Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital

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Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital, 1

Betancourt died in May 2009. On Friday, August 13, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey issued their opinion in Betancourt v. Trinitas. In essence the court ruled that because Betancourt had died, the issue was now moot. Thus, they neither support the plaintiff’s nor the defendant’s positions.

Law and ethics

According to Sam Germana, vice president and general counsel for Trinitas, the hospital's ethics committee met multiple times to evaluate Betancourt's case. "Our doctors usually err on the side of doing anything," he told the press. "It's extremely rare when they say 'enough is enough, we're just keeping organs alive." At the time of the committee meetings, Betancourt's care had directly cost the hospital, by its own estimate, $1.6 million.^[4]

The case had become a cause célèbre for both supporters and opponents of the right of patients, and their surrogate decision-makers, to choose whether to discontinue life-sustaining medical treatment. Among those who had taken the hospital's side are the New Jersey Hospital Association, the Medical Society of New Jersey, and the Catholic Healthcare Partnership of New Jersey.^[4] These organizations have argued that unconscious, elderly, or terminally ill patients do not have an "unfettered" right to choose whether their lives will be sustained.^[1] They also argued that hospitals have a duty to conserve their limited resources for all patients.^[1]

The family has received support from a prominent authority on medical futility, Thaddeus Mason Pope, and conservative commentator Wesley J. Smith.^[5][6] Smith has written: "If the hospital won the case, doctors and bioethicists would, in effect, have been given the right to declare that the life of a patient diagnosed in a PVS is futile, and once that principle became well established in law and medical ethics, such ad hoc health care rationing wouldn’t end with catastrophically ill people such as this patient."^[6]

In explaining its reasoning for dismissing the case as moot, the court stated:

"Courts normally will not decide issues when a controversy no longer exists, and the disputed issues have become moot…" "A critical factor in the mootness analysis is whether the unusual circumstances of a case make a recurrence of this specific set of facts unlikely. This is the decisive issue here."

The Court opined that it is up to legislature to handle the issues raised by the case:

"While we dismiss the appeal, we do not see our declination to resolve the issue on this record and in this case to be an end to the debate. The issues presented are profound and universal in application. They warrant thoughtful study and debate not in the context of overheated rhetoric in the battlefield of active litigation, such as marked the Schiavo debate, but in thoughtful consideration by the Legislature well as Executive agencies and Commissions charged with developing the policies that impact on the lives of all."

See also

• Bioethics
• Karen Ann Quinlan case

References

External links

• Text of Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital, 415 N.J. Super. 301, 1 A.3d 823 (App. Div. 2010) is available from: Findlaw  Google Scholar  Leagle 
• Lower Court Ruling