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Wrongful Death – EMS Crew Fails to Perform CPR or Take Any Action to Treat Man Having Heart Attack: Hodges v. City of Detroit
Sommers Schwartz attorney Andy Dragovic filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the estate of a 30-year-old man who died after grossly negligent EMS personnel on the scene failed to deliver CPR or provide him any care while he had a heart attack in front of them.
According to the complaint, the Detroit Fire Department dispatched an EMS crew on an emergency run for the decedent, whose shortness of breath and difficulty breathing led him to believe he was experiencing a heart attack. When the team arrived, they did not take the man’s vital signs, nor did they provide him with oxygen. They kept insisting that the man stand even though he repeatedly told them he could not do so. Ultimately, he did get up on his own with the help of a walker and made his way towards a gurney.
At that point, the man slumped over the gurney and became non-responsive. Instead of performing life-saving CPR, the crew put him in the back of the ambulance, and drove to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Had the EMS crew performed CPR, he would have survived.
In the wrongful death suit, the decedent’s estate sought compensation for medical, hospital, funeral, and burial expenses, pain and suffering, his family’s loss of earnings, loss of society and companionship, and other damages.
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