Earlier this week, we published a story about the death of Sunny von Bulow after 28 years in a coma. See previous blog. This has been a sensational story for nearly three decades, with little relevance to what we do as traumatic brain injury lawyers. However, there are two issues that are relevant, seemingly buried in this story.
The first is that the cost of caring for her. According to the story: “Her doctor testified that the cost of maintaining her was $375,000 the first year, 1981.” In any catastrophic injury case, there is always an argument about the cost of care. Her care cost $375,000, in 1981. Adjusted to today’s dollars, that would be well in excess of a million dollars.
Perhaps the most important personal injury precedent in this case, is that Sunny, despite her severe coma, lived 28 years, likely to her normal life expectancy. One thing defense lawyers try to argue in almost every case is that they should not have to pay the cost of care for a normal life expectancy because the now severely injured plaintiff won’t live very long. Such an argument should be rule unconscionable and never allowed, because no defendant should get the benefit of a reduced life expectancy, caused by its own conduct.
But what the von Bulow case shows is that if you get the best care, with evolving improving care for comatose patients, there is no reason to presume a shortened life expectancy. Perhaps the lower standard of care defense lawyers claim is all that is necessary will result in a shortened life expectancy. But for Sunny, because she got the best care, her life wasn’t shortened by the wrongdoing.
We believe that if a person’s life is shortened by wrongful conduct, at the point of death, then the actionable conduct becomes a wrongful death. Here there was no “wrongful death” just the loss of everything that “life” means other than a heartbeat
Sunny von Bulow dead after 28 years in coma
Date: 12/6/2008
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Martha “Sunny” von Bulow, an heiress who spent the last 28 years of her life in oblivion after what prosecutors alleged in a pair of sensational trials were two murder attempts by her husband, died Saturday at age 76.
She died at a nursing home in New York, her children said in a statement issued by family spokeswoman Maureen Connelly.
Sunny von Bulow was a personification of romantic notions about high society — a stunning heiress who brought her American millions to marriages with men who gave her honored old European names.
But she ended her days in a coma, showing no sign of awareness as she was visited by her children and tended around the clock by nurses.
In the 1980s, she was the offstage presence that haunted her husband’s two sensational trials in Newport and Providence, R.I.
At the first trial, in 1982, Claus von Bulow was convicted of trying twice to kill her by injecting her with insulin at their estate in Newport, R.I. That verdict was thrown out on appeal, and he was acquitted at a second trial in 1985.
The murder case split Newport society, produced lurid headlines and was later made into the 1990 film, “Reversal of Fortune,” starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.
Claus von Bulow is now living in London, “mostly taking care of his grandchildren,” said Alan Dershowitz, the defense lawyer who handled the appeal and won his acquittal at the second trial. He wrote the book “Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bulow Case,” on which the movie was based.
Dershowitz said there was “overwhelming” evidence that her coma was self-induced — caused by a “large ingestion of drugs, and Claus had nothing to do with it,” Dershowitz said.
“There are no winners in a case like this,” he added.
Claus von Bulow’s main accusers were his wife’s children by a previous marriage to Austrian Prince Alfred von Auersperg — Princess Annie-Laurie “Ala” von Auersperg Isham and Prince Alexander von Auersperg. They renewed the charges against their stepfather in a civil lawsuit a month after his acquittal.
Two years later, Claus von Bulow agreed to give up any claims to his wife’s estimated $25 million-to-$40 million fortune and to the $120,000-a-year income of a trust she set up for him. He also agreed to divorce her, leave the country and never profit from their story.
Sales of Sunny von Bulow’s property brought $4.2 million from her oceanfront estate in Newport, $6.25 million from her 12-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and $11.5 million from the art and antiques from the homes.
Prosecutors contended that Claus von Bulow wanted to get rid of his wife to inherit a large chunk of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress. The defense countered by painting Sunny von Bulow, who suffered from low blood sugar, as an alcoholic and pill popper who drank herself into a coma.
Claus Von Bulow was accused of injecting his wife with insulin first in December 1979, causing a coma from which she revived. Prosecutors said he tried again a year later, on Dec. 21, 1980, and the 49-year-old heiress fell into what her children on Saturday called “a persistent vegetative state.”
Her world was reduced to a private, guarded room in the Harkness Pavilion and later the McKeen Pavilion of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She died at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, her family said.
Her doctor testified that the cost of maintaining her was $375,000 the first year, 1981.
No figures were available for the years that followed, but by the early 1990s, room charges were up to about $1,500 a day — $547,000 a year — plus $200,000 to $300,000 for round-the-clock private nursing.
