Poohbah is mistaken. Plaintiffs submitted new evidence showing a possiblity of success in a hearing. Whittemore penalized them for not arguing it.
Since Terri's law only created jurisdiction to review alleged deprivation of Federal constitutional rights, for a judge to hear and decide other issues would be judicial activism.
It was not the charge of the Federal Court to decide whether Terri could be rehabilitated. It was their charge to determine whether the State of Florida, in deciding that she was PVS, violated her Federal constitutional rights. It is a process issue, whether you like that or not.
Having only heard that Gibbs blew his chance from several sources, I will not argue the fine points of what he did wrong, cause I lack enough info to know how he did it...only to say that some capable lawyer people here on FP were aghast at how he handled it.