Court Won’t Halt Removal of Life Support

PHILADELPHIA — A federal appeals court refused Friday to prevent a New Jersey man from removing the feeding tube keeping his comatose wife alive, and the nursing home where she has been a patient said it no longer will challenge her right to die.

The nursing home had sought stays in four courts in less than a week challenging the right of John Jobes to withdraw artificial life support from his wife.

The decision to end the court battle came just hours after the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia unanimously refused to grant a stay sought by the Morris County, N.J., home.

Nancy Ellen Jobes, 32, had been a patient in the home since shortly after she suffered irreversible brain damage in an April, 1980, operation to remove a dead fetus after an automobile accident. She was transferred last weekend by court order to Morristown Memorial Hospital.

Refuse to Intervene

The U.S. Supreme Court and a federal district judge both refused Thursday to intervene in the case, letting stand a New Jersey Supreme Court decision giving John Jobes the right to order artificial life support withdrawn.

The last possible legal obstacle would have been a request by the nursing home for the full 3rd Circuit Court to overrule the three-judge panel. The home decided against that move.

“We feel tremendous relief and tremendous gratitude that finally we will be able to let Nancy die and put this whole 7 1/2-year nightmare to rest,” said Eleanor Laird, Nancy Jobes’ mother.

Paul Armstrong, the lawyer for John Jobes, said the family now will meet with doctors to discuss procedures for the withdrawal of life support.

Jobes, of Boonton, N.J., testified in a state court trial last year that his wife said often before the car accident that she did not wish to be kept alive by artificial means if she had no hope of recovery.