Panel upholds dismissal of lawsuit against Elgin school after 11-year-old dies of seizure
An appellate court panel has upheld a Kane County judge's decision to dismiss a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against Highland Elementary School in Elgin after an 11-year-old student died in 2017 from a seizure while playing tag.
The mother of Marcus M. Price, a fifth-grader, sued staff members at the Elgin Area School District U-46 school, seeking unspecified damages.
The lawsuit argued staff members knew the boy was asthmatic, had a severe seizure disorder and carried an inhaler when he was playing a game of tag, also known as "statue," in an unsupervised classroom on May 19, 2017.
Marcus began to shake, fell and hit his head, according to the suit.
School personnel were called, but the lawsuit argued they failed to provide appropriate medical care, supervise the classroom, find or use the inhaler, promptly call 911 or perform CPR.
A Kane County judge dismissed the case in May 2019, ruling the lawsuit failed to state a claim for "willful and wanton conduct" and that the school was protected under the Local Governmental and Governmental Entity Tort Immunity Act.
In a 20-page ruling late last week, the appellate panel confirmed the decision.
"Willful and wanton conduct goes beyond mere negligence in that it requires a conscious choice by a defendant to either cause harm or to engage in a course of action with knowledge that it involves a risk of serious danger to another," read part of the ruling. "It is well settled that a teacher's mere act of leaving students unsupervised, without more, is not sufficient to establish willful and wanton conduct."
The appellate panel noted the lawsuit did not allege there were previous instances of rough physical activity that caused Marcus to have an asthma attack or seizure. The panel also noted school personnel immediately called paramedics, who arrived in seven minutes.
"There are no allegations that the decedent exhibited signs of these conditions when his class was left unsupervised, or that any planned activity in the classroom had previously resulted in the decedent suffering either a seizure or asthma attack," the panel wrote.