Date: 2/3/2009
ROME (AP) — A woman at the center of Italy’s right-to-die debate was transferred Tuesday to a hospital where she is to be allowed to die after 17 years in a vegetative state.
Eluana Englaro was moved to the northeastern city of Udine overnight, said family lawyer Vittorio Angiolini.
A small crowd of anti-euthanasia activists gathered outside the clinic in Lecco, where she had been cared for, seeking to prevent the ambulance from leaving, TV footage showed. Some were shouting “Eluana, Wake Up!”
Englaro has been in a vegetative state since a car accident in 1992, when she was 20. Her father has led a protracted court battle to disconnect her feeding tube, insisting it was her wish.
An Italian court in the summer granted his request, setting off a political storm in the Roman Catholic country.
Her father then sought to have her removed from the Catholic clinic in Lecco to Udine, in the region where the family is from. But the government issued a decree last month telling state hospitals that they must guarantee care for people in vegetative states, leading at least one hospital in Udine to refuse to take Englaro.
She was moved overnight to La Quiete, a private clinic.
Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi said the government is looking into the situation.
Italy does not allow euthanasia. Patients have a right to refuse treatment but there is no law that allows them to give advance directions on what treatment they wish to receive if they become unconscious.
The case has provoked the strong reaction of the Vatican, which is opposed to euthanasia. Pope Benedict XVI said this weekend that euthanasia is a “false solution” to suffering.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the pope’s health minister, told La Repubblica that removing Englaro’s feeding tube “is tantamount to an abominable assassination and the church will always say that out loud.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Trial Lawyer Lessons from Sunny von Bulow Coma
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
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
Italian woman in right-to-die case worsens
Date: 10/11/2008 1:51 PM
ROME (AP) _ The condition of an Italian woman at the center of a right-to-die case worsened after she suffered a massive hemorrhage, doctors said Saturday.
Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state for 16 years and her father has led a protracted court battle to disconnect her feeding tube, insisting it was her wish.
This summer a Milan court granted his request, setting off a political storm in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. Italy does not allow euthanasia, but patients have a right to refuse treatment.
Catholic and anti-euthanasia groups protested the ruling by leaving bottles of water in front of Milan’s Duomo cathedral. Prosecutors appealed the decision and the father pledged not to disconnect the tube before Italy’s high court weighed in.
Carlo Alberto Defanti, Englaro’s doctor, told reporters gathered Saturday at a clinic in northern Italy that over the last two days Englaro had been bleeding from her uterus.
“It was a very abundant hemorrhage, which puts her life at risk,” he said. “This afternoon it stopped. We can’t make predications; if it doesn’t restart she may recover.”
Italian news reports said doctors had agreed not to give Englaro a blood transfusion.
Englaro was 20 years old when she fell into a vegetative state following a car accident in 1992. Two years later, doctors called her condition irreversible.
Her father, Beppino Englaro, has said she had visited a friend who was in a similar condition shortly before her accident and had expressed the will to refuse treatment if in the same situation.
The case has drawn comparisons here with that of Terry Schiavo, the American woman who was at the center of a right-to-die debate until her death in 2005. Schiavo’s husband, who wanted her feeding tube removed against her parents’ wishes, prevailed in a polarizing battle in the United States that reached Congress, President George W. Bush and the Supreme Court.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
ROME (AP) _ The condition of an Italian woman at the center of a right-to-die case worsened after she suffered a massive hemorrhage, doctors said Saturday.
Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state for 16 years and her father has led a protracted court battle to disconnect her feeding tube, insisting it was her wish.
This summer a Milan court granted his request, setting off a political storm in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. Italy does not allow euthanasia, but patients have a right to refuse treatment.
Catholic and anti-euthanasia groups protested the ruling by leaving bottles of water in front of Milan’s Duomo cathedral. Prosecutors appealed the decision and the father pledged not to disconnect the tube before Italy’s high court weighed in.
Carlo Alberto Defanti, Englaro’s doctor, told reporters gathered Saturday at a clinic in northern Italy that over the last two days Englaro had been bleeding from her uterus.
“It was a very abundant hemorrhage, which puts her life at risk,” he said. “This afternoon it stopped. We can’t make predications; if it doesn’t restart she may recover.”
Italian news reports said doctors had agreed not to give Englaro a blood transfusion.
Englaro was 20 years old when she fell into a vegetative state following a car accident in 1992. Two years later, doctors called her condition irreversible.
Her father, Beppino Englaro, has said she had visited a friend who was in a similar condition shortly before her accident and had expressed the will to refuse treatment if in the same situation.
The case has drawn comparisons here with that of Terry Schiavo, the American woman who was at the center of a right-to-die debate until her death in 2005. Schiavo’s husband, who wanted her feeding tube removed against her parents’ wishes, prevailed in a polarizing battle in the United States that reached Congress, President George W. Bush and the Supreme Court.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.