SPRINGFIELD – Weak responses from St. Clair County’s 911 dispatchers didn’t cause Laurene Schultz to die, Supreme Court Justices ruled on April 21.
They attributed her death to her own negligence.
“The decedent’s decision to drive while intoxicated was the sole proximate cause of her injuries and death,” Justice Mary Jane Theis wrote.
The Justices mixed a unanimous agreement on that point with a separate dispute about immunity.
Laurene Schultz fatally wrecked her car in 2017.
Husband Larry Schultz sued the county and its emergency telephone board in St. Clair County circuit court in 2018.
His counsel Rhonda Fiss of Belleville alleged that Schultz called 911, said his wife was under the influence, and asked for help to keep her from driving.
Fiss claimed Larry asked a dispatcher to send police to All-Mart in Mascoutah, and the dispatcher sent police to Handi-Mart instead.
Fiss claimed Larry called 911 and said his wife was at Sax’s convenience store near the high school on State Street in Mascoutah.
Fiss claimed the dispatcher wouldn’t dispatch police without an exact address, and told him to call back when he had it.
Fiss claimed tort immunity for local governments didn’t apply because the county acted in willful and wanton disregard for Laurene’s safety.
She claimed a provision in 911 law for limited immunity didn’t apply due to gross negligence, recklessness, or intentional misconduct.
The county moved to dismiss the complaint, asserting local government immunity and absence of proximate cause.
Circuit Judge Heinz Rudolf dismissed it on both grounds.
On appeal, Fifth District Justices Randy Moore and Mark Boie ignored proximate cause and affirmed Rudolf on local government immunity.
Moore and Boie rejected application of 911 law, finding it provided limited immunity only for failures of infrastructure and technology.
Dissenting Justice Milton Wharton would have applied 911 law.
He declared himself reluctant to conclude that failure to dispatch wasn’t the result of failure in infrastructure and technology.
He found a system couldn’t meet the needs of communities if operators must rely on distressed callers to provide exact addresses.
Five Supreme Court Justices agreed with Wharton, finding 911 law has a broader scope than technology and infrastructure.
They found the law specifically concerns itself with conduct of dispatchers.
Justices Rita Garman and Michael Burke specially concurred to argue for local government immunity.
Garman found the majority’s analysis of immunity “not only unnecessary to the resolution of this case but also incorrect on the law.”
All seven Justices agreed on proximate cause.
Theis wrote that cases distinguish between condition and causation.
She cited precedent from 1942, that if negligence does nothing more than furnish a condition by which injury is made possible, it isn’t the proximate cause of injury.
She cited precedent from 1993, finding a road provided nothing more than a location where negligence came to fruition.
She found Larry couldn’t establish that the injury wouldn’t have occurred absent the refusal to dispatch police to the convenience store.
“At most, defendants’ alleged conduct furnished a condition by which her injury was made possible,” she wrote.