Landmark right-to-die ruling: top French court says life support for Vincent Lambert, who has been in a vegetative state for a decade, can be switched off
- Verdict overturns previous court decision to keep Lambert, 42, alive artificially
- Lambert has been in a vegetative state since a 2008 traffic accident
France’s highest appeal court said Friday that the life support mechanisms keeping a severely brain-damaged man alive can be turned off “from now”, a lawyer for his wife said, in the latest legal twist in a landmark right-to-die case.
Vincent Lambert, 42, has been in a vegetative state since a 2008 traffic accident, with the question of whether to continue keeping him alive artificially bitterly dividing his family and the nation.
“This definitely ends the matter,” said Patrice Spinosi, legal counsel for Lambert’s wife Rachel, who believes the most humane course of action is to let her husband die.
“There is no other recourse possible because there are no more judges to appeal to,” he said.
The ruling reverses a decision by another Paris court which last month ordered that Lambert’s feeding tubes be reinserted, just hours after doctors began switching off life support.