FORT WORTH, Texas _ Attorneys for a Texas hospital have appealed a judge's decision to require that a 9-year-old girl who they say is brain dead and riddled with cancer be kept on life support for another week.
On Monday, State District Judge Melody Wilkinson granted the girl's parents an additional week to seek out a health care facility that would care for their daughter, Payton Summons. The hospital's appeal was filed about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday.
Payton was due to be taken off life support at Cook Children's Medical Center at 1:20 p.m. Monday. A motion to extend the girl's time on life support was filed by the family's lawyers about 11:15 a.m., a few hours before a temporary restraining order was set to expire.
The newly extended order expires at 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 22, and the expiration of the order will clear the way for the hospital to remove Summons from life support. The court agreed with the attorneys representing Payton's mother and father, Tiffany Hofstetter and Joseph Summons, on Monday that an extension in this circumstance would be appropriate.
The hospital's lawyers appealed that decision on Tuesday, arguing that the judge had no good reason to extend the original order and that Payton was declared dead by medical professionals on Sept. 25, less than 24 hours after she arrived at the hospital.
The extension is asking hospital staff to maintain a dead person on ventilation and continue treating a "deceased deteriorating body," and is "medically, ethically and morally repugnant," the lawyers argue.
