LOS ANGELES – A judge Friday issued a temporary ruling allowing visitation with her 4-year-old triplets to a woman so badly brain damaged by medical errors during childbirth that she can no longer walk, talk or eat.

Attorneys for both sides praised the tentative 10-page order issued by Superior Court Judge Frederick C. Shaller, who ruled after a two-week hearing that Abbie Dorn, 34, would be granted visits of three hours a day for five days each summer at the Myrtle Beach, S.C., home where her parents care for her.

Lisa Helfland Meyer, attorney for Dorn’s parents, said the decision set a precedent for “every single parent out there with any sort of disability.”

“This is an astounding victory,” she said at a news conference. “The court held that this parent has the same right as any other parent to have visitation and a relationship with their child.”

Shaller also ordered that the children could have a 30-minute monthly videoconference with their mother, a move Meyer said would establish a “wonderful continuity” between mother and children.

But father Dan Dorn’s attorney Vicki Greene said her side got exactly what it asked for – just five days of visits, all supervised by Dan Dorn, who is raising the children at his Los Angeles home. The maternal grandparents, in a lawsuit that is awaiting a trial date, want four weeks of unsupervised visitation.

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Greene said the ruling confirmed their contention that the beliefs of grandmother Susan Cohen contradicted those of their father and that Cohen had a negative effect on the children.

“The judge recognized the father’s right to parent his children without undue influence from the grandparents,” said Greene, who expressed hope that the two sides could accept the ruling’s temporary provisions and avoid trial.

Cohen said on a conference call from her home that she’d told her daughter of the decision and that she was happy.

“She gave me a long, long blink and a huge smile,” Cohen said.

Medical and legal evidence shows that Abbie Dorn would not have been capable of such a response, Greene said.

The judge called it “more likely that not” that Dorn “does not have any cognitive function, that her eye blinking and smiling and movements are involuntary.” He later added, explaining the short visits, that though a bond has been established, “there is no purpose to exposing the children to a prolonged period with their comatose mother.”

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Shaller did praise the “impressive” care given by Susan Cohen, calling her a “tireless, fully devoted and successful advocate for her daughter.”

But the ruling directly forbids her from telling the children anything about what their mother thinks, saying anything about her prognosis, or suggesting that she may recover.

Greene argued during a hearing earlier this week that Abbie Dorn was so badly injured giving birth that she is no longer capable of being a parent, and that Cohen was an “unfit grandmother” who would fill them with unrealistic expectations that their mother might recover.

But attorneys for Abbie Dorn’s family said that although Dorn may be incapable of taking part in a traditional mother-child relationship, that doesn’t mean no relationship is possible.

“Even though Abbie can’t interact with the kids, the kids can interact with Abbie,” Meyer said during the news conference.

Abbie Dorn had given birth without incident to a son and a daughter on June 20, 2006, but as a doctor was delivering a second son, he accidentally nicked her uterus. Before doctors could stop the bleeding, her heart had stopped, a defibrillator malfunctioned and her brain was deprived of oxygen.

A year later Dan Dorn divorced her, believing she would never recover.


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