Robert Baxter, 75, suffering from leukemia, was sleeping Friday, when his lawyer called him to let him know that a Montana court had ruled on his Right-to-Die lawsuit. But, he never woke up and died without knowing that the court had affirmed his right to end his life with the help of doctors.

Compassion & Choices, a party in the suit, in its statement issued today states, Baxter's lawsuit was about allowing physicians to write prescriptions for mentally competent, terminally ill patients who could not endure their suffering any longer.

According to Associated Press, Judge Dorothy McCarter in a ruling late Friday, wrote 'the Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity' afford such patients the right to 'die with dignity'. The judge also said such patients should be allowed to hasten death by self-administering medication, if they felt their suffering was unbearable.

Montana is the third US state to allow doctor assisted suicides by prescribing medications to dying patients, who wish to hasten their deaths, the other being Washington, whose voters approved the practice in November elections last year, and Oregon, one of the states to have a longstanding law on its books.

Though, Baxter was unable to benefit from the court's ruling, his family hope other patients will be able to take advantage of it.