A Quebec judge ruled ambulance technicians’ failure to follow protocol led to an 18-year-old’s fatal allergic reaction, awarding his family $450,000.
A Quebec Superior Court has ordered Urgences-santé to pay nearly $450,000 to the family of an 18-year-old Innu man who died after ambulance technicians failed to follow emergency protocols.
Nutin McFarland, who had recently moved to Montreal for school, died in October 2017 after unknowingly eating peanuts in a sandwich. Despite firefighters administering an EpiPen, paramedics delayed transporting him to the hospital—just 700 metres away.
Justice Jeffrey Edwards ruled that the ambulance crew failed to provide urgent transport or alert hospital staff, directly causing McFarland’s death. “If the technicians had followed protocol, Nutin would have arrived at the Verdun hospital no later than 7:31 p.m.,” Edwards wrote. Instead, he arrived 19 minutes later in critical condition and went into cardiac arrest.
Medical experts testified that rapid hospital care would have “highly likely” saved him. Urgences-santé said it is reviewing the judgment.