It’s been called one of the most unusual medical malpractice cases and one that has raised questions for organ donors, organ recovery centers and their insurance carriers.
Paula Denison, age 57, was taken to the emergency room at Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian, Mississippi, late one afternoon in 2022. She showed signs of an aneurysm, brain swelling or a stroke. She was found to be drowsy and confused but with coherent speech, according to court documents.
Within a few hours, the woman was pronounced “brain dead” by a physician, then “legally dead.”
Denison’s family arranged for her to be transported to the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency, or MORA, a nonprofit center in Flowood, about an hour away, where her organs could be recovered and donated to patients in need.
About 2 a.m. the next morning, nurses at the recovery center started tests, including a surgical liver biopsy. Later that evening, Denison “began showing medical signs inconsistent with human death, such as ‘spontaneous respirations, a reactive pupil, and the presence of coughing and gag reflexes,'” the Mississippi Supreme Court recounted in an opinion handed down last week.
The woman was taken back to the hospital, where, a day later, she was pronounced dead—again. Denison’s daughter, Brooke, filed two lawsuits, one as administrator of the estate, against the organ recovery agency, the hospital and physicians involved, charging negligence. Brooke Denison also sued in her own name, seeking bystander recovery, arguing that she had suffered emotional distress and mental anguish upon learning of her mother’s situation.
The circuit court in Meridian agreed with the organ center and defendant physician and dismissed the estate’s suit on the grounds that the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, a model law adopted by Mississippi and most other states, provides immunity to the organ center. The trial court also dismissed the daughter’s lawsuit, noting that Brooke did not meet the statutory requirements because she had not actually witnessed the organ center’s treatment of her mom. (The daughter did not file a wrongful death suit, based on the conclusion that Denison likely would not have survived, anyway.)
On appeal, the daughter’s attorney, Michael Jaques, argued that the law provides immunity only for actions taken by an organ center on a deceased person. But Denison was not dead. Jaques declined to comment while the case is still pending, but his appeal brief argued that the organ recover agency performed surgery on the living woman without anesthesia, something the immunity law does not apply to.
Later, after realizing Denison was not quite deceased, the center staff administered significant doses of propofol, Brooke’s team wrote.
Propofol is a powerful sedative and anesthetic. The organ center said it was ordered for sedation, but it also has been used as part of a euthanasia cocktail in Canada, the plaintiff’s brief notes. Propofol was famously determined to be the drug overdose that killed pop star Michael Jackson in 2009, according to news and medical reports.
The Mississippi organ center never obtained the woman’s permission nor the family’s consent before giving the dosage, the plaintiff’s brief argued. It also kept Denison at the center for more than a day before notifying the family.
