Wrongful Death Attorneys

The doctor to professional wrestlers. The doctor charged by the federal government with overprescribing drugs.

The name clicked with Tyrone Police Det. Dean Johnson as he heard and read the news about the grisly deaths in June of professional wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and young son in neighboring Peachtree City, another suburb about 45 minutes south of Atlanta.

When it did, Johnson flashed back to a 911 call from 16 months earlier, one that rang in to the Tyrone Police Department late in the morning on Feb. 16, 2006.

In the ring, Chris Benoit earned in excess of $1 million a year. Here, he’s handlingTriple H.
That call led Johnson to a house trailer in town, where he found Michael Durham, a former pro wrestler known in the ring as Johnny Grunge, lying on his side and clogging the narrow hallway. Durham, 349 pounds globbed onto a 6-foot frame, was partially clothed in dark velour pants with an elastic waistband and a white sock on his left foot. His arms and shoulders were covered with tattoos.

He was 40 years old, and he was dead.

The autopsy report attributed Durham’s death to heart disease and obesity, and cited a significant condition of “acute toxicity of carisoprodol and hydrocodone” — a potent mix of muscle relaxants and narcotic painkillers.

More : sports.espn.go.com

Continuing their summation today, the defense in the O. J. Simpson wrongful-death suit finally confronted one of the few pieces of evidence to arise in the four-month-long civil case but not in the earlier criminal case: 30 separate photographs of Mr. Simpson wearing a type of shoe he earlier had said he never owned.

With the case scheduled to go to the jury on Monday, Dan Leonard, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, suggested the pictures could have been faked by photographers out for a quick dollar. No court session is scheduled on Friday, as Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki has a prior engagement.

As the Simpson defense team neared the end of its closing argument, Mr. Leonard told the jury, ”That’s what it’s all about: money, evidence for sale.”

Early in the civil trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs, relatives of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, produced a single picture of Mr. Simpson wearing a pair of shoes that they argued had the same type sole as a shoe that left an imprint in blood at the scene where Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman were slain.

Asked whether he had ever owned such a pair of shoes, Mr. Simpson said he had not and called the photograph a fake.

The shoe issue then slipped somewhat into the background of the trial, only to be resurrected when the plaintiffs produced 30 separate photographs of Mr. Simpson wearing such shoes.

The pictures were obtained from two photographers who said they had found them in their files and had decided to make them public, including selling them to news outlets.

Confronted with copies of the pictures and asked again whether he had ever owned such shoes, Mr. Simpson said he did not think he had.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers made much of the shoes in their closing arguments, contending that Mr. Simpson’s lawyer had never really addressed the issue and suggesting that it was too touchy for the defense team to dispute. But late this afternoon, Mr. Leonard undertook to grapple with the issue.

He noted that after the first photo had been shown and Mr. Simpson insisted he had never owned such shoes, no store clerk stepped forward to claim selling shoes like them to Mr. Simpson.

”Where is that person that sold those shoes?” Mr. Leonard asked. ”Why didn’t he come forth? Why is that?”

More : query.nytimes.com

The report released today by the Texas Rangers will not definitively answer any of the ”dark questions” about the Branch Davidian siege that John C. Danforth has promised to answer in his independent investigation. But it makes plain the awkward role facing the Rangers as the different Branch Davidian investigations begin to gather steam.

Initiated three months ago on orders from James B. Francis Jr., the chairman of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Rangers’ report was narrowly focused by design. Last month, a spokesman for the Rangers, Mike Cox, pointedly said the agency was not investigating the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Justice Department. Instead, Mr. Cox said, the inquiry focused on crucial pieces of evidence believed to be kept inside state storage rooms in Austin and Waco.

But nonetheless, the persistent probing of the Rangers and the outspoken comments by Mr. Francis have played significant roles in applying the pressure that has resulted in the new Washington investigations into the 1993 events near Waco. Much of what was included in today’s inch-thick Ranger’s report was not new: the uncovering of a potentially flammable device had been disclosed last month; the significance of rifle shells found inside a house near the compound that had been used by the F.B.I. Hostage Rescue Team has long been in dispute.

