Last Father’s Day saw the near drowning of a 4-year-old girl who was later pronounced dead while receiving treatment in a hospital. The girl had accompanied her parents to a private club in Downers Grove where the incident occurred. Anna Trent of Downers Grove has now filed a suit in DuPage County court against the club for the wrongful death of their daughter.

A closer scrutiny of this case reveals imminent negligence on the side of the club. Evidence points that before Anna was found floating in the deeper area of the pool, her parents had left her playing in the shallow part in the presence of lifeguards. This clearly reveals that the lifeguards did not monitor the swimming properly, which from a broader perspective indicates a lack of proper training.

Even after the drowning victim was recovered from the swimming pool, the lifeguards could not perform Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and the child’s aunt and father had to do it in a bid to save their girl’s life.

The club also lacked proper resuscitation equipment at the pool, which might have contributed to her death. Anna’s demise comes at a time when the drowning death toll for younger children is on the rise.

Based on federal government statistics, submersion injuries remain the second-leading cause of unintentional deaths among children between the age of 1 to 14 years. Further evidence reveals that children between the age of 1 to 4 years are at the greatest risk of accidental drowning and injury-related deaths. For every four children who are rushed to the hospital for drowning-related emergencies, another one child dies from the submersion injuries.

Although the case against the club is still hanging in the balance and we cannot predict what the final ruling will be, there are several things we can dissect from this case. To begin with,swimming pool deaths and injuries are subject to both federal and county laws. If everything goes well, the suing party, Ann’s parents, may be entitled to the following types of damages:

• Loss of enjoyment of life,
• Loss of love and companionship,
• Mental anguish,
• Medical expenses encountered while Ann was hospitalized, and
• Pain and suffering.

Everything will depend on how well the family’s attorney proves the negligence case against the Downers Grove club.

In 2012 a 43 year-old woman named Carmen Alexander came to the Emergency Room at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital with a large bruise on her chest, a high white blood cell count—which indicates unchecked infection—difficulty breathing, and nausea. The doctors sent her home later that day.  She died two days later.

Carmen Alexander was a victim of necrotizing fasciitis, a rare but potentially deadly infection caused by bacteria that rapidly destroy tissue as they multiply. By the time she was discharged from the Emergency Room, her lungs were filling up with blood. When she returned to the ER the following day in severe distress, she was admitted directly to the Intensive Care Unit, where a surgical team couldn’t save her, despite having the correct diagnosis.

Ms. Alexander’s family recognized that the Emergency Room physicians made a critical error when they decided to send her home after her initial visit, and her three teenaged children sued the hospital.  “The evidence was right in front of them,” said Vadim Hsu, the children’s guardian. “It should have made the physician jump out of her skin.”

It took almost exactly 5 years after Alexander’s death for the plaintiffs to settle the case.  The total fees and costs were about $200,000, and each child will receive a total of slightly over $132,000.  For them, though, it’s not about the money.  “What the upshot of this lawsuit was, was to put in place measures to idiot-proof policy and procedure,” said Hsu. “There needed to be a system in place so that a doctor who ordered the test in the first place actually reads the test and does something about it.”

Cottage Hospital has changed its Emergency Room policies to require physicians to respond immediately to white blood cell counts as high as Ms. Alexander’s.  Dr. Edmund Wroblewski, the hospital’s vice president of Medical Affairs, wrote a letter to her children stating “Had this change in policy been made prior to your mother’s death, she would not have been discharged from our hospital on February 19, 2012.”

While the circumstances surrounding Ms. Alexander’s death were tragic, patients who appear at the Emergency Room with the same symptoms are now protected against her fate. The lawsuit and the policy changes that resulted, said Hsu, ensure that she “didn’t die in vain.”