The family of a patient, who had expressed the wish to be maintained alive, even artificially, disputed a medical choice of the Valenciennes hospital (North), which provides for a cessation of treatment, due to An “unreasonable obstinacy”.
by Béatrice Jérôme
The Constitution does not oblige doctors to respect the will of a person expressed in his early guidelines, even his wish to be maintained alive at all costs: the Constitutional Council made on Thursday, November 10, A decision that will make case law. The 2016 Claeys-Leonnetti law provides that any adult can indicate in writing the way in which they want to be accompanied by doctors, if their life is in danger. These wishes must be respected, but under certain conditions only.
The decision of the wise men of rue de Montpensier aimed to decide a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) posed by the family of a man admitted in coma in July 2022 at the Valenciennes hospital (North), after having been crushed by the truck he repaired. Victim of multiple fractures and a cardiorepiratory arrest, the man, then aged 43, had been taken care of in intensive care. Doctors considered that it was preferable in July 2022 to stop the treatments and acts provided. They estimated that their prosecution would only have the effect of keeping it alive artificially, by allowing it only a “quality of survival (…) catastrophic”. They based on the Claeys-Léonnetti law, which authorizes the cessation of treatments, “when they result from unreasonable obstinacy”.
But this patient had written in June 2020 early guidelines asking to be maintained alive “even artificially”, if he was plunged into a coma deemed irreversible. The family, resolved to oppose the cessation of care, seized the judge in summary proceedings of the administrative court, which proved it wrong. She then appealed before the Council of State, while submitting a QPC transmitted to the Constitutional Council.
legally, the QPC disputes the conformity to the constitution of paragraph 3 of article L 1111-11 of the public health code which provides for the possibility for a doctor to refuse to execute the early directives if he believes that they are “manifestly inappropriate or not in accordance with the medical situation”.
The family lawyer, Ludwig Prigent had pleaded, during the hearing of October 25, that these two exceptions left the doctor with an excessive margin of appreciation, which could lead to a decision contrary to the principles of the Dignity of the person, respect for human life, personal freedom and freedom of conscience, all rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
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