”It’s a beginning rather than an end,” said Michael Caddell, the lawyer representing families of deceased Branch Davidian members in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Government. ”It is the first time that any government officials have looked seriously at these issues. I think it raises more questions than it answers.”

In Texas, where the Rangers, the state’s top law-enforcement agency, enjoy a nearly revered status as throwbacks to the state’s cowboy origins, the release of the report had been widely anticipated as the renewed investigations into the siege dominated local headlines and newscasts.

In fact, The Austin American-Statesman obtained a copy on Sunday, a day before the Rangers planned to release it, after filing a lawsuit on Friday to force its immediate release.

But the inquiry’s narrow focus reinforces the uncomfortable reality that the Rangers are potentially uncovering evidence that could ultimately be used against the Federal Government in the wrongful death lawsuit.

The Rangers got into the case in 1993 at the behest of Federal prosecutors in Texas, who asked them to take charge of the crime scene after the fire and collect evidence from the compound. The evidence was then used by Federal prosecutors in the 1994 criminal cases against several Branch Davidian members who were convicted of killing four agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. For the last six years, an estimated 24,000 pounds of the evidence has remained in storage rooms in Austin and Waco.

Earlier this summer, the Rangers asked the Federal judge in the wrongful death lawsuit to take control of all the evidence, a motion the judge granted. Then, Mr. Francis, a political appointee of Gov. George W. Bush, ordered an investigation into the evidence itself after questions were raised by an independent filmmaker, Michael McNulty, who had toured the storage rooms.

Source : query.nytimes.com

A prominent Manhattan negligence lawyer was acquitted yesterday of charges that he sought to bribe potential trial witnesses in a $7 million wrongful-death suit against the City of New York.

A prominent Manhattan negligence lawyer was acquitted yesterday of charges that he sought to bribe potential trial witnesses in a $7 million wrongful-death suit against the City of New York.

A 12-member jury in State Supreme Court in Manhattan deliberated for about three hours before exonerating the lawyer, Theodore H. Friedman, of all charges brought against him in 1987 by the District Attorney’s office.

Mr. Friedman had been accused of conspiring with a private investigator to bribe the witnesses to give false testimony. He had been charged with criminal solicitation of perjury, conspiracy, attempted grand larceny and attorney misconduct.

”I feel fine and dandy,” Mr. Friedman said after the verdict. ”I’m very happy with the results.”

Ethel Wachs, one of the jurors, said that the general feeling of the jurors was that he had been wrongfully indicted.

More : query.nytimes.com

Behind closed doors, with a scattering of the curious and an army of reporters and photographers hanging outside the courthouse, the jury in O. J. Simpson’s second trial put in its first full day of deliberations today.

At one point the panel of seven women and five men sent out for a magnifying glass used in closely studying photographs, and for a photograph of a test tube like the one used to store a sample of Mr. Simpson’s blood. Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki gave the jurors the magnifying glass but refused to give them the picture, saying they did not need it.

Throughout the trial, many photographs were entered as evidence, including those of the crime scene, of spattered blood in Mr. Simpson’s home, of his vehicles and of Mr. Simpson, apparently wearing shoes like the ones that left bloody footprints at the slaying scene.

It was not clear from the jury’s requests where the jury was headed or how long it might take to get there.

The panel — which includes a postal worker, a bank employee, a stage manager, an unemployed cement finisher and several homemakers — was handed the wrongful-death civil suit late on Tuesday. It remained closeted for more than six hours today as it tried to determine whether Mr. Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson, his former wife, and Ronald L. Goldman, her friend, and, if he did, how much he should pay the surviving families, the plaintiffs.

The families did not ask for a specific amount in their court papers.

In Mr. Simpson’s criminal trial for murder, the jury, after little more than three hours of deliberation in October 1995, found the former football star and entertainment personality not guilty of charges that he fatally slashed Mrs. Simpson and Mr. Goldman outside her condominium on the night of June 12, 1994.

