Can you have people for Pain and suffering, because a doctor has extended his Suffering unnecessarily? No, ruled the German Federal court of justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe. Doctors are not liable, therefore, in principle, with money, if you get a patient, for example through artificial nutrition longer than is medically useful life and thus his Suffering extend.
Further no harm is life
It prohibits, as a General rule, a more life than damage, argued the judges. An action for Pain and suffering and material damages, meadows, therefore, from (reference VI ZR 13/18).
In the case of a man who died in 2011 at 82 years of age. According to his son, Heinz Sening, he could not speak in the last two years of his life and was unable to move in bed. A gastric tube kept the patient alive artificially. The treatment was a senseless cruelty, criticized his son Sening. The doctor should have let his father die. What would have wanted, the Patient, is unclear. A living will was not.
Plaintiff Heinz Sening
Sening complained of, therefore, on pain of money damages. Overall, he called for 152.000 Euro due to “continuing injury” and the resulting cost of care. With the death of his father Sening had inherited its claims to Pain and suffering. The Supreme court rejected his claim only to but.
The higher regional court of Munich had been Sening first right and him € 40,000 for Pain and suffering awarded. The probe nutrition is served, at least in the last almost two years of pure life attitude, decided the judge at the time. The doctor had been not required, the treatment self-cancel, it said in the judgment. He would, however, appeal to the supervisor, and with this very thoroughly have to discuss whether the 2006 placed feeding tube should stay or not. Because the son lives in the USA, supervised at that time, a lawyer for the dementia patients.
Both Sening and the doctor went in Revision, therefore, the Federal court of justice negotiated now, as the Supreme civil court. The presiding judge Vera von Pentz said it was questionable whether the doctor’s obligations. “The judgment about the value of a life is not for a third,” she said. It lacks, therefore, to a non-pecuniary damage, the pain of money-claims could trigger.
In medical principles for the dying it is said: “patients are still Dying, but according to medical knowledge, in all likelihood, in the foreseeable future will die, it is necessary to Change the objective of the Treatment, when life-support Suffering at the end of measures would extend or Change the treatment objective, the will of the patient.”
The German Foundation patient protection recommends, in a timely manner to cater for situations such as coma, organ failure or dementia precise treatment instructions to write down. “So self-determination is secured to the death,” says Executive Board Eugen Brysch. “We had not had a living will, the process is superfluous.” After his experiences in the Doctors to rethink. before come less and less frequently.