Better Dead than.Improperly Declared Dead?
A North Carolina man was hit by a car and then lived through a nightmare generally reserved for horror movies and scary folklore.
Before the days of modern medicine some people were mistakenly buried prematurely, while still clinging to life. In the days when bodies were not routinely embalmed, there were documented cases of people who were actually buried alive, only to be exhumed later and found to be either still alive or having scratched at the lid of their coffins before actually dying while buried.
It's definitely a scary thought, but with all of the advances in modern medicine it's hardly likely that a person who is still alive would be declared dead. Right?
In 2005, Larry Green ended up in a body bag in the morgue. He had been hit by a car while crossing a highway and declared dead at the scene. His family was notified that he had been killed in the accident. It was not discovered that he actually was still alive until about 2 1/2 hours after the accident.
The medical examiner, J.B. Perdue, was called to the scene of the accident, but he did not immediately examine Green. Perdue was told that Green had died, and said that it is not his job to determine if a person is living or dead: the medical examiner is only called in the event of a death to investigate the surrounding circumstances.
So, more than two hours later, Perdue began his examination of Green's body to document the injuries. Much to his surprise, he found that Green was still breathing. His breathing was so shallow that Perdue says he had to double check to make sure that he actually was still alive.
When Green was found to be alive he began receiving medical treatment and a state trooper visited his family to give them the good news that he was not actually dead, as they had been told earlier.
Green survived the accident and also survived his trip to the morgue zipped inside the body bag. However, since he did not get immediate medical treatment after the accident, his family says that his injuries and permanent disabilities are more severe than they would have been had he not been wrongly declared dead. They have filed a personal injury lawsuit against the medical personnel who declared Green dead.
The lawsuit filed by Green's family claims that the medical personnel who responded to the scene of the accident did not adequately check Green's vital signs to determine whether he had survived the accident. The lawsuit also makes allegations that Perdue ignored signs that Green was actually alive.
The paramedics at the scene of the accident did not use an electrocardiogram monitor on Green. The monitor would have given them an electric reading of Green's heart. A flat-line on the monitor usually indicates that a person is dead, but since they did not use an EKG monitor, the paramedics simply guessed that Green was dead, and therefore he was treated as if he were dead.
The paramedics who responded to the accident have not admitted that they declared Green dead, and although it's not state law, they say that they would be unable to do so because only a doctor could declare someone legally dead. So there is a situation in which the medical officials involved are passing the buck, and no one wants to take the blame for the unfortunate circumstances that led to Green ending up in a body bag.
After the accident, Green was in the hospital for two months due to a severe head injury, a broken leg and other injuries. He began to regain limited speech capabilities five months after the accident. He now lives in a nursing home.