The nation was transfixed by that trial, with its undertones of spousal abuse, unrequited love, police racism and high living in the fast lane. And to isolate it from the intense national focus, the criminal jury was sequestered throughout the nine-months trial. Though national interest in the case remains high, it has somewhat abated, and the civil judge has not sequestered this jury throughout the four-month second trial.

But the civil case is significantly different from the criminal one because it involves only money claims, and not the possibility of a prison sentence.

Much of the legal ground covered in the first trial also was covered in the second, including accusations by the plaintiffs that Mr. Simpson was a cold-blooded, lying murderer and counter-accusations by the defense that he was framed by corrupt police investigators. But the jury in the second case is applying a different, lesser standard of culpability as it determines Mr. Simpson’s fate.

Source : query.nytimes.com

On Jan. 7, 1989, Dr. Kathryn Hinnant, a pathologist from South Carolina, was in an office in Bellevue Hospital Center, preparing a lecture to medical students, when she was raped and murdered. She was 33 years old and five months pregnant.

The next day, the police arrested Steven Smith, a 23-year-old homeless man with a history of arrests and psychiatric problems who had been living in the hospital, sneaking around dressed as a medical worker. A jury rejected an insanity defense, and he is now serving a 50-year-to-life sentence.

Yesterday, another jury, in the civil part of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, began hearing arguments in a wrongful death suit filed by Dr. Hinnant’s husband and family seeking $25 million in damages from the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation. The suit contends that Dr. Hinnant died because Bellevue was negligent for releasing Mr. Smith in late December after treating him and that the hospital failed to provide adequate security to keep him from re-entering its buildings and wandering about at will.

The murder of Dr. Hinnant raised oft-heard concerns about the follow-up treatment of the mentally ill and the adequacy of security at Bellevue and other psychiatric institutions. And yesterday, seven years since the killing, those old questions loomed large once again.

“This tragedy was avoidable,” the family lawyer, Thomas A. Moore, said in his opening statement. “It never should have happened, and it never would have happened if not for not one, not two, but a whole procession of errors by the Health and Hospitals Corporation of New York.”

A little later, Mr. Moore, a lawyer known for his oratory, thundered, “Steven Smith was running amok in Bellevue Hospital!”

By contrast, Jeff Pollack, a low-key assistant corporation counsel representing the city, asked the jury to keep an open mind and not be swayed by the emotion of a “sad and terrible tragedy.”

Dr. Hinnant’s husband, Eric Johnson, a sales manager for a musical instrument company, and her mother, Jane Hinnant, sat with grim expressions in the first row.

Mr. Smith yesterday was in the mental health unit of the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, 68 miles north of Albany, according to James B. Flateau, a spokesman for the State Department of Correctional Services. The unit is a short-term care center for inmates who have episodic mental health problems.

Mr. Moore told the jury that on Dec. 17, 1988, Mr. Smith went to the Bellevue emergency room and told doctors that he had tried to kill himself by swallowing rat poison. He was treated for the overdose, his psychological state was monitored and he was released on Dec. 27, escorted from the hospital by two security guards, Mr. Moore said. The lawyer contended that based on his psychiatric background and “significantly violent criminal history,” Mr. Smith should not have been released.

More : query.nytimes.com

New York City has agreed to pay $75,000 to settle a $145 million wrongful-death suit filed by the mother of 17-year-old Edmund E. Perry, the prep school graduate who was shot to death by an undercover police officer in Harlem nearly four years ago.

New York City has agreed to pay $75,000 to settle a $145 million wrongful-death suit filed by the mother of 17-year-old Edmund E. Perry, the prep school graduate who was shot to death by an undercover police officer in Harlem nearly four years ago.

Doron Gopstein, the city’s First Assistant Corporation Counsel, and Frederick Brewington, a lawyer for the Perry family, acknowledged the settlement but refused to discuss details, saying both sides had agreed not to do so. Other lawyers said it was reached last October and had not been disclosed previously because the court record was sealed.

The suit, brought by Veronica Perry in Federal Court in Manhattan in 1987, charged the city, the Police Department and Officer Lee Van Houten, who fired the fatal shots, with civil rights violations and responsibility for the wrongful death of her son on June 12, 1985.

