NEGLIGENCE

Heastie v. Roberts, No. 102428 (Ill. Nov. 1, 2007)

The Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed in part and reversed in part the judgment of the appellate court and held that a patient who was restrained and sequestered in a hospital emergency room and who caught on fire sufficiently alleged in his complaint the elements of the res ipsa loquitur doctrine to state a cause of action for negligence against the hospital. The court recognized that the patient adequately alleged the first element of res ipsa loquitur in that a patient restrained on a bed, left alone in an emergency room, and exposed to an ignition source that sets him on fire does not ordinarily occur in the absence of negligence. Additionally, the patient effectively alleged the second element of res ipsa loquitur by demonstrating that the particular agency or instrumentality that set him on fire, even though it had not been ascertained, appeared to be under the exclusive control of the hospital.

The court also held that the patient should have been permitted to argue to the jury that the hospital’s failure to search him for contraband was a proximate cause of his injuries. (The patient contended that the hospital’s failure to search him resulted in his setting himself on fire with a lighter which he claimed not to remember having.) The court concluded that since the hospital was allowed to claim that the patient had a lighter and set himself on fire with it despite being restrained, the patient should have been permitted to use this claim by the hospital to buttress his alternative theory of recovery that the failure to search him for contraband was a proximate cause of his injuries.