More Lawsuits for Unwanted Medical Treatment

Traditionally, courts have not been receptive to claims for unwanted medical treatment at the end of life. But things are changing.

I published a series of articles (here and here and here) both arguing and demonstrating that more litigants are filings and winning lawsuits when clinicians administer treatment contrary to advance directives. I collected some resources here.

The latest of these lawsuits was filed last week in Bronx Supreme Court. After receiving a dementia diagnosis, Gerald Greenberg completed an advance directive directing that he was to be given “comfort measures only, no intravenous fluids and no antibiotics."

But in November 2016, Greenberg was transferred from a nursing home to Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital. There, clinicians violated Greenberg’s advance directive by giving him medications that kept him alive for a whole month before he was eventually transferred to hospice.