Patient in Right-to-Die Legal Battle Succumbs

An elderly nursing home resident who was the subject of a right-to-die legal battle died unexpectedly after the nasal feeding tube that was keeping her alive accidentally slipped out, nursing home officials announced Thursday.

Avis Flott’s death Wednesday evening put a new twist into her family’s monthlong effort to have the feeding tube removed in deference to the 77-year-old woman’s oft-expressed wishes never to be kept alive by artificial means.

Family members said Thursday they were seeking an autopsy to determine how Mrs. Flott had died, more than a week before a court order removing the tube was to have taken effect.

“I accuse nobody of nothing, but it doesn’t take an Einstein to see this is a coincidence,” said attorney Richard Scott, who is representing Mrs. Flott’s daughters, Virginia McMahon and Florence DuBois.

Mrs. Flott, who suffered severe brain damage in a 1979 automobile accident, never regained consciousness and survived on a 1,200-calorie-a-day solution fed through a 2 1/2-foot tube into her stomach. Her doctor, fearing possible criminal liability, refused her daughters’ request to remove the feeding tube.

The case had been near a resolution earlier this month when a Superior Court judge ordered nursing home officials to remove the tube, effective Oct. 24.

State and federal authorities, meanwhile, were considering an appeal because of the order’s guarantee of immunity from criminal prosecution to doctors and nursing home administrators if the tube were removed.

Prosecutors said they fear that such a guarantee could prevent authorities in future cases from scrutinizing families’ motives when seeking to end the lives of their elderly relatives.

The attorney for the El Monte Golden Age Convalescent Hospital, Kenneth Stern, said the tube “accidentally” came out a few days ago while nurses were bathing the patient, and her physician, instead of ordering it reinserted, decided that she could be fed orally.

“Maybe he felt she could tolerate food now, where she couldn’t before,” Stern said. Her death Wednesday evening was due to cardiac arrest, he said.

Scott, who is also a physician, said “a 2 1/2-foot tube being knocked out seems to my not-totally unsophisticated brain, cuckoo. I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think it got knocked out. I don’t know what happened.”

Scott said McMahon had last visited her mother on Sunday. “She looked just the same as ever,” he said, “and then suddenly to die is a little unexpected. And when your death is the subject of a fairly high-visibility lawsuit, some minds, not necessarily mine, say, hmmm, that is a coincidence. But strange things happen.”

“Very fortuitous,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg, who said he is not certain whether his office will investigate the death.

Attorneys on both sides said the death will bring an end to the legal action.

“The legal victory won for Mrs. Flott by her daughters . . . now seems to be without direct consequences,” the family said in a prepared statement, “although the issue of the duty of nursing homes and government health inspection agencies regarding the rights of patients has been raised and discussed fairly vigorously. This is the legacy of Avis Flott.”