Judge Keeps Nurse's Lawsuit Against Northwestern Memorial Alive

CHICAGO — A Cook County judge on Tuesday allowed a lawsuit to proceed that accuses Northwestern Memorial Hospital officials of firing a nurse for wearing an N95 face mask and encouraging her co-workers to do the same during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lauri Mazurkiewicz was fired a day after sending an email to colleagues warning that the cloth masks offered by hospital management were unsafe and insufficient to stop the spread of the coronavirus. She said she would be wearing an N95 respirator whenever caring for a possible COVID-19 case.

"I have my own box of N95 masks. I will wear the N95 mask under a simple mask and change out the simple mask like the facility wants me to do," Mazurkiewicz said, before calling on her fellow nurses to insist hospital officials provide them with sufficient personal protective equipment.

"I want to be extra cautions and extra safe while taking care of a possible Coronavirus Patient. Hopefully management understands this," she said. "Take care of yourselves! Be safe and stay healthy! Demand proper PPE's!!!!!"

The initial version of the suit named individual hospital officials as defendants and included counts alleging violations of the Illinois Whistleblower Act, but Mazurkiewicz agreed to voluntarily dismiss all but one count of retaliatory discharge. Cook County Circuit Judge Patricia O'Brien Sheahan this week allowed her case to proceed.

RELATED: Nurse Fired After Warning Staff Of Coronavirus Mask Safety: Suit

Northwestern Memorial's lawyers had argued that Mazurkiewicz, who began working at the hospital in August 2019, was not technically a Northwestern Medicine employee because she worked for a staffing agency with which it contracted. Sheahan rejected this claim.

In seeking to dismiss her suit, attorney Antonio Caldarone argued on behalf of Northwestern that there is no specific public policy that mandate the use of N95 masks and that the nurse had failed to point to any rules or regulations that require the use of any particular type of face mask. He also alleged Mazurkiewicz's email expressed only her personal views.

"[Mazurkiewicz's] internal e-mail expressing her personal thoughts about N95 facemasks is little more than a personal gripe," Caldarone argued, asking the judge to toss out the suit.

"Clearly, she was not acting out of a greater public good or concern," he added, "her opinions and actions were purely personal."

Sheahan did not buy these arguments either, she said in her opinion rejecting the hospital's motion to dismiss the suit.

"The Court disagrees, as it goes without saying that Illinois has a clearly mandated public policy of stopping the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the health of safety of its citizens," Sheahan said, "and that public policy is clearly implicated by the use of facemasks by healthcare workers."

As for the email, it was "not sheerly a 'private' concern, but rather one that relates to the spread of COVID-19 within her hospital work environment and therefore one that has an 'impact on the general welfare of Illinois citizens as a whole."

A case management conference is scheduled for Monday.