But the police said Mr. Perry, who had graduated with honors 11 days earlier from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and was to attend Stanford University that fall, was shot when he and his brother, Jonah, 19, a Cornell University sophomore, tried to mug Officer Van Houten at 113th Street and Morningside Drive. Racial Motivation Asserted

Officer Van Houten, on plainclothes duty, said he opened fire after the two youths jumped him from behind, knocked him down and pummeled him in an apparent robbery attempt.

But the family said the youth had no reason to commit such a crime and contended that the shooting was unjustified and racially motivated. The Perry family is black and the officer is white.

A grand jury later cleared the 24-year-old officer of wrongdoing, saying he had acted in self-defense. But in January 1986, Jonah Perry was acquitted of charges that he had assaulted and attempted to rob the officer, a verdict that left many questions in the case unresolved.

In its suit, the family charged that Officer Van Houten had been improperly trained and supervised and that the city had ”permitted a pattern of illegal beatings and shootings of minority people.”

The case renewed deep-seated frustrations and anger among blacks over what many called brutal treatment by law-enforcement authorities, and it drew nationwide attention because the Perry brothers had no criminal record, had attended elite college preparatory schools and seemed destined for bright futures.

More : query.nytimes.com

When 12 jurors returned their decision in a wrongful death trial in Memphis on Wednesday afternoon, they became the first jury to hold someone responsible for playing a role in the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

But with key players dead, with confessions recanted and altered, and with a vast conspiracy alleged but not proved, Wednesday’s verdict in the civil trial of Loyd Jowers seems unlikely, ultimately, to untangle the knot of fact and theory surrounding one of the century’s most traumatic events.

The jury in Memphis declared Mr. Jowers liable in Dr. King’s death for having purportedly hired a now-dead Memphis police officer, as part of a vast conspiracy, to kill Dr. King. It also found that unnamed others, including government agencies, had been involved, in effect accepting the plaintiffs’ contention that James Earl Ray was innocent, despite his guilty plea.
The finding came after a four-week trial that was notable for the passivity of the defense, the prevalence of second-hand and third-hand accounts and the propensity of the judge and jurors to apparently nod off during testimony. At one point, Judge James E. Swearengen of Shelby County Circuit Court allowed unsworn testimony from a 1993 mock television trial of Mr. Ray to be introduced as evidence.

Despite the unusual nature of the Memphis trial, Dr. King’s widow and children exulted today in the verdict, saying it vindicated their nearly three-year effort to revive the investigation into his killing.

In February 1997, the family began pushing for a new trial for Mr. Ray, the career criminal who pleaded guilty in 1969 to killing Dr. King and received a 99-year sentence. He quickly recanted, saying he had been duped by a shadowy figure named Raul into playing patsy for the real killer.

While Mr. Ray never faced a jury, his conviction was repeatedly upheld by appellate courts, and a Congressional committee concluded in 1978 that he had been the killer, although it found that he may have had help.

The King family was convinced by Mr. Ray’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, that the assassination had been planned and executed by a government conspiracy reaching from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House. The federal government, Mr. Pepper maintains, feared Dr. King’s growing denunciations of the Vietnam War and his threats to clog Washington with massive protests by the poor.

More : query.nytimes.com

A wrongful death case under New York law is treated differently from a similar case under Connecticut law and from the way cases are treated in other states.

A wrongful death case under New York law is treated differently from a similar case under Connecticut law and from the way cases are treated in other states.

Under New York law, the family members of a decedent are compensated for their losses, principally their pecuniary or monetary losses. Under Connecticut law, however, the jury is instructed to award damages first in terms of the decedent’s own loss of earning capacity, his loss of enjoyment of life and then for the decedent’s own pain and suffering prior to death. Each loss in Connecticut is evaluated in terms of the loss to the decedent, and the award is paid to the decedent’s estate.

In his article, Randall Craft, an attorney I respect, assumes that the New York approach to compensation is the correct approach and that economic losses are the only ones that should be compensated for in litigation. I disagree. I believe that the Connecticut approach - which is shared by a half-dozen states - makes more sense.

