A broad federal law imposed under President George W. Bush shields a clinic that gave a child a COVID-19 vaccine without parental consent, according to a recent ruling.
The Guilford County Board of Education, which was also sued by the boy and his mother, is also shielded by the law, known as the PREP Act, the court found.
“We are of course very disappointed in the ruling, and we are currently weighing all of our options going forward,” Steven Walker, an attorney representing the appellants, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The appellants could ask the North Carolina Supreme Court to review the case.
Injected Without Permission
Tanner Smith was 14 years old in August 2021. He was attending Western Guilford High School, which is part of Guilford County Schools, and playing football there.
The district informed Tanner’s mother, Emily Happel, and stepfather on Aug. 19, 2021, that Tanner may have been exposed to a cluster of COVID-19 cases. The district conveyed that local health officials were recommending students get tested, regardless of vaccination status. Players who declined testing would not be able to return to practice until they were cleared by a doctor.
In the letter, the district noted there would be testing provided for free at one of the district’s schools the following day. A free vaccination clinic was taking place at the same location, although that was not noted in the letter.
Tanner’s stepfather took him to the clinic, but stayed in the car as the boy went inside. According to plaintiffs, Tanner filled out a form he thought was for a test. An Old North State Medical Society worker tried calling Ms. Happel to get permission to vaccinate Tanner, but she did not answer. Workers did not try contacting Tanner’s stepfather.
One worker told another worker to “give it to him anyway,” according to court filings. Tanner said he did not want a vaccine and had come for a test, but one of the workers injected him with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The shot was available to 14-year-olds under emergency use authorization at the time.
Ms. Happel and Tanner sued in 2022, alleging battery and violations of their constitutional rights on the state and federal levels.
“No matter what your position is on vaccines, we should all be able to agree that children should not be subjected to medical procedures without their parents’ knowledge and consent,” Mr. Walker said at the time.
Appeal Lodged, Rejected
In the appeal, lawyers for Ms. Happel and Tanner argued the PREP Act does not apply because their claims “are not because this relates to COVID-19, but they happen to relate to COVID-19.”The claims “are not dependent on COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccine and its administration,” they said. “Those claims would result regardless of what substance had been administered to Tanner. It matters not whether it was a COVID-19 vaccine, a chickenpox vaccine, an Aspirin, or open-heart surgery.”
“Taking the trial court’s interpretation of the PREP Act to its logical conclusion, had defendants injected Tanner with saline, they would have been liable, but since they injected him with a vaccine they are not liable. Should a covered person have a slip-of-the-hand and inject saline into a person’s heart there would be no immunity, but if the substance was a COVID-19 vaccine, there would be immunity,” they added. “This certainly could not be the intent of Congress. The intent of Congress, when reading the Act as a whole, was to limit the liability for adverse effects and promote the quick development and deployment of the countermeasure, not to give carte blanche to medical providers to perform medical procedures without consent.
The appeals court, though, said the argument was not correct.
“We would be inclined to agree if the PREP Act did not define the scope of immunity so broadly,” Judge April Wood wrote in the unanimous ruling.
She pointed to three previous rulings, including a lawsuit brought after a woman went to a Walgreens for an influenza vaccine but was given a COVID-19 vaccine without her knowledge.
The U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota said in response that in the PREP Act, “Congress plainly provided immunity under both federal and state law with respect ‘to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure.'”
“We conclude that these cases are instructive persuasive authorities supporting our holding that the broad scope of immunity provided by the PREP Act applies to both Defendants in this case. Although Plaintiffs’ claims could arise no matter what type of vaccine Tanner was given without parental consent, the PREP Act provides immunity to Defendants because it shields them from ‘any claim for loss that has a causal relationship with the administration” of the COVID-19 vaccine,’” Judge Wood wrote.
The only exception in the PREP Act is in cases of willful misconduct and Ms. Happel and Tanner did not provide any arguments of such misconduct, the appeals court said. The law defines such misconduct as actions taken “intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose,” without legal or factual justification, and “in disregard of a known or obvious risk that is so great as to make it highly probable that the harm will outweigh the benefit.”
James Lawrence, former deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said on X that the case “illustrates risk allocation issues related to COVID-19 vaccine mandates” and shows why state-level efforts are important, because “they block mandates, giving students, workers, and parents the right to chart their own course on the shot.”
Mr. Roy said the bill was being introduced “to empower Americans to remove crony federal liability protections for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers and empower injured Americans.”
