<p>The family may well not want to donate organs either way. I know people in real life who don’t want to be kept alive but don’t want their organs donated either. Personally, I am all for organ donation by the way, but it still doesn’t mean her parents have to be on board with that.</p>
<p>This is so sad. I can’t really blame the parents, because I’m willing to excuse bad decision-making and denial in the face of such a terrible loss. But there is no excuse for the ambulance-chasing lawyer to have brought the case. The people around these parents ought to be helping them accept their loss, not feeding their magical thinking about how their dead daughter is going to somehow come back to life.</p>
<p>There is no duty of care for dead people. How would the parents even find a doctor to operate on a corpse, in order to install a feeding tube and do a tracheotomy?</p>
<p>My suspicion is that the court chose the timeframe to let the family get through Christmas and hopefully come to terms with this on their own. Had that occurred, it would have been the best outcome. Personally, I find some of the comments by the hospital and its lawyers to have been very insensitive and I wonder if they didn’t prolong the matter by being so adversarial so quickly. I guess they know the liability is going to be staggering.</p>
<p>Zoos, why do you think the hospital has any liability? Sleep apnea surgery on the obese sometimes has bad complications. Bad outcomes don’t necessarily mean bad care.</p>
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I disagree. Everyone should have legal representation when needed. It’s up to the court of law to make a judgment, not the court of public opinion. Seeking the services of an attorney and review before the proper court is the unquestioned right of every American. Having a favorable judgment is not.</p>
<p>The hospital and it’s lawyers are starting to get a little testy. True. But they have been battling nonsense and keeping a dead girl breathing for two weeks. I’m sure they are frustrated.</p>
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Because she was a young person who died. Who do you really think a jury is going to sympathize with? Not the hospital. In cases like this you can almost always find SOMETHING that wasn’t done that should have been or was done and shouldn’t have been. The hospital settles and its insurance rates go up hugely or they take the case to trial, pay massive legal fees, and probably lose in the end. This is a medical facility’s worst nightmare.</p>
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There is absolutely nothing about this matter that is nonsense.</p>
<p>zoos, how should a lawyer react if a client approaches them trying to bring a case that they believe has no merit? (Not snark. Real question.) Isn’t it the first duty of the lawyer to advise their client that the case has no merit and they should accept the situation? Of course, the lawyer may have done just that, but it sure doesn’t look like it.</p>
<p>Sometimes the family just can’t make the decision so the law makes it for them. It also prevents one member of the family from having to make the decision in opposition to the rest of the family. It’s very very difficult to have to make these decisions when you are confused, exhausted, grieving and have no support.</p>
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<p>Not with a negative cerebral blood flow test. Brain cells must have a blood/oxygen supply to live. Once they are dead, they are dead. Her brain has no blood flow; therefore her brain has irreversibly died. Nothing will bring it back.</p>
<p>Uhm, she’s dead. That’s the nonsense.</p>
<p>Malpractice is another issue and I don’t doubt for a minute that’s where this is going. They were on TV almost immediately. That bothered me at the time. If my 13-year old tragically dies during surgery I will not be talking to reporters on the nightly news. They are also fundraising on FaceBook. It’s creepy.</p>
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Really? Really?
I hope with all my heart that you never have to find out what you would do in such a situation.</p>
<p>I don’t know what I would do. If I really thought my child was still alive and someone was trying to kill her, I would do ANYTHING. Nothing would be off limits. I think the best outcome now would be for the family to make the decision, but I also think they should sue. Which is not ambulance chasing. When a child dies, the family has the right and the obligation to know what happened. I don’t know what happened, you don’t know what happened. Without legal discovery, there is no way to know if malpractice occurred. Assuming that her obesity was the cause is quite a leap at this time.</p>
<p>The mere fact that a child died after a tonsillectomy does not mean there was negligence. Every surgery carries a risk of death, either during surgery or post-op. </p>
<p>There may well have been negligence with post op care; I’m sure the facts will come to light in a lawsuit, which the hospital can win if it shows standards of care were met. I personally think they will settle.</p>
<p>Negligence during the post op period really should have no bearing on what should be done with a brain dead patient on life support.</p>
<p>“If I really thought my child was still alive and someone was trying to kill her, I would do ANYTHING.”</p>
<p>Why would you think this when something went wrong after surgery? They were there and saw her bleeding profusely. This is tragic but I don’t know why I would ever leap to the hospital is trying to kill my child. Ever. Malpractice, maybe. But keeping a corpse alive. Never.</p>
<p>Under California’s MICRA medical malpractice statute, non-economic damages are limited to $250,000. There wouldn’t be any substantial economic damages since she was 13, not earning anything or supporting anyone. There might be minor medical bills. Not a big payday for a lawyer.</p>
<p>Judging by the description of the family in the articles linked above, The best hope of convincing them is to convince their minister, and get him or her to talk to them.</p>
<p>I’m terribly sorry for them. It’s unimaginably awful. But there are probably other children who could be saved by her organs. That is what I would want for my child: for something good to come out of it.</p>
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I am amazed that you are so judgmental and simultaneously so flip about the worst thing that could possibly happen to a family. Again. I hope you never have to find out what you would do.</p>
<p>I agree, it’s unimaginably awful. I can’t imagine how exhausted the grieving family must be at this point. And I’m concerned that there’s going to be a very ugly scene at the hospital in 4 hours.</p>
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You keep using the term “life support”. She’s dead - no life to support.<br>
It’s bad for her classmates, other members of the family, for the parents themselves. Psychologically, there comes a time when you have to accept that you did all you could.</p>