The fiancé of a man who has been in a vegetative state since suffering a 2018 respiratory event has sued an Iowa city, seven first responders, a doctor and a hospital alleging medical negligence leading to anoxic brain injury.

The lawsuit against the city of Des Moines, seven members of the Des Moines Fire Department, Iowa Lutheran Hospital, and an Iowa Lutheran doctor, filed on behalf of the fiancé and legal guardian of Lawrence McLachlan III, seeks damages for medical costs, lost income, pain and suffering, “loss of enjoyment of life, and past and future loss of full mind and body,” according to the Des Moines Register.

Court documents describe McLachlan as a healthy 49-year-old at the time of the September 2018 incident, when he went to an urgent care clinic for respiratory issues including a cough lasting about a week. A doctor at the clinic advised that McLachlan should be transported to the emergency room, at which point Des Moines Fire Department EMTs were called to the scene.

The suit alleges the EMTs didn’t start preparing to intubate McLachlan until 17 minutes after they arrived and then made multiple unsuccessful attempts to intubate him. After successfully intubating him, they later removed the tube in the ambulance due to McLachlan vomiting blood, the lawsuit states.

The suit also claims an on-call doctor for the hospital was out of town and refused to go to the hospital to treat him. McLachlan suffered a cardiac arrest shortly after arriving at the hospital and was resuscitated, but suffered brain damage leaving him in a persistent vegetative state, according to court documents.

A lawyer for the plaintiff said that due to COVID-19 restrictions, she expects the case will take up to two years to go to trial.

First Responder Negligence Case Information

Roxanne Conlin of Roxanne Conlin & Associates, P.C., is representing Michelle Boston, fiancé and guardian to Lawrence McLachlan III. McLachlan is described in court documents as a healthy, 49-year-old African American man at the time he sought care for respiratory issues in September 2018.

A lawsuit filed last month centers on a medical episode in which first responders and an unnamed doctor allegedly failed to provide competent and timely treatment. The plaintiff seeks compensation for damages including medical and drug costs, “lost past income and future earning capacity, past and future pain and suffering, anguish, anxiety, loss of enjoyment of life, and past and future loss of full mind and body.”

According to the lawsuit, McLachlan went to MercyOne East Village Urgent Care Clinic on Sept. 11, 2018, after a week of coughing and other respiratory issues. There, the suit says, a doctor observed McLachlan’s labored breathing and advised that he be taken by ambulance to the emergency room.

First Responder Negligence Standards

First responders are held to a four part standard when it comes to negligence.

• There is a duty to act
• There is a breach of that duty
• The breach causes an affect
• Damage has been inflicted to another

Duty

Each of us owes a general duty of care to everyone — the duty not to intentionally harm anybody and to try not to do anything too stupid. Legally speaking, there is a general duty “not to behave in such a way as to endanger the well-being of others.”

EMS professionals, whether paid or volunteer, on the other hand, owe a much greater duty to the community while on or off the job. First responders have a legal duty to act as would a prudent, reasonable EMS provider with the same level of training, in the same community, and under similar circumstances.

This broad definition goes well beyond direct patient care and includes how well your vehicle is stocked, is it clean and run safely while being operated, and so on.

Breach

The concept of breach is simple: You did something that you had a duty not to do, or you failed to do something that you had an absolute duty to do.

It’s a simple answer: Yes. The concept of breach does not consider whether anyone was hurt or even affected by your act (or non-act). It only considers your behavior relative to your duty. In the example, there was a duty to stop, and you decided not to. Would a  negligence claim be filed against you? No. A successful negligence claim requires that all four elements be present.

Causation

Here is where things get tough. When you breach a duty AND your breach is the direct cause of damage, then you will be considered a cause of the damage.

But the law generally requires that the first responder also be the proximate (most direct) cause. Thus, it is possible for your breach to cause damage, but if there are unforeseeable, superseding or intervening factors, you may not be completely liable or even negligent.

Damages

Any physical, financial, and sometimes emotional injury caused by the breach of a duty can constitute this final element of negligence. Damages could conceivably be as little as a 50 cent phone call; if that call had to be made directly because you breached your duty to caller, the plaintiff would be entitled to recover the four bits. Damages commonly are medical expenses, lost wages, physical damage to property, and manifested emotional distress.

The important thing to know about damage is this: the idea is to make the damaged person whole and to place him back in the position he would be in prior to the negligent act. Civil law seeks to do that through financial penalties.

If you are driving recklessly with your lights and sirens and you smash up someone’s brand new car, you just bought that car. If your failure to properly treat a spinal injury results in damage that would otherwise not have been sustained, it’s coming out of your pocket. If you negligently tell a family member that a loved one is dead…and they’re not, you could be made to pay dearly.

First Responder Training

Never Forget 9-11 Foundation provides a number of training modules directly related to preventing negligence claims, particularly in the areas of airway management.