do to save Taylor's life. He administered morphine, but the 10mg dose did nothing to relieve Taylor's obvious, extreme pain.
Under the American Medical Association's guidelines, Wilson knew that he had "an obligation to relieve pain and suffering . . . , includ[ing by] providing effective palliative treatment even thought it may foreseeably hasten death." (Id. at 13 (quoting Am. Med. Assoc. Rule 2.20).) But Wilson recognized that morphine was insufficient to relieve Taylor's suffering. So, he administered a dosage of potassium chloride "for the purpose of rendering Taylor unconscious as Taylor spiraled through the terrifying process of suffocating to death." (Id. at 15-16.) Potassium chloride has the potential to be lethal, but Wilson deemed that risk necessary in light of Taylor's suffering. He administered 40 millequivalents (m/eq) of the drug rather than the standard dose of 30 m/eq, because Taylor had developed a tolerance for potassium during years of kidney dialysis. (Id. at 16.) Though larger than standard, this dose was still one-sixth the lethal dose of 240 m/eq. (Id.)
As Wilson began to administer the injection, however, Taylor's heart stopped from lack of oxygen. He died at 8:25 a.m. on September 30, 1998. (Id.) Recognizing that, because Taylor died as potassium chloride was being administered, there might be suspicion that that the drug had killed him, Wilson promptly took a voluntary leave of absence so that the IDFPR and the Cook County State's Attorney could conduct a thorough investigation into Taylor's death. (Id. at 17.) Wilson himself called the CCME to request that the office perform an autopsy. (Id.)
The next day, October 1, 1998, Taylor's body was transported to the CCME where Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Mitra Kalelkar performed an autopsy. (Id. at 20.) At first, Kalelkar could not determine the cause of Taylor's death. She listed the result as uncertain pending the return of a toxicology report on Taylor's blood. While waiting for the blood test, Kalelkar spoke to an unidentified "third party"2 about the events leading to Taylor's demise. Based on that conversation, she changed the autopsy result to "homicide" resulting from "Potassium Chloride Intoxication." (Id.) Kalelkar's change of heart could not have been based on the blood test results, which were not completed by a third party until the following day. (Blood Test Results, Ex. 12 to Second Am. Compl.) According to an affidavit from Wilson's expert, Dr. James Bryant, those results, which were apparently never analyzed by the CCME or the IDFPR, actually confirmed that Taylor's potassium levels were normal at the time of his death (i.e., the injection had not reached his heart when he died). (Id. at 20-21.)
Immediately after modifying the autopsy results on October 1, 1998, Kalelkar notified the Olympia Fields Police Department that Taylor's death was a homicide. (Id. at 21.) Several days later, without notifying Wilson, Kalelkar released Taylor's body for cremation, foreclosing any opportunity for a second autopsy. (Id.) Kalelkar and her boss, Edmund Donoghue, met with IDFPR employees Dr. Andrew Gorchynsky and attorney Thomas Glasgow at the CCME office in Chicago on October 7. Kalelkar told the others that she had been unable to determine the cause of Taylor's death based on medical testing alone, but that she'd concluded his death had been a homicide after hearing a story from a third party about Wilson injecting Taylor with potassium chloride. (Id.)
Based on this meeting, Gorchynsky and Glasgow concluded that Wilson had injected Taylor in an effort to kill him, an effort that proved successful. Their conclusion relied, in part, on the belief that potassium chloride was capable of immediately causing Taylor's heart to stop. Wilson, alleges, however, that it would actually take "much longer" for the drug to have had any adverse effect on Taylor. (Id. at 24.) After the meeting with Kalelkar, Donoghue told the local Olympia Fields newspaper that the amount of potassium chloride administered by Wilson "is always fatal," and that the injection was "given to euthanize [and t]hat's exactly what happened." (Id. at 26.) Without interviewing Wilson or any other witnesses, Gorchynsky and Glasgow concluded their investigation and, at their urging, the...
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