Tort Claim Against Hospital for Denial of Visitation for Dying Same-Sex Partner

The Miami Herald reports that a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida will decide whether the  tort case against a Miami hospital for failure to allow visitation to a same-sex parent could proceed to trial.  The surviving woman, Janice Langbehn, is from Washington state and was on a cruise with her partner of seventeen years, and their three adopted children, when the now-deceased woman had a heart attack.  The hospital refused visitation for over eight hours; Langbehn was allowed to see her partner receive last rites.  A copy of the complaint in pdf is here; more information is available on the Lambda website here.

The tort suit brings Florida's "little DOMA" legislation into sharp relief - - - Florida has both a statute and a constitutional amendment defining marriage as limited to one man and one woman. 

RR