The highest French court considers the suspension of the procedure to stop treatment illegal. Doctors from the Reims University Hospital will have to decide again.
Vincent Lambert’s doctors will have to resume the collegial procedure. The Council of State has ruled “Illegal the suspension of the 2th procedure for examining the interruption of treatment ”of this 41-year-old man hospitalized at the University Hospital of Reims since 2008 in a vegetative state.
This interruption was decided by Dr Daniela Simon in July 2015. She said that the medical team was under too much pressure from the family. Vincent Lambert’s relatives have been torn apart in the courts for 10 years. While his wife, designated as guardian, his nephew and some of Vincent Lambert’s brothers and sisters are in favor of stopping care, his parents and other members of his siblings are against it.
These two parties are also the ones who seized the highest French court. Vincent Lambert’s nephew asked the Council of State to enforce the decision of the Nancy Court of Appeal. In June 2016, this ordered the Reims University Hospital to give the doctor “the means to continue the consultation process” which could lead to an end to the artificial nutrition and hydration which keep Vincent Lambert alive. A decision contested by the parents.
Insufficient reason
Now the Sages of the Palais Royal have just ruled in favor of the Nancy Court of Appeal. They believe that Dr Simon, who left his post in January 2017, could not invoke the lack of serenity and security “to take the decision to suspend the proceedings for an indefinite period”.
“The result is that the doctor currently in charge of Mr. Vincent Lambert will again have to decide on the initiation of a procedure for examining the cessation of treatment of the person concerned”, explains the Council of State.
If the outcome of these discussions between experts cannot be anticipated, the Council of State nonetheless recalls that it had ruled in June 2014 “that Mr. Vincent Lambert had clearly and on several occasions expressed the wish not to be kept artificially alive in the event that he is in a state of great dependence ”. If the doctors consider that his survival can be qualified as unreasonable stubbornness, the cessation of treatment may be decided in accordance with the Leonetti law.
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