Legal Lesson of the Month: Patient Dies After Response to Wrong Address

EMS can be full of interesting and tricky legal scenarios. While you can’t have an attorney ride with you, it behooves providers to have at least some familiarity with the principles, precedents, and major issues of EMS law. To that end EMS World is pleased to offer the EMS Legal Lesson of the Month.

These cases are presented by prominent attorneys in the EMS field. This month’s comes from Larry Bennett, program chair for fire science and emergency management at the University of Cincinnati. Bennett’s department publishes a monthly Fire & EMS and Safety Law newsletter; subscribe to that by e-mailing Lawrence.bennett@uc.edu or read the latest edition here.

Case: Boris Morrison v. City of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, et al.

Decided: May 2022

Verdict: The 8th District Court of Appeals (Cuyahoga County) held 3–0 that the trial court properly denied summary judgment for dispatch and fire/EMS since there appears to be a history of “recklessness” in confirming addresses, as well as inaccurate arrival times on run reports.

Facts: On September 5, 2017, 71-year-old Betty L. Morrison had a severe asthma attack. She called 9-1-1 and requested assistance. Squad 1 responded to 19419 Lanbury, instead of 19219 Lanbury, and when they eventually got to the correct address, the patient was in full cardiac arrest. Attempts to revive Morrison were unsuccessful. She was transported to South Pointe Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The city asked the county sheriff’s office to investigate, and its report reflected a history of sloppy procedures on confirming run addresses and inaccurate run times. Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Courtney K. Sheehy summarized “systemic failures” at Warrensville Heights as follows:

“Lack of training, equipment, and policies and procedures. Lack of properly functioning equipment from speakers inside Station 1 to no computers or linked GPS units inside any engine, ladder, or squad. [Firefighters] have to hope that speakers are working to hear the address of a call they are being dispatched to. There is no system of checks and balance[s]. If an address is communicated incorrectly by dispatch or [written] down incorrectly by firefighters, there is no other written or electronic check on that address. There is a check when [firefighters] radio to dispatch they are en route to a call, but if dispatch does not hear this traffic and does not respond or doesn’t make the correction to an incorrect address being stated, then the same error will be made.”

The court noted that the run and dispatch reports both showed Morrison’s 9-1-1 call was received at 9:40 AM. However, the 9-1-1 call was actually received at 9:37 AM. This change made it appear EMS was dispatched as soon as the call was received. Both reports also showed EMS arrived at Morrison’s home at 9:44 AM, making it appear that Morrison received services 3 mins earlier than she actually did. However, the court found no evidence dispatchers disregarded their responsibilities.

Key quote: “We conclude the trial court correctly found there remained a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the emergency service employees’ conduct was reckless. It was well known in the city that the emergency services department had antiquated equipment, and as such, the importance of relaying and notating accurate information was obvious. Errors due to failure to verify addresses were a known issue. It was also well known that dispatchers, due to other duties, would not always be available on the radio. Firefighters were aware they could not count on dispatch to be available during the course of a call to verify addresses or to hear other pertinent information.

“And further still, firefighters were aware of simple address verification techniques used by other departments that were not utilized by the city. For instance, [firefighter Nick] Kaminsky testified about haloing, the simple act of repeating the address to verify it was heard correctly. Kaminsky testified the city did not use the haloing technique. Furthermore, none of the emergency service employees utilized haloing during the course of this incident.”

Legal lesson: The city would be wise to settle this lawsuit and promptly correct these identified deficiencies in both its dispatch and fire/EMS.