Defensive life support

Against a patient’s wishes, pulmonologists hook up a patient to a ventilator to protect themselves from liability:

. . . one of the lung specialists ordered that the patient be sedated and placed back on the ventilator. Hold on a sec! Isn’t that assault? Yes it is. But the specialists felt that from a liability standpoint, they could not be 100% sure that the patient is fully competent since he could not speak and he had a relatively high carbon dioxide blood level. They felt that this uncertainty could be brought up in court and used against them should the case ever go to trial.