The parents of a 12-year-old boy at the center of a dispute over life-support treatment prepare for an appeals court hearing after a Supreme Court judge ruled the youngster was dead.
Ms Justice Arbuthnot recently ruled that doctors may legally stop treating Archie Battersbee after examining evidence at a trial in the Family Division of the High Court in London.
The judges of the Court of Appeal will hear the case at a hearing in London on Wednesday.
Doctors treating Archie at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, have told Ms Arbuthnot they believe he is “brain-stem dead”.
They said treatment should stop and Archie should be disconnected from a ventilator.
Archie’s parents, Hollie Dance and Paul Battersbee, from Southend, Essex, say his heart is still beating and want treatment to continue.
Lawyers representing the Royal London Hospital’s governing trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, asked Ms Justice Arbuthnot to decide what steps would be in Archie’s best interest
Ms Justice Arbuthnot concluded Archie was dead and said the treatment should stop.
But she said there was a “compelling reason” why appellate judges should consider the case.
A lawyer who leads Archie’s parents’ legal team had argued that the evidence does not show “beyond reasonable doubt” that he is dead.
Edward Devereux, QC, said the decision was based on probabilities.
I have argued that a decision of such “gravity” should have been made on the basis of “beyond reasonable doubt”.
Ms Justice Arbuthnot decided that appeal judges should take that standard of evidence into account.
Archie suffered a brain injury in an incident at home in early April.
Dans said she found her son unconscious with a ligature over his head on April 7 and believes he entered an online challenge.
He has not regained consciousness.