## Facts

- Thirteen-year-old Jahi McMath went into cardiac arrest after a surgical procedure at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland (Children’s Hospital).
- Two medical professionals determined that McMath’s brain function had irreversibly ceased and pronounced her dead under California’s Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA).
- A death certificate was issued based on that determination.
- McMath’s mother, Latasha Winkfield, petitioned to compel Children’s Hospital to continue medical treatment, asserting McMath was still alive.
- In a probate proceeding, the court appointed a specialist in child neurology to evaluate McMath.
- The court-appointed specialist confirmed McMath’s irreversible brain death, consistent with the earlier physician determinations.
- The probate court issued a final order determining that McMath was dead under the UDDA.
- Winkfield did not pursue a direct challenge to the probate court’s findings or final order.
- Winkfield later initiated multiple civil proceedings on McMath’s behalf that Children’s Hospital characterized as collateral attacks on the death determination and death certificate.
- In those civil matters, Winkfield at times asserted that “changed circumstances” warranted reconsideration of McMath’s medical condition.
- One of the civil actions was a personal-injury case that the Alameda County Superior Court allowed to proceed.

## Issues

1. Whether the probate court’s final UDDA death determination precluded later civil litigation asserting McMath was alive (issue preclusion/collateral estoppel).
2. Whether allowing the later civil actions to proceed would permit an improper collateral attack on the probate court’s final order and the issued death certificate.
3. Whether extraordinary writ relief was available to require the trial court to treat the probate death determination as binding in the pending civil case.

## Decision

- Children’s Hospital petitioned the California Court of Appeal for a writ of mandate seeking to stop civil litigation that would contradict or relitigate the probate court’s death determination.
- The Court of Appeal denied the writ petition.
- Children’s Hospital filed a petition for review in the California Supreme Court.
- The California Supreme Court disposed of the matter by minute order (2016 WL 4495093), denying review and leaving the Court of Appeal’s denial of writ relief in place.

## Legal Principles

- Under California’s UDDA, death includes the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, determined in accordance with accepted medical standards.
- Issue preclusion (collateral estoppel) can bar relitigation of an issue when the issue is identical to one previously decided, actually litigated, necessarily decided, final on the merits, and asserted against a party (or one in privity) to the prior proceeding.
- Final orders in probate proceedings may have preclusive effect in later litigation as to issues necessarily resolved by the probate court, including a legal determination of death.
- A later civil action that, in substance, seeks to negate a final order may be treated as an impermissible collateral attack, depending on the claims asserted and the relief sought.
- Writ relief is discretionary and extraordinary; denial of a writ petition or denial of review does not create a precedential merits opinion but leaves the challenged lower-court ruling undisturbed.

## Conclusion

In this petition-for-review proceeding arising from the Jahi McMath brain-death litigation, Children’s Hospital sought to use issue preclusion to prevent civil suits from contradicting a final probate order declaring McMath dead under the UDDA, but after the Court of Appeal denied writ relief, the California Supreme Court denied review by minute order, leaving the civil action to proceed.


USCF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland v. Superior Court of California, City of Alameda, 2016 WL 4495093 (2016)