Airline not liable after passenger dubbed ‘unruly’ dies of medical emergency, court says

A California appeals court upheld a trial court ruling that Southwest Airlines was not liable for the death of a passenger who suffered a pulmonary embolism on a flight in 2014, local media outlets reported.

Richard Ilczyszyn, 46, was on a flight on Sept. 19, 2014 when he collapsed in the plane’s bathroom, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015. According to a lawsuit filed by his family, members of the flight crew treated the incident as a disruption caused by a passenger instead of a medical emergency, the outlet reported.

Ilczyszyn had locked himself inside the plane’s bathroom during the last 10 minutes of the flight and pressed his foot against the door, leaving crew members unable to open it, the Mercury News reported.

Flight staff said they heard him “grunting, growling [and] crying” and declared a lockdown on the flight from Oakland to Orange County. Once the flight landed, law enforcement officers found Ilczyszyn inside the bathroom, unconscious and without a pulse, the outlet reported.

“Rather than treating Ilczyszyn’s circumstances as a medical emergency, the flight crew perceived him to be a security threat,” court documents said. “As a result, he did not receive medical care until after the flight had landed and the other passengers had disembarked. By then, he had gone into cardiac arrest.”

He was resuscitated, but died in a hospital the next day, The Associated Press reported. According to an autopsy report, his cause of death was a pulmonary thromboembolism, or blood clots inside the lungs.

The lawsuit suggested that Ilczyszyn may have survived if the flight crew had given him immediate medical attention, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“We agree with the ruling and maintain that our crew appropriately handled this tragic and unfortunate onboard medical event,” Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said in a statement to McClatchy News. Attorneys for the man’s family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A trial jury ruled in 2019 that the airline had been negligent, but that the negligence did not play a significant role in Ilczyszyn’s death, the Mercury News reported.

The trial included medical testimony regarding whether Ilczyszyn’s condition was survivable, AP reported.

The jury’s 2019 decision was appealed, but the appeals court decided that the jury’s decision was supported by “substantial evidence based on the expert medical testimony,” AP reported.

This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 12:35 PM with the headline "Airline not liable after passenger dubbed ‘unruly’ dies of medical emergency, court says."