Kane County, one of its corrections officers and a private security company are asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit faulting them in the May 13 hostage incident at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva.
An inmate from the county jail receiving inpatient medical treatment at the hospital took two nurses captive and allegedly raped one of them during an hours-long standoff that ended when a regional SWAT officer fatally shot the inmate, according to the lawsuit.
Through civil litigation, those two nurses and their husbands, along with two other nurses affected by what they experienced that day, are seeking relief including compensatory and punitive damages, court costs and attorney fees.
The latest iteration of the lawsuit, originally filed in May in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, includes 18 counts: Six each making allegations against the county, corrections officer Shawn Loomis, and Apex3, a private security company contracted by the hospital.
In motions filed this week, teams of lawyers representing each defendant asked the court to dismiss parts of the lawsuit specific to their clients. Kane County made the first dismissal request Tuesday, followed by Loomis and Apex3, on Wednesday, the deadline Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan had given each defendant to respond.
Loomis, through his attorneys Michael Bersani, Michael Condon and David Mathues, is asking for the dismissal of all counts against him, “for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted.”
In the motion and an accompanying memorandum, Loomis states allegations that he was negligent and failed to act after inmate Tywon Salters got a hold of the officer’s gun are not sufficient to state a claim that he violated each plaintiff’s right to be free from state-created danger.
Loomis argues the complaint doesn’t establish proximate cause — a requirement in all constitutional torts — because the nurses suing him can’t show they faced any danger distinct from the general public.
Even if the nurses could establish their constitutional rights had been violated, Loomis claims he’s entitled to qualified immunity, “because no controlling case would have given him fair warning that his action of unshackling a detainee so that the detainee could use the toilet would give rise to liability.”
On behalf of Kane County, attorneys Michael J. Atkus and William W. Kurnic similarly focus on refuting the complaint’s theory that Loomis put the nurses in “state-created” danger.
Allegations against the county stem from its employment of Loomis, so if the complaint fails to state a valid claim against Loomis, then it follows that claims against the county should be dismissed, the county’s motion argues.
In defense of Apex3, attorney Adam Jagadich, working with Anastasios Foukas and Dan Alexander, said the sheriff’s office, not the security company, had custody and control over Salters while he was a patient at Delnor.
An August court entry states if any defendant moved to dismiss, the plaintiffs would be given until Nov. 6 to respond and the defendants would get until Nov. 27 to reply.
In August, a separate lawsuit was filed against the same three parties, plus the hospital, on behalf of a woman who said she was a patient in a room down the hall from Salters. The woman’s lawsuit states that experience has caused her to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and made her afraid to return to any medical facility.
