Implied Consent: Act III, Scene IV

(The setting now shifts to the inside of the courthouse, which MARK enters and seats himself among the spectators. He does not yet have an official role to play in this trial. JUDGE BENSON is already situated in his place at the center rear of the stage, as are the representatives of the prosecution and the defense, arrayed at the stage's opposite sides. ROBERTS, OSWALD, and VICTORIA sit on one of the sides, and NEVILLE sits on the other, accompanied by the SERVANT who had attended to Quintus Grummond prior to his fateful jog. REPORTERS stand wherever they can find room to do so.)

JUDGE (striking the table in front of him with a gavel): I now declare the trial of this case, The Family, Kin, and Legal Heirs of Quintus Grummond v. The Estate of Quintus Grummond, to be in session. The court shall now hear the opening arguments of the prosecution.

ROBERTS (walks to center stage, carrying suitcase): Thank you, Your Honor, esteemed spectators and media at this trial. My clients' case is simple to grasp; it is a case of extreme filial devotion, a devotion great enough for them to have embarked on the lengthy and costly endeavor of setting up this trial. Their devotion has been so great as to urge them to yearn for the use of a power based on love, the power of implied consent. The power of implied consent is a power of trust, a trust vested in a man's relative for deciding some of the most critical questions concerning his loved one when the latter is unable, for some reason, to decide them for himself. Here (points to OSWALD and VICTORIA) we have a family that ardently loved its now departed member, Quintus Grummond, a man of impressive caliber, colorful personality, and a great sense of life. Now, however, Quintus Grummond has been forced to suffer an immense affront to his dignity, and, likewise, to the dignity of his family. He can no longer exhibit any of that character that his family loved, he can no longer enjoy life in all of its delightful facets. Rather, he is paralyzed beyond recovery, confined to a bed, forever to dwell in the sorry state of being unable to execute a single bodily function without the aid of a machine. Is that a state you would consider compatible with human dignity? I would think not. My clients request that this court allow the termination of such a state.

I know that the defense will come up here and tell you that it is not out of compassion that my clients are making their request, but rather out of the consideration that Mr. Grummond's Estate is of some value, but I shall plainly and clearly demonstrate before you that this is not so. I shall engage in honest conversation one of my clients, a man who knew his father best, and who had the highest affections for him, as does befit a son. I would like to call Oswald Grummond to the stand.

JUDGE: The witness may take the stand. (OSWALD moves to the witness stand from his seat.)

ROBERTS: Now, Mr. Grummond the Younger, how old are you?

OSWALD: I am sixty years old.

ROBERTS: And would it be safe to say that you had known your father for all those sixty years?

OSWALD (in a carefully rehearsed and recited manner): Oh, yes, ever since my birth. I have been quite close to my father for all my life, even living with him and taking care of him in his old age. Naturally, I would do so, since this would repay the great upbringing my father gave me.

ROBERTS: You see, Your Honor, this is a model son, whose record of genuine concern for his father stretches for a half-century and ten years more. Now, Mr. Grummond, how do you feel about your father's unexpected collapse?

OSWALD: I was quite shocked, of course, when it happened. It came as such a surprise, after all. I reacted as soon as I heard about what happened and rushed to call the paramedics. They did all they could, too, but, alas, that was not enough. They had only resuscitated my father into a state of limbo; they cannot make him live and think and feel again, and, if they relent even slightly with their life support procedure, all of his organs will fail.

ROBERTS: So, then, would you ever want to be in such a precarious state?

OSWALD: Why, no, never! I would never wish to hang by a thread in this manner.

ROBERTS: Mr. Grummond, do you believe in the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have others do unto you?

OSWALD: Why, naturally, that seems to me to be a sound rule to live by.

ROBERTS: So, if you would not want yourself to be in the position of being reliant solely on life support, would it not be natural to assume that you would not want others, especially those as close to you as your father, to go through the same suffering?

OSWALD: Why, yes.

