Illinois: Forced Sedation After A Documented Refusal Medical Battery

Location: Illinois

Last year, 2 days after heart surgery, after contacting my surgeon’s office, I returned the hospital’s ER for wound care for an old IV site where I had an infiltrated IV. I refused an IV. I ended up held down, sedated with a drug that carries a heart restrictions for my condition, and kept for four days without any of the paperwork required to hold someone, and my cell phone confiscated. This wasn’t a mental health situation, and my records show it.

The firms I’ve talked to screen it as a malpractice case and pass. Civil rights firms say they focus on police cases. My understanding is that battery is different. It’s about the lack of consent, and it doesn’t depend on proving a lasting injury.

My questions:

1. Under Illinois law, is treatment given over a documented refusal, with no certificate or court order in place, medical battery rather than malpractice? Does a hospital’s emergency justification still apply in that situation?
2. Does a battery claim depend on proving lasting injury, or does the unconsented treatment itself count as the harm?
3. Can a hospital be liable for false imprisonment for holding someone four days and taking their cell phone away, with no petition or certificate on file?

Honestly, I have a hard time accepting there’s no consequence for this. A hospital took my phone, wouldn’t let me leave, and forced injections on me, including a drug with an FDA heart warning. There’s no record of any doctor responding when I went into AFib with RVR. They took me off heart monitoring and went a long stretch without recording vitals. A known pleural effusion kept growing, untreated, while my medications were held against my wishes. And my discharge paperwork left out an MRI that showed a stroke.

Thanks.