In re Quinlan
Court	New Jersey Supreme Court
Full case name	In the matter of Karen Quinlan, an alleged incompetent
Decided	March 31, 1976
Citation	70 N.J. 10; 355 A.2d 647 (1976)
Court membership
Judges sitting	Chief Justice Hughes, Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman, Clifford and Schreiber and Judge Conford
Case opinions
Majority: Hughes (unanimous)

In re Quinlan (70 N.J. 10, 355 A.2d 647 (NJ 1976)) was a landmark^[1] 1975 court case in the United States in which the parents of a woman who was kept alive by artificial means were allowed to order her removal from artificial ventilation.^{[citation needed]}

Karen Ann Quinlan was 21 years old in 1975. After a night of drinking alcohol and ingesting tranquilizers, Quinlan lost consciousness and ceased breathing for two 15-minute periods. After it was determined that she was in a persistent vegetative state, her father, Joseph Quinlan, wished to remove her from the medical ventilator. Quinlan's primary physician and the hospital both refused.

Quinlan's father retained attorneys Paul W. Armstrong, a Morris County, New Jersey, Legal Aid attorney, and James M. Crowley, an associate at the New York City law firm of Shearman & Sterling with degrees in theology and Church law, and filed suit in the New Jersey Superior Court in Morris County, New Jersey, on September 12, 1975,^[2] to be appointed as Quinlan's legal guardian so that he could act on her behalf. Armstrong would later become involved in the Nancy Cruzan case and later still become a judge.^[3] Crowley is, as of 2017, legal counsel and advisor to several Vatican-related entities. Judge Armstrong is currently a Senior Policy Fellow and Judge in Residence at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

The Court denied his request on November 10, 1975.^[4] Joseph Quinlan appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of New Jersey, which on March 31, 1976, held that he could authorize the cessation of ventilation; and that Saint Clare's Hospital was bound to proceed with this order.

After being removed from the ventilator, Quinlan continued to breathe until her death, in 1985, from pneumonia.^[5]

The autopsy of Quinlan's brain found extensive damage to the bilateral thalamus.^[6]

• Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital: another New Jersey case on end of life care

• Full text of decision Archived 2017-05-17 at the Wayback Machine