Last February, 41-year-old Conrad Spicehandler was walking through Manhattan after signing papers to buy a house with his partner of 15 years. Suddenly, he was struck by a car.
Before going into surgery for a badly broken leg, Conrad sweetly wrote to his partner, John Langan, 'I've made my life in your heart.'
That night, following the surgery, John and other family members watched over Conrad. While in shock that Conrad had been one of a dozen victims in a bizarre hit-and-run spree, everyone was grateful his injury didn't seem life-threatening. But, while recuperating from a seemingly successful follow-up operation two days later, Conrad died.
'We were each other's first true loves,' says John, who ran an insurance business with Conrad. 'The worst thing is the loneliness, is going home to an empty house and knowing that he is not going to come in through the door. Conrad was a healthy man. You just don't go in for a broken leg and not come out.'
Obviously, St. Vincent's Hospital owes John an adequate explanation. And if Conrad's death was its fault, the hospital also owes John whatever would be due the surviving spouse in a wrongful death.
But rather than properly allowing a judge or jury to decide, the hospital is attempting to block John from even being able to sue. In a shamefully anti-gay legal document, the hospital claims John isn't a real spouse and, therefore, isn't eligible to sue.
John and Conrad were legally united in a Vermont civil union, which gives gay couples all the state-level rights and responsibilities of marriage. Conrad's will left everything to John. And, John says, the hospital had treated him as Conrad's spouse. He was the one called when the hospital discovered Conrad had died.
But in trying to avoid having to defend itself, St. Vincent's leans on the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick decision. The hospital argues that John can't have lost consortium rights— which is lawyer talk for the loss of sex and companionship that spouses commonly sue for in addition to compensation for the lost loved one's future earnings—because Hardwick means gay couples have no constitutional right to sexual privacy. The hospital even dredged up the irrelevant fact that, decades ago, sodomy was illegal in New York.
To sue, John now must first persuade New York courts that he should be treated no differently from a heterosexual spouse. In recent years, New York has made significant strides toward treating gay couples fairly, including in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. John hopes he'll be helped by a groundbreaking California ruling that gave the surviving lesbian partner of Diane Whipple, who was mauled to death by vicious dogs, the right to sue.
But his civil union certificate is at the heart of John's argument that he should be recognized as Conrad's spouse and, thus, allowed to press his claim against the hospital. Since Vermont created civil unions in July 2000, 5,212 couples—4,420 of us from out of state —have entered into that legally binding relationship.
John's promising lawsuit is among the early batch testing states' readiness to recognize the validity of civil unions beyond Vermont's borders. ( Courts declined to give civil unions legal weight in Georgia and Florida, where gay parents tried using them in custody disputes with heterosexual ex-spouses, and in Connecticut, where a dying gay man tried to dissolve a civil union to prevent his ex-partner from inheriting. Meanwhile, three Indiana couples are suing for the right to marry, saying their civil unions put them in legal limbo because they are neither 'single' nor 'married'—the options on Indiana tax forms. )
The aftermath of Conrad Spicehandler's tragic death spotlights the continued vulnerability of gay survivors. Grieving partners ought not to have to become civil-rights pioneers in order to be treated with fairness and respect.
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
