Fifth Cir. Appears Likely to Reopen Medical Disability Bias Case

Attorneys for health-care providers who put a man with disabilities into hospice care, where he died, instead of treating his medical condition faced difficult questioning at oral argument Monday in federal appeals court.

A doctor’s statement that his patients normally were walking and talking when they entered the hospital indicates he had “something less than sympathy” for Michael Hickson, a quadriplegic who sought treatment for a respiratory illness at a St. David’s Healthcare Partnership facility, Judge Edith H. Jones said.

Jones, of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, seemed likely to side with Hickson’s family in their ...