(Newswire.net — July 10, 2019) — Doctors in Mercy hospital in Chicago disconnected a patient from a life support system and ended his life. They did that with the consent of the wrong family. Now both families are suing the hospital and the city of Chicago for negligence.
The man was transported to Mercy Hospital in April after being found under a car unconscious and completely naked with multiple injuries. The man’s face was crushed which made him completely unrecognizable.
The police identified him as Alfonso Bennett, and hospital staff called “his” family. After talking with family members, the nurses disconnected him from the life support device and the patient died, the BBC reports.
Alfonso Bennett, however, appeared sound and well at a family gathering one day, shocking all relatives who buried him. It turned out that Alfonso took a longer holiday and he didn’t inform anyone about it.
It was only after the incident that the police took fingerprints from the deceased person, finding that it was Elisha Brittman (69), after which they called his real family.
Now both families are suing the hospital and the city of Chicago for negligence and pain.
When the injured patient was brought to the hospital, he was enrolled as John Doe, because the staff failed to identify him. Allegedly, doctors advised family members that it was best to come to terms with the situation and to disconnect the life support device the man was strapped to.
In the meantime, the family of Elisha Brittman, who disappeared just like Bennett, searched unsuccessfully for him in the local morgues and hospitals.
When police realized what had happened, they called the Brittman family, finding out that the man had disappeared long ago.
The Mercy hospital management, refused to comment on the case, and the head of the public relations department said in June that there were “lots of open questions” and that their “detectives investigate all aspects of the case”.
The lawyer of the Bennett family found it unacceptable that the hospital has circumvented the law and treated people as invisible. Senator Patricia Van Pelt thinks that the police should immediately take the fingerprints of patients or their DNA to determine the exact identity.