She was born Martha Sharp Crawford aboard a railcar in Manassas, Va., on Sept. 1, 1932, daughter of utilities tycoon George Crawford, who died when she was 4.
Sunny, nicknamed for her disposition, was raised by her mother in New York City.
While touring Europe with her mother, she met Prince Alfred von Auersperg, who was younger, penniless and working as a tennis pro at an Austrian resort catering to rich Americans. They were married in 1957 and divorced eight years later after she returned alone to New York with their young son and daughter.
On June 6, 1966, she married von Bulow, who then quit his job as an aide to oilman J. Paul Getty. He could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday.
In addition to her two children from her first marriage, Sunny von Bulow is survived by Cosima Pavoncelli, a daughter from her marriage to von Bulow. Pavoncelli sided with her father during the trials.
___
Associated Press writers Jay Lindsay in Boston and Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Martha “Sunny” von Bulow, an heiress who spent the last 28 years of her life in oblivion after what prosecutors alleged in a pair of sensational trials were two murder attempts by her husband, died Saturday at age 76.
She died at a nursing home in New York, her children said in a statement issued by family spokeswoman Maureen Connelly.
Sunny von Bulow was a personification of romantic notions about high society — a stunning heiress who brought her American millions to marriages with men who gave her honored old European names.
But she ended her days in a coma, showing no sign of awareness as she was visited by her children and tended around the clock by nurses.
In the 1980s, she was the offstage presence that haunted her husband’s two sensational trials in Newport and Providence, R.I.
At the first trial, in 1982, Claus von Bulow was convicted of trying twice to kill her by injecting her with insulin at their estate in Newport, R.I. That verdict was thrown out on appeal, and he was acquitted at a second trial in 1985.
The murder case split Newport society, produced lurid headlines and was later made into the 1990 film, “Reversal of Fortune,” starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.
Claus von Bulow is now living in London, “mostly taking care of his grandchildren,” said Alan Dershowitz, the defense lawyer who handled the appeal and won his acquittal at the second trial. He wrote the book “Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bulow Case,” on which the movie was based.
Dershowitz said there was “overwhelming” evidence that her coma was self-induced — caused by a “large ingestion of drugs, and Claus had nothing to do with it,” Dershowitz said.
“There are no winners in a case like this,” he added.
Claus von Bulow’s main accusers were his wife’s children by a previous marriage to Austrian Prince Alfred von Auersperg — Princess Annie-Laurie “Ala” von Auersperg Isham and Prince Alexander von Auersperg. They renewed the charges against their stepfather in a civil lawsuit a month after his acquittal.
Two years later, Claus von Bulow agreed to give up any claims to his wife’s estimated $25 million-to-$40 million fortune and to the $120,000-a-year income of a trust she set up for him. He also agreed to divorce her, leave the country and never profit from their story.
Sales of Sunny von Bulow’s property brought $4.2 million from her oceanfront estate in Newport, $6.25 million from her 12-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and $11.5 million from the art and antiques from the homes.
Prosecutors contended that Claus von Bulow wanted to get rid of his wife to inherit a large chunk of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress. The defense countered by painting Sunny von Bulow, who suffered from low blood sugar, as an alcoholic and pill popper who drank herself into a coma.
Claus Von Bulow was accused of injecting his wife with insulin first in December 1979, causing a coma from which she revived. Prosecutors said he tried again a year later, on Dec. 21, 1980, and the 49-year-old heiress fell into what her children on Saturday called “a persistent vegetative state.”
Her world was reduced to a private, guarded room in the Harkness Pavilion and later the McKeen Pavilion of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She died at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, her family said.
Her doctor testified that the cost of maintaining her was $375,000 the first year, 1981.
No figures were available for the years that followed, but by the early 1990s, room charges were up to about $1,500 a day — $547,000 a year — plus $200,000 to $300,000 for round-the-clock private nursing.
She was born Martha Sharp Crawford aboard a railcar in Manassas, Va., on Sept. 1, 1932, daughter of utilities tycoon George Crawford, who died when she was 4.
Sunny, nicknamed for her disposition, was raised by her mother in New York City.
While touring Europe with her mother, she met Prince Alfred von Auersperg, who was younger, penniless and working as a tennis pro at an Austrian resort catering to rich Americans. They were married in 1957 and divorced eight years later after she returned alone to New York with their young son and daughter.
On June 6, 1966, she married von Bulow, who then quit his job as an aide to oilman J. Paul Getty. He could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday.
In addition to her two children from her first marriage, Sunny von Bulow is survived by Cosima Pavoncelli, a daughter from her marriage to von Bulow. Pavoncelli sided with her father during the trials.
___
Associated Press writers Jay Lindsay in Boston and Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
