The Price of Dishonesty

CASEY LUNSFORD’S kidneys were failing him. Doctors estimated that the three-and-a-half-year-old boy would survive for only another three or four months unless he had a kidney transplant. His parents, who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, decided in favor of the operation; in fact, Casey’s father was to donate one of his own kidneys to the boy.a Their only stipulation was that no blood be used​—Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse transfusions on Scriptural grounds.​—See Acts 15:20.

The Lunsfords planned to have the operations done in a Texas hospital with a known record of successful kidney transplants performed without blood transfusions. But a hospital just miles from the Lunsfords’ home in California was willing to perform the transplant without a blood transfusion. The Lunsfords chose this closer hospital.

During the week before the operation, the hospital staff and the transplant surgeon repeatedly assured the parents that there would be no necessity for a blood transfusion or a court order authorizing one over the parents’ objections. However, right after the parents agreed to the surgery, the surgeon began arranging to get a court order to force blood on Casey. He even managed to have a social worker in the case replaced when she insisted that the parents had a right to know about any court order. On the morning of the operation, the hospital filed a certificate requesting a court order to transfuse Casey. The certificate made it sound as if Casey were currently lying bleeding on an operating table when, in fact, the operation had not yet begun! An hour after the operation, which had been successfully performed without blood, Casey was given a blood transfusion.

The Lunsfords sued the surgeon and the hospital for violations of their civil rights and for fraud, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and breach of fiduciary duty. After a four-week trial, the jury deliberated for two and a half days and returned a verdict against the surgeon and the hospital. They were ordered to pay the Lunsfords a total of $500,000.

Although the trial judge has now overruled the judgment on the civil rights violations and ordered a new trial for the fraud and other charges, the 12 jurors were convinced that the deceit of the hospital and the doctor justified the award of $500,000. Attorneys for the family have indicated that they will seek to uphold the jury’s decision by an appeal.

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