A Utah man has filed a pro se federal civil rights lawsuit against Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake City Fire Department, and Gold Cross Ambulance Service, alleging he was forcibly restrained and transported to a hospital against his will during a medical and mental health emergency.

Matthew Leshinsky filed suit today in US District Court for the District of Utah, alleging the incident occurred on June 10, 2025, after personnel from the Salt Lake City Fire Department and Gold Cross responded to his residence. Leshinsky claims he was not subject to an involuntary commitment or psychiatric hold, and that after he regained consciousness from a brief blackout while en route to the University of Utah Hospital, he told personnel he wanted to discontinue treatment and leave the ambulance. He alleges a Salt Lake City Fire Department employee instead used force to keep him on the stretcher while the ambulance continued to the hospital.

Quoting from the complaint:

• The June 10, 2025 Extralegal Seizure and Custody Posture
• On or around June 10, 2025, Plaintiff suffered an acute, transient medical and mental health emergency at his residence, resulting in emergency medical personnel from the Salt Lake City Fire Department and Gold Cross arriving on-scene.
• A decision was made to physically transport Plaintiff to the University of Utah Hospital. For reasons completely undocumented in the medical records, a sworn employee of the Salt Lake City Fire Department entered the rear patient compartment of the Gold Cross ambulance vehicle to oversee the transport lifecycle.
• En route to the hospital facility, Plaintiff suffered a brief, medical blackout event. Upon regaining consciousness, Plaintiff became disoriented, attempted to sit up on the stretcher, and explicitly communicated to all medical personnel on-scene his unconditional desire to immediately decline further medical care and exit the ambulance vehicle.
• CRUCIAL JURISDICTIONAL FACT: At no point during this transport cycle was Plaintiff “sheeted,” involuntarily committed, or placed under an active medical or psychiatric hold under the Utah Civil Commitment Act (Utah Code § 62A-15-631). Plaintiff was a legally free citizen holding an absolute, unfettered right to refuse emergency medical transportation at any moment.
• The Use of Predatory Knee-Restraint and Excessive Physical Force
• Upon Plaintiff exercising his lawful right to decline care, the Salt Lake City Fire Department employee did not order the vehicle to stop. Instead, the employee advanced over Plaintiff, used his hands to violently push Plaintiff backward onto the bed, and hovered over Plaintiff’s body in a hostile, intimidating manner.
• When Plaintiff made a secondary attempt to rise and escape the unconstitutional confinement, the Salt Lake City Fire Department employee executed a highly dangerous, extrajudicial physical assault. The employee violently struck Plaintiff directly in the chest and arm with his knee, slamming Plaintiff back down onto the metal stretcher with blunt force trauma.
• The Fire Department employee then dug his physical knee deep into Plaintiff’s chest cavity, applying his full body weight to crush Plaintiff’s torso and physically bind Plaintiff into physical “soft restraints” face-up on the stretcher.
• While pinned under the employee’s knee, Plaintiff suffered a severe respiratory restriction and repeatedly yelled out that he could not breathe. In direct, malicious indifference to Plaintiff’s life, the Fire Department employee mocked Plaintiff, stating aloud: “If you’re talking, you’re breathing.”
• Hostile Psychological Antagonism and Deceptive Bookkeeping Cover-Up
• Under the recorded belief that Plaintiff was enduring a psychological or mental health crisis, the Fire Department employee systematically engaged in a pattern of targeted harassment inside the vehicle. The employee leaned over the restricted Plaintiff, making highly sarcastic, mocking taunts such as declaring that he was “Plaintiff’s best friend at this point,” while executing winky-faces to intentionally elevate Plaintiff’s distress.
• Terrified for his physical safety under the knee-restraint, Plaintiff repeatedly demanded that the Gold Cross drivers contact the Salt Lake City Police Department to intervene. The Fire Department employee explicitly denied the request and commanded Gold Cross staff to ignore Plaintiff, block any police routing, and force the vehicle to keep moving towards the hospital against Plaintiff’s express will.
• Following the June 10, 2025 incident, the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD), operating at the request of the Plaintiff, initialized an administrative investigation, subsequently asserting that the department lacked independent electronic or dispatch tracking records verifying that the Plaintiff had ever been placed on the subject ambulance transit track.
• Concurrently, Defendant Salt Lake City Corporation’s Senior Claims Adjuster uncovered and logged explicit, unredacted statements executed by the Fire Chief of the Salt Lake City Fire Department, which sought to formally justify the extrajudicial violence used against the Plaintiff.
• The Defendant’s official administrative posture asserted that because the Gold Cross ambulance vehicle was traveling at a continuous rate of approximately thirty-five (35) miles per hour, the deployment of a blunt force knee-strike, chest compression, and soft restraints was executed solely “for the Plaintiff’s safety to prevent him from stepping out of a moving vehicle.”
• Defendant’s fabricated “safety” justification completely omits the critical, mandatory operational requirement that the emergency medical technicians possessed a non-delegable duty to immediately order the vehicle to execute a controlled stop within ten (10) seconds to allow the non-sheeted, free citizen to exercise his absolute constitutional right to exit the compartment and decline care.
• Instead, Defendants intentionally maintained a high rate of speed, using physical restraints and bodily violence as a weapon of coercion to force an unconsenting individual to complete a multi-mile involuntary transit to a hospital facility, wherein he was immediately recognized by emergency room doctors as non-sheeted and permitted to walk out of the building unhindered. At all times relevant to this assaultive transit, Defendant Gold Cross Ambulance Service stood by in total silence, failing to intervene, block, or stop the unlawful detention occurring directly on their corporate property.

The complaint sets out four counts. Count I alleges excessive force and unlawful seizure under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, based on Leshinsky’s contention that he had a constitutional right to refuse further medical treatment and that the use of force to restrain him after he did so constituted an unlawful seizure. Count II alleges false imprisonment and kidnapping under color of state law, claiming the defendants lacked legal authority to continue transporting him once he withdrew his consent.

Count III alleges emergency medical malpractice. Leshinsky claims personnel breached the applicable standard of care by using a knee strike and torso compression, restraining him face-up on the stretcher, and failing to involve law enforcement after physical restraints were used.

Count IV is directed specifically at Gold Cross and alleges deliberate indifference and joint vicarious liability. Leshinsky contends Gold Cross was acting under color of state law through its contractual relationship with Salt Lake City and that its personnel failed to intervene while the Salt Lake City Fire Department employee allegedly restrained and assaulted him in the patient compartment of the ambulance.

Leshinsky seeks $100,000 in compensatory, actual and special damages, plus $25 million in punitive damages, litigation costs, and other relief deemed appropriate by the court.