Wife’s court battle over PC left with brain damage
PC PAUL Briggs suffered brain damage and five spine fractures in a motorcycle crash in Birkenhead in 2015.
The driver who hit him, 26-yearold Chelsea Rowe, had been on the wrong side of the road and was jailed for a year. But Mr Briggs, a Gulf War veteran who had been on his way to a night shift with Merseyside Police, was left in a coma, dependent on tubes to supply him with liquids and nourishment.
His wife, Lindsey, then 40, said seeing her brain-damaged husband suffer was ‘beyond torture’ and that their five-year-old daughter Ella was frightened of visiting him.
His mother and brothers said his life was not worth living and he would not want to be kept alive if he could not communicate with his family. Mrs Briggs said that ‘given his previously expressed wishes’ and the poor quality of life he was likely to endure on even the most optimistic estimates of a possible recovery, he should be allowed to die.
The argument over whether Mr Briggs should live or die went to the Court of Protection after doctors at Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust called for caution, saying Mr Briggs was in a state from which it was still possible for him to recover.
However, Mr Justice Charles ruled that life-sustaining treatment could be stopped, and Mr Briggs could be moved to a hospice to receive palliative care designed to make him comfortable rather than keep him alive. He died in January 2017.