Businessman Offers $1 Million To Keep Woman On Life Support [just a feeding tube; 'life support' is misleading] - Gloria Allred's Law Firm Holds Money In Trust Account

 

March 10, 2005
 
By webstaff@nbc4.tv and the Associated Press.
 
Los Angeles, California -Attorney Gloria Allred said she would hold a news conference with one of her clients Thursday afternoon to make an announcement regarding the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman whose feeding tube is scheduled to be removed on March 18.

 

Allred said the client is a businessman who has deposited $1 million into her law firm's trust account to offer Schiavo's husband, Michael, if he agrees to certain conditions to keep his [brain damaged but not] comatose wife alive after the feeding tube is scheduled to be removed.

 

Meanwhile, the state of Florida is moving on two fronts to try to block the March 18 removal of the feeding tube keeping brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive.

 

The Department of Children and Families wants to intervene in order to investigate allegations of abuse and neglect by the woman's husband. And in Tallahassee, Republican lawmakers crafted a bill requiring that Schiavo and other incapacitated people be afforded water and nutrition unless a living will directs otherwise.

 

The husband has a court order to stop her artificial feedings. A DCF attorney told a judge Wednesday that the court cannot impede an agency investigation. But the husband's attorney argued that the agency's last-minute attempt to intervene is politically motivated, especially because dozens of previous complaints to DCF have failed to yield any evidence of abuse.

 

The attorney told reporters that the agency is simply acting as an arm of Governor Jeb Bush's office to try to undo a court order [it doesn't] like.
 
 
Copyright 2005, NBC4.tv. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
http://www.nbc4.tv/health/4272987/detail.html