Michael Schiavo's Legal MONEY WELL! Funny We Didn't Hear About THIS BEFORE!

Schiavo case relied on lawyers' largess

By the Los Angeles Times

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Monday, April 18, 2005

PINELLAS PARK — For the final two weeks of Terri Schiavo's life, Jon B. Eisenberg was part of her husband's legal team. But he knew he wouldn't walk away with a fee.

Instead, the California lawyer said, he spent $2,800 of his own money to travel to Washington when it looked like the Supreme Court might agree to hear the case.

"Flight, hotels, food, cab, Alka-Seltzer, coffee, it all came from my pocket," Eisenberg, an appellate attorney from Oakland said. "As someone who believes in the Constitution, it was an obligation, it was an honor."

(Insert GAG REFLEX HERE)

Terri Schiavo died March 31 at 41. Long before the court battle between her husband and her parents over whether to disconnect her feeding tube reached its headline-generating crescendo, many other people had stepped in to participate, including some who helped pay the legal bills.

Bob and Mary Schindler, the retired Gulfport couple who filed petitions, motions and appeals since 1998 to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive, couldn't afford to pay for the legal work themselves.

"Litigation is very expensive. Mr. Schindler asked us for help after he had exhausted his own fund resources," (awwww) said Dana Cody, executive director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Napa, Calif. The fund contributed more than $350,000 over the past four years.

For at least a year and a half, whether Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should be disconnected and the woman allowed to die became a battleground in America's culture wars, with lawyers and donors from conservative Christian, anti-abortion and disability-rights organizations arrayed against attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and advocates of the right of individuals to choose their medical treatment.

"We're a group that tries to maintain the sanctity of human life, and we think this case could set a dangerous precedent for those who have become disabled," Cody said. "We want to prevent society of hastening the death of those it deems inconvenient."

On the other side, the ACLU contributed the services of two Florida-based lawyers "because it was important to prevent a giant step backward to the legal and constitutional principles that we have in this country, that people have a right to refuse unwanted medical care," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.

The organization was involved in the case since the autumn of 2003, when the Florida Legislature passed a law, later struck down as unconstitutional, that authorized Gov. Jeb Bush to order the feeding tube reinserted.

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"No one, no attorney in Mrs. Schiavo's case has been paid for work since July of 2002," said George J. Felos, who represented Michael Schiavo since he submitted the original petition. "I don't know if anyone has added up the hours, but it's obviously enormous."

Oh, I am SURE it has been added up by SOMEONE!

Read it ALL!