ROBERTS: So, you see, Your Honor, this man is such a devoted son that he would never stoop to treating his father with any lower standard than he sets for himself. I think that this strongly suggests that Mr. Grummond the Younger is fit to make a decision as important as the one for which he is filing this suit. The prosecution has no further questions. (He takes a seat.)

JUDGE: The defense may now question the witness.

NEVILLE (rises): Thank you, Your Honor. Now, Mr. Grummond the Younger, you have stated that you had been taking care of your father during his elder years. What has made you assume that your father needed taking care of?

OSWALD (in a clearly feebler and less resolute tone than during ROBERTS' questioning): Well... he was senile... wasn't he? Senile people need to be taken care of. (clears his throat and tries to regain a stronger tone of voice) It was my filial duty!

NEVILLE: So, Mr. Grummond, how exactly did you take care of your father, then? (OSWALD wavers and produces no intelligible answer.)

ROBERTS (shoots up from his seat): Objection! This line of questioning is irrelevant to this case, which concerns Quintus Grummond's condition after the point in time when my client could have taken care of him in anything!

NEVILLE: Your Honor, it was the prosecution itself that had initiated this line of-

JUDGE: Objection sustained!

NEVILLE (finishing sentence): Questioning.

JUDGE: Mr. Neville, I have already sustained the objection. The defense needs not argue this matter further, as it will not alter the court's opinion. You may proceed along another line of questioning.

NEVILLE (sighs): Very well, Mr. Grummond the Younger, what do you do for a living?

(OSWALD wavers again; he is afraid to reveal to the court that he does not have a career.)

ROBERTS: Objection! This question is a clear violation of Mr. Grummond the Younger's right to privacy, especially given that he is not the person on trial here. His father's Estate is on trial, and the defense's questions should be confined to matters directly regarding Quintus Grummond and his Estate.

NEVILLE: But Your Honor, if Mr. Grummond the Younger's claims that he had taken care of his father are veritable, he must have had some material means by which to take care of him, such as an-

JUDGE: Objection sustained!

NEVILLE (finishes sentence again): Independent income.

JUDGE: Mr. Neville, why do you persist in pursuing lines of questioning that the court will clearly not entertain? The court frowns upon such behavior.

NEVILLE: Very well, Mr. Grummond the Younger, we are all well aware of the effort your father had invested in creating his quite formidable and profitable firm. Do you respect this effort of his to the extent that, were you to win this case and inherit his fortune, you would perpetuate it?

ROBERTS: Objection! What Mr. Grummond the Younger does or does not do with any money that he inherits is none of the defense's business! He may do with it whatever he pleases, even if the defense does not approve of it! That is his right, and should have no bearing on this case!

JUDGE: Objection sustained! (Waits for a moment to hear NEVILLE's reaction. Soon afterward, it is evident that none is forthcoming.) Mr. Neville, your behavior is unacceptable, as you continue to show opposition to the finality of the court's decision on these matters!

NEVILLE: Your Honor, it is clear and self-evident that I have said nothing after you had sustained the objection.

JUDGE: So now you are adding to your offense by your insolence! Mr. Neville, one more disrespectful outburst like that, and I will have you held in contempt of court!

NEVILLE: As Your Honor wishes. The defense has no more questions.

JUDGE: The witness may be seated. (OSWALD returns to his seat, breathing a deep sigh of relief.)

NEVILLE: The defense requests permission to address the court.

JUDGE: Granted.

NEVILLE: Your Honor, contrary to the prosecution's arguments, the so-called power of implied consent is nothing more than the violation of an individual's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. The prosecution has tried to prove to the court that Oswald Grummond is a competent and worthy person to make the decision to terminate the life support of his father, but I come before you to argue that nobody, no matter how competent he claims to be, should have such authority. Nobody should have the prerogative of deciding that an innocent individual ought to die and his explicit wishes concerning the disposition of his property ought to be defied.

