The Widow Lewis At It Again

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    Just give it up lady. Be happy you got a huge insurance payoff.
Other
people who loose their loved ones aren't so lucky, and I believe Jackie
MacMullan's sources on Lewis and Cocaine.

3d Reggie Lewis lawsuit sought
Appeals Court asked to allow another trial
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff, 9/12/2003

Ten years after Celtics star Reggie Lewis collapsed and died of a heart
ailment, his widow renewed her case yesterday against the cardiologist
whose negligence, she argues, caused her husband's death.


 A lawyer for Donna Harris-Lewis argued to a panel of state Appeals
Court judges that she should get a third chance at convincing a jury
that Dr. Gilbert H. Mudge Jr. committed medical malpractice in treating
her husband. The lawyer, Pamela Harris-Daley, argued that jurors in the
second trial, who ruled in favor of Mudge, were prejudiced by testimony
about Lewis's alleged cocaine use and about insurance money Harris-Lewis
received after her husband died.

Lewis was shooting baskets in a Brandeis University gym on July 27,
1993, when he collapsed and died. Harris-Lewis sued, arguing that Mudge
had failed to diagnose a lethal heart condition.

The first jury to hear Harris-Lewis's case deadlocked in 1999, and the
judge declared a mistrial. In the second case the following year, a jury
decided 13-3 that Mudge was not to blame for Lewis's death.

Yesterday, Harris-Daley told the justices that her client should get a
chance at a trial without the "incredibly prejudicial evidence."
Although the trial judge told jurors that they could not consider
testimony about Lewis's alleged drug use as evidence, Harris-Daley
argued that the instruction was insufficient. "It's too much to forget,"
she said.

Harris-Daley argued that the judge should have granted a mistrial. But
Appeals Court Justice William I. Cowin asked whether she had grounds for
an appeal on that issue when Harris-Lewis's trial lawyer, Neil Rossman,
didn't request a mistrial at the time.

Harris-Daley responded that there are other grounds for ordering a new
trial and that her client should not be denied an appeal because of the
actions of her trial lawyer.

But Mudge's lawyer, William J. Dailey Jr., argued yesterday that the
case should be put to rest. A lower court judge who allowed
Harris-Lewis's appeal to go forward did not have the authority to make
such an order, Dailey argued.

He also argued that the trial evidence, without the testimony the jurors
were instructed to ignore, supported the jurors' decision. And, Dailey
pointed out, Rossman acknowledged after the verdict that the trial had
been fair.

During the trial, Mudge's lawyers argued that Lewis had disobeyed his
doctor's recommendations by failing to take medication and by exercising
strenuously. Mudge said he could not accurately diagnose Lewis's
condition because the basketball player did not admit that he used
cocaine until two weeks before his death.

No one disputes the complexities of the case, which has a 10,000-page
appendix. "It is clear that this case is probably one of the most
complicated, expensive, and time-consuming litigations this state has
ever seen," Harris-Daley told the justices.

The appeal has been working its way through the legal system since 2000.
The trial judge first dismissed Harris-Lewis's appeal of the jury
verdict in favor of Mudge after she missed a filing deadline. But after
Harris-Lewis, represented by a new team of lawyers, asked that the case
be reopened, Superior Court Judge Thayer Fremont-Smith agreed.

But the judge wrote in his decision that he could find "no legal merit"
in Harris-Lewis's grounds for appeal.

Health concerns about Lewis, a National Basketball Association all-star,
began after he fainted in Boston Garden during a playoff game in April
1993. The following day, he checked into New England Baptist Hospital,
where he underwent tests and was examined by a team of doctors. They
concluded that Lewis suffered from a serious heart ailment that
threatened his basketball career.

However, the Celtics player checked himself out of the hospital against
doctors' orders and transferred to Brigham and Women's Hospital, where
he was treated by Mudge. The new doctor concluded that Lewis had only a
benign fainting disorder and could continue his basketball career.

While playing basketball at Brandeis 11 weeks later, Lewis collapsed and
died. An autopsy found no evidence of drugs in his system, and his death
certificate listed adenovirus, a relatively minor infection, as the
cause of scarring in his heart.

Harris-Lewis, who was pregnant and had a 1-year-old son when Lewis died,
attended the arguments yesterday but declined to speak about the case.

But her lawyer said Harris-Lewis was pressing forward to clear her
husband's name. "We've been very eager for this day," Harris-Daley said.

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@xxxxxxxxxx

) Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.