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Bill would impose rule in brain damage cases

TALLAHASSEE - A state senator has filed a bill he says would prevent disputes over feeding tubes and other artificial life-prolonging measures like the bitter court fight over the fate of Terri Schiavo.

Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, said comatose and brain-damaged people would be presumed to want to be artificially fed and have their life prolonged if they didn't specify otherwise in writing.

"If it is not in writing, the tube cannot be disconnected," he said.

Schiavo, of Clearwater, suffered severe brain damage in 1990. Her husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, has said she had told him she wouldn't want to be kept alive under such circumstances. But her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, are waging a fight to keep her alive. They lost in court and her feeding tube was removed Oct. 15, but under a law the Legislature quickly passed, tailored just for this case, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered the tube reinserted. Michael Schiavo is battling to get the law overturned.

Senate President Jim King, also a Jacksonville Republican, said he will try to prevent Wise's bill from coming up for a full Senate vote.

King said he fears the bill could attract amendments that would gut the state's "Death with Dignity" law, which provides for allowing people to testify about their loved ones' wishes on end-of-life care.

PENSACOLA - A former financial services executive testified Thursday that his company backed out of putting $90-million into building a cement plant in Suwannee County because of what he read in a newspaper article about the plant's owner.

Bill Lockhart told a jury that GE Capital bailed out of the project in 1999 based on a shortened version of a Pensacola News Journal story obtained from the LexisNexis research service, stating that Joe Anderson Jr., founder of the Anderson Columbia paving company, had "shot and killed" his wife, Ira.

Lockhart subsequently obtained the full article, published in 1998, that noted a couple sentences later that authorities determined the death 10 years earlier was a hunting accident. He said that wasn't enough to change his mind about pulling out of the deal.

"I think the damage was done," Lockhart testified. "It was just devastating."

Newspaper lawyer Robert Kerrigan challenged Lockhart's credibility by pointing out that News Journal articles published before 1999 were not in the LexisNexis database.

Anderson and his Lake City-based company are seeking $50-million in actual damages and "billions" in punitive damages from defendants including the newspaper and its parent, the Gannett Co. They dropped reporter Amie Streater, now working for the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, as a defendant when the trial opened Monday.

They allege that the story, which focused on Anderson Columbia's political influence, cast Anderson in a false light by implying he murdered his wife.

The trial will continue today.