Judge Orders Girl Be Kept on Ventilator OAKLAND, Calif. - A 13-year-old girl who was declared brain-dead after complications from a tonsillectomy should be kept on life support for the time being, a judge has ruled. The family of the girl, Jahi McMath, says doctors at Children's Hospital Oakland wanted to disconnect life support after she was declared brain-dead on Dec. 12. A ruling on Friday by Judge Evelio Grillo of Superior Court came as both sides in the case agreed to get together and choose a neurologist to further examine Jahi and determine her condition. The judge scheduled a hearing on Monday to appoint a physician. After Jahi underwent what the family called a routine tonsillectomy to help with her sleep apnea and was moved to a recovery room, her mother, Nailah Winkfield, began to fear that something was going wrong. Jahi was sitting up in bed, her hospital gown bloody, and was holding a cup full of blood, she said. Is this normal? Ms. Winkfield repeatedly asked nurses. With her family and hospital staff members trying to help and comfort her, Jahi bled profusely for the next few hours and then went into cardiac arrest, her mother said. Despite the family's description of the operation as routine, the hospital said in a memorandum presented to the court on Friday that the procedure was "complicated." "Ms. McMath is dead and cannot be brought back to life," the hospital said in the memo. "Children's is under no legal obligation to provide medical or other intervention for a deceased person," it added. The family said hospital officials told them in a meeting on Thursday that they wanted to take Jahi off life support quickly. The family filed a request on Friday for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the hospital from taking her off life support or any of her other treatments. At the hearing later, the hospital's lawyer, Doug Straus, said two doctors unaffiliated with the hospital had examined Jahi and concluded that she was brain-dead. But he said, "We're happy to cooperate with the judge's suggestion that an independent expert be provided to confirm yet again that brain death is the outcome that has occurred here." The family's lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said the family wanted tests of their own because they did not believe that the hospital's physicians were sufficiently independent. "There is mistrust, and there is a conflict of interest," he said.