State Senator Dr. Tyler Johnson wants the malpractice case against him sealed, which would prevent anyone from knowing what is going on.
Johnson is a doctor with Professional Emergency Physicians which provides emergency room physicians for Parkview Health. He faces allegations of malpractice in Allen County Superior Court in the death of 20-year-old Esparanza Umana. She died less than a half hour after leaving Johnson’s emergency room.
According to documents filed in Allen Superior Court last May, the family of Esparanza Umana sued Johnson and Parkview Health after the 20-year-old died in January of 2018. She had gone to the emergency room with respiratory distress and signs of sepsis.
The state medical review panel determined Johnson violated the standard of care when he overloaded her system with four liters of fluid, aggravating her respiratory distress, and then discharging her.
Umana died of cardiac arrest 20 minutes later at a local pharmacy where she was filling a prescription.
Earlier this week – after months of delays in the case – Johnson asked the court to pause the proceedings, and then filed a request to prohibit public access to the case.
Allen Superior Judge Andrew Williams ordered the plaintiffs to respond to the request, and apparently sealed the documents outlining Johnson’s reasoning.
Prior to that request, every document in the court filing was available digitally to all who looked up the record.
Now even those requests are sealed, though their contents were leaked to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
Johnson won the seat vacated by long-time Senator Dennis Kruse in portions of Allen and DeKalb counties in 2022.
During his first legislative session, he authored bills targeting library materials and gender-affirming care for minors, with lawmakers drawing on his medical expertise during the debate.