Under the laws of some other states the mental anguish or the grief of the survivors - a wife, children or parents - is also compensated. No one can argue that the grief and mental anguish exist. Why should it be argued that compensation for that in monetary terms is wrong? Since money is the accepted medium of exchange, it is also the only way to evaluate losses. By paying damages in money, the recipient is allowed to translate the award into whatever is compensatory or satisfying.

Critics like Mr. Craft, who argue against monetary compensation, are also arguing for putting limitations on the amount of damages. That is what they mean when they say that monetary compensation should be awarded only for what can reasonably be compensated for by money. The argument for limiting monetary payments to the amount of economic damages is the argument of the insurance companies, which would like to pay less money.

Despite what the critics say, money can make family members who have suffered a grievous loss feel better. The recognition by the law that they have suffered such a grievous loss at the hands of a negligent defendant gives rise to an expectation of damages. The recovery of these damages does fulfill a psychological need. And while it is true that revenge and punishment are not parts of compensatory damages, the fact is that aggrieved family members do derive satisfaction that the negligent defendant has been caused to pay for the loss.

While it may be true that the only thing that can be replaced is the financial loss, the financial loss is not the only damage that warrants compensation. The grief of parents for the death of a child, for example, which is recoverable under the law of nine states, is entirely deserving of compensation.

More : query.nytimes.com

Nearly four years ago, a black teenager was crushed beneath a dump truck as she crossed a seven-lane highway to get to her job at a mall. The shopping center had barred stops by her bus, which mainly served poor minority neighborhoods.

Now the death of Cynthia N. Wiggins, 17, is the focus of a wrongful death trial. Her family, which hired the lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., is seeking $150 million in damages. Mr. Cochran argued last week before a jury that includes no blacks that racism contributed to her death.

”Her fate was sealed when she was a little 10-year-old fifth grader,” Mr. Cochran told the jury during opening remarks on Monday. ”Her destiny is being decided by powerful businessmen who run a mall.”

The trial is expected to last several weeks. Shortly after the six-member jury was seated, Mr. Cochran was overruled when he objected that the selection process had been flawed. Out of 95 people chosen at random from Erie County for the jury pool, five — or 5.2 percent — were black, compared with 12.3 percent of the county’s population. The jurors are three white women, two white men and a man of Indian descent.

The family is suing the mall’s owner, Pyramid Companies of Syracuse, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which operates the Metro Bus line, the driver of the truck and the company that owned it.

The story of Ms. Wiggins’s death has slowly emerged in the courtroom of Justice Jerome C. Gorski of State Supreme Court. On a dreary December morning, Ms. Wiggins said goodbye to her 4-month-old son, Taquilo Castellanos, and her grandmother at their home on Buffalo’s east side, and caught the Route 6 Metro Bus to her job at the food court in the Walden Galleria in suburban Cheektowaga. She got out at Walden Avenue and skirted between the bus and banks of snow. Instead of walking up to the intersection, which has no crosswalks or pedestrian signal, she threaded her way through stopped traffic and had made it across six of the highway’s seven lanes when the light changed.

Witnesses say a dump truck knocked the teenager to the pavement. The rear wheels rolled over her. The driver, John P. Bunch, said he never saw Ms. Wiggins. She died two weeks later, never regaining consciousness.

Mall officials have acknowledged they turned down the transit authority’s repeated requests to allow the Route 6 bus onto their property, but say they did so to keep out rowdy juveniles, who had been causing problems at a nearby mall and a skating rink. After Ms. Wiggins’s death, the mall opened up its property to public buses, under the threat of a boycott by the Buffalo teachers union and local civil rights groups.

More : query.nytimes.com

William Campbell, the brother of a man killed in 1986 during a fight over a parking space in a Dobbs Ferry lot, has expanded his Federal civil rights lawsuit to charge that county and municipal officials should have revoked a permit for the gun used to kill Charles Campbell before it was used as a murder weapon.

