Fourteen-year-old Michael Todd is brain dead, University of Kansas Hospital doctors say, and should be taken off life support. His family disagrees and says doctors just want to harvest the boy’s organs.

Today, the two sides may take their dispute to court.

“We want the child to be declared dead to confirm our diagnosis,” said Dennis McCulloch, a spokesman for the Kansas City, Kan., hospital. “We’re asking the judge to declare that the declaration of death is the official status of the victim.”

Michael’s family received a temporary restraining order Friday in Wyandotte County, after the hospital’s staff declared Michael brain dead, which means legally dead under Kansas law. But family members say he’s been responding to their touch and has tried to open one eye.

The parties had planned to meet Tuesday morning to schedule a hearing on whether the restraining order should be made permanent. But the judge they were going to see called in sick, McCulloch said.

They plan to try again this morning.

Under state law, someone who has sustained “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem,” is dead.

Michael was shot May 9 at a Blue Springs, Mo., apartment in what a witness told police could have been an accidental shooting. Hospital doctors, including a pediatric neurologist, an intensive care specialist and a neurosurgeon, determined the next day that the boy is brain dead.

But the boy’s mother, Cecelia B. Cole, says her son has responded to touch, shed tears, tried to open his right eye and tried to grip the hands of those who are holding his.

Cole also contends that doctors didn’t let painkilling medication wear off before testing her son’s brain function.

Additionally, Michael’s family argues that the hospital wants to remove the boy from life support because it wants to use his organs for a donor program. But the hospital says families are required to authorize any organ donations.

McCulloch said the hospital might not be able to comply with the temporary restraining order even if Michael remains on life support.

“Brain death means the signals are not being sent to the tissues of the body from the brain,” he said. “That means that deterioration will ultimately occur. Even with the latest technology in artificial respiration, it cannot stop the breakdown of the body once brain death has occurred.”

Asked about the boy’s status as of Tuesday afternoon, McCulloch said, “He’s brain-dead in the pediatric intensive care unit.”