Good afternoon.
Following are this week's summaries of the civil decisions
of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
In McKitty v. Hayani, the court determined that the definition
of death at common law includes neurologically determined death
(ie. brain death). The other, more common, method of determining
death is cardiorespiratory failure (heart stops beating). The Court
determined that which of the two criteria for determining death are
used by the medical field in making a decision to withdraw
mechanical ventilation ought to take into consideration the
patient's religious beliefs. However, in this case, which did
not have an adequate evidentiary record and, in any event, was
moot, the Court ultimately did not determine whether the
doctor's declaration of the patient as legally dead under the
neurological criterion infringed her constitutional rights.
