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 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.

[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.

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