Thread: Life-support case shows rifts in legal system

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/su ... 720835.htm










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Posted on Tue, Oct. 10, 2006


ANCILLARY LAWSUIT OUTRAGES PHYSICIAN
Life-support case shows rifts in legal system

By Eric Senn


Outraged. That's how I felt when I read that Ramon Hernandez' public defender had filed a lawsuit against several Medical University of South Carolina physicians in the amount of $5 million for taking his daughter off life support (after she was clearly brain dead, according to experts).

Hernandez has been charged with murdering his 2-month-old daughter, who was brought to the hospital with multiple bruises and skull fractures.

Stuart Axelrod, a public defender, then filed a lawsuit that appears to cloud the real issue by claiming that his client, who is an illegal immigrant, has had his constitutional rights violated when the physicians disconnected his client's daughter's life support (although she had no blood flow to her brain).

Did common sense die somewhere along the last 10 years or so? Could it be that Hernandez might not agree to discontinue totally futile life support to avoid a murder charge?

This is just another example of our totally broken and running-wild legal system.

Common sense did win a victory recently with the passage of limited tort reform, but clearly much more needs to be done. Are you telling me that we are going to have to spend untold hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and select a jury to try this totally absurd lawsuit?

All of this is wrong, wrong, wrong, and on so many levels. I urge all citizens to contact your legislators and insist that the legal system be repaired in a fundamental way before this grand state and country go belly up from citizen apathy.


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The writer, a physician, lives in Myrtle Beach.





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I thought our President put an end to these frivilous lawsuits against the medical field, did he not? Our government will soon go broke supplying these kinds of persons with attorney's then the payouts if they win.