................................
WILMINGTON -- The two attorneys who were on opposing sides in the 2005 Terri Schiavo fight had the same advice for the parents of Lauren Richardson, now in the same situation as Schiavo.
Stop now.
Get away from the courts, get into a room together and try to work out your differences before it is too late.
"If there is one thing I learned from the Schiavo case, any way other than litigation is a better way to resolve this," said George J. Felos, an attorney who represented Michael Schiavo.
"I urge these people ... not to look to the court but to work this out themselves, before their positions harden and before things get said and things get done to make it impossible to talk," said Pat Anderson, an attorney who represented the Schindlers, Terri Schiavo's parents.
~Snip~
Anderson said the case is "eerily" similar to Schiavo's, a Florida case where Schiavo's husband maintained that his wife would not have wanted to live in a vegetative state on life support.
Schiavo left no written instructions and Schiavo's parents, the Schindlers, opposed removing a feeding tube.
The two sides fought in Florida courts for seven years and gained national attention before the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the rulings of state judges, allowing Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube in March 2005.
~Snip~
Anderson said her great fear during the Schiavo case was "that all those people who looked at the television screen [and saw the video of Terri Schiavo] and said, 'I wouldn't want to live like that,' might live to regret it because those words might come back at them," she said.
"Those sort of casual remarks would be elevated to an oral directive," she said-- exactly what happened in this case, "If the mother's testimony is accurate."
Anderson, the Schindlers' attorney, said the two cases point to what she sees as "a huge societal issue."
"Why are we executing disabled people because they are disabled? These patients are not dying of any terminal disease. If they die by removal of a feeding tube, they in effect have been executed because their brain has been damaged."
Anderson said if the family of Lauren Richardson does not take her advice and work this out among themselves, outside a court, "Hang onto your socks, it will be a nasty fight ... Everyone is going to lose."
Terri Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, who now helps run the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation Inc., agreed.
A story about Lauren Richardson was recently posted on the foundation's Web site.
"Certainly, communicate, try to work this out," he said. "Do anything to keep it out of the courts."
At the same time, Schindler, who had been in contact with randy Richardson, was pessimistic, saying that they tried to do that with Michael Schiavo in 2002.
He said that the only compromises that Michael would agree to all ended with the "killing" of his sister. "We would never compromise like that," he said.
In the Richardson case, Schindler said, "Anything short of caring for the girl, I don't know what can be accomplished."
On Saturday, Randy Richardson said "I am willing to do anything possible to avoid death being imposed on my daughter, mediate, whatever it is. My feeling, my concern is my daughter be given the chance to life."
Towers could not be reached.
Halt court war, Schiavo lawyers advise
8mm