The life of the individual is the ultimate value; it cannot be trumped by any other, since the very capacity to value presumes an individual who is alive. This statement is true for those of us in this room who can walk, speak, and analyze this case, but it is just as true for anyone and everyone else. It is true for children, even those tiniest of infants who can barely sit up. It is true for individuals handicapped by any manner of paralysis. It is true for the sick, even those afflicted with terminal diseases. It is true for the elderly, some of whom may have lost the ability to live self-sufficiently. It must be just as true for the comatose and those on life support, no matter how long the duration of their life support or how slight the prospects for their recovery. Nobody ought to have the authority to state that the lives of any of these individuals are not worth living, that their ultimate values are the equivalent of a zero. Remember, Your Honor, that, in a world guided by absolute moral principles, every contention we make must be taken to its logical extreme. If we are to indeed argue with a sound conscience that every individual has the inalienable right to life so long as he has not deprived another of such a right, we cannot arbitrarily exclude some innocent individuals from that definition, no matter how incapacitated those individuals may seem to us. In any case where a person assumes guardianship over another, that guardianship is a service rendered, not a power asserted. The guardian has no power to do for an individual anything that is contrary to the interests of that individual's life, just as a parent does not have the authority to kill his child, even a severely crippled child, even a bedridden, deaf-mute-blind child whose ability to interact volitionally with his surroundings is as small as that of Quintus Grummond at present. In this case, of course, the plaintiffs do not even presume to act as Quintus Grummond's legal guardians; Quintus Grummond has not asked them for their guardianship. Rather, they merely seek to terminate his life out of sheer short-sighted convenience.

In the external world, a man's right to life is manifested by the ability of his rational mind to make the decisions it sees fit. This ability, to have any value at all, must extend to the full right to dispose of one's property, the material products of the labor of the mind. In every decision, there will inevitably be some amount of delay between the time a decision is made and the time it is implemented, yet this does not alter the right of the individual to make that decision, and the right of the individual to dispose of the property involved in and arising out of such a decision. Quintus Grummond has made a clear, explicit, rational decision, extensively detailed in his will, to have his property used in a specific way that could not have been more precisely formulated. The current form of the Estate of Grummond is the way that he had ordained, and it should not matter that he has lost his consciousness in the interim. If I decide to use my hovermobile tomorrow, and then go to sleep, would the plaintiffs have the right to take my hovermobile away from me, simply because the state of my consciousness has somehow been altered? Of course not. Nor should they have the right to take from Quintus Grummond not only a hovermobile, but everything he has ever earned. Moreover, my argument with regard to property concerns not only property in inanimate objects, but also property that the individual holds in his own body and mind. This property, too, ought to be governed by the individual's own decisions, however delayed in time their implementation may be. Quintus Grummond has made a decision in his will to place his body on indefinite life support, should he lose the ability to survive without it. Now, after a necessary time delay between Mr. Grummond's conscious and unconscious states, that decision is being implemented. To curtail its implementation, as the prosecution desires, would be a clear violation of Quintus Grummond's right to the property that is his own body and the property that is his own mind, which had devised the entire arrangement.

The plaintiffs ought to recognize that arguing that they were supposed to be the legal heirs of Quintus Grummond does not alter the reality that they are not because Mr. Grummond did not wish them to be. Supposed to, by what standard? Quintus Grummond has chosen to dispose of his property-his property, not theirs, in body, mind, and possessions-in an alternate manner. The only legitimate response that the plaintiffs ought to have is to respect that arrangement as they would like others to respect any arrangements the plaintiffs would make with regard to their property. That is the true application of the Golden Rule to this situation, and that is why the court ought to reject the prosecution's claims.

I would like to leave it to Your Honor and the ladies and gentlemen analyzing this case and seeking to decide for themselves which side to support to internalize and deliberate over the arguments I have made today, and to recess until the next day.

ROBERTS: Objection! My clients do not yet wish to recess! The prosecution wishes to refute the outrageous and fanatically extremist arguments that the defense has spewed forth!

JUDGE: Objection overruled. The court shall give the prosecution time this evening to prepare a more polished refutation, thus satisfying everybody's interests, in the court's opinion. The court is on recess until tomorrow. (He taps the table with his gavel.)

(The lights are dimmed.)

To read other parts of Implied Consent, go here.