The suit, which was initially filed in 1996 in Federal District Court in Manhattan, holds responsible the Village of Dobbs Ferry and Westchester County, along with three criminal defendants in the case, for a violation of civil rights, because Charles Campbell was black.

But in December, the complaint was amended to say that county prosecutors should be liable for the slaying because they knew that the permit holder, the delicatessen owner, Richard B. DiGuglielmo, had a history of violence.

Randolph Scott-McLaughlin, a lawyer for the Campbell family, said records unsealed during the murder trial showed that in 1986, a similar fight occurred outside Mr. DiGuglielmo’s store, and the delicatessen owner was charged with assault. The case was later dropped and the records were sealed.

Ten years later, on Oct. 3, Charles Campbell parked in the parking lot outside the delicatessen and became involved in a fight with Mr. DiGuglielmo and his son, an off-duty New York City Police Officer, Richard D. DiGuglielmo, who used one of his father’s six licensed handguns in the fatal shooting. Robert Errico, a relative of the DiGuglielmos, who was also present during the fight, was also named in the suit.

”But for that gun being present on the premises, this incident would have been a simple fight and Mr. Campbell would have been alive today,” said Mr. Scott-McLaughlin, a vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights organization in Manhattan, and a professor of law at Pace University in White Plains. ”It was a crime waiting to happen.”

Richard DiGuglielmo was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving a prison term of 20 years to life at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County, N.Y. The elder Mr. DiGuglielmo’s pistol permit was revoked after the killing. Neither he nor Mr. Errico were convicted of the second-degree assault charges that were filed against them.

Source : query.nytimes.co

Gathered deep inside the nation’s largest military base, a group of government officials, special investigators and private lawyers watched an unusual simulation today that was intended to help determine whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been truthful about its role in the fatal Branch Davidian standoff in 1993.

The exercise, which was ordered by a federal judge and carried out at Fort Hood, was designed to examine unproven allegations that F.B.I. agents fired into the Branch Davidian’s Mount Carmel compound before it burned to the ground on April 19, 1993. About 80 men, women and children died that day, including the leader of the religious sect, David Koresh.

Initially, the special infrared videos taken of today’s simulation were supposed to have been released to the public. But this morning United States District Judge Walter S. Smith, presiding over a wrongful death lawsuit brought against the government by survivors and descendants of the Branch Davidians, sealed the videos, precluding any public viewing. The simulation was supervised by former Senator John C. Danforth, who was appointed by United States Attorney General Janet Reno to lead an investigation into the F.B.I.’s role in the standoff.

Early this evening, F.B.I. officials said that agency experts had conducted a preliminary review of the videos, and said they vindicated their position that agents had never fired on April 19. Michael Caddell, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs in the wrongful death lawsuit, was scheduled to hold a news conference on Monday morning in Houston after his experts had concluded reviewing the videos.

The lack of public access has created the possibility that both sides in the case would offer conflicting opinions without any public review of the videos. An independent analysis of the videos by the British company that conducted today’s simulation could be turned over to the court within 30 days and then possibly released to the public.

At a news conference after the simulation, Mr. Caddell and one of the lead lawyers for the government relayed Judge Smith’s action to reporters, saying they had not anticipated the judge’s action. ”That was the court’s decision,” said United States Attorney Mike Bradford, one of the main lawyers for the government in the civil case. ”I don’t think either side really solicited it.”

For years, controversy has surrounded aerial infrared videos taken by the F.B.I. on the day of the fire that showed unexplained ”flashes.” Mr. Caddell and other government critics have contended that the flashes were from F.B.I. agents firing into the compound. He has argued that the gunfire trapped Davidians inside when the fire broke out. Government officials have presented evidence that Mr. Koresh ordered that the fires be started as part of a suicide pact.

More : query.nytimes.com

O. J. Simpson’s lawyer injected new mystery into Mr. Simpson’s civil trial today, suggesting that one of the leather gloves in evidence might not be the one found by police officers at the killing scene.

”I’m not sure this is the same glove,” Dennis Fung, a criminalist said, turning the left-handed glove over and over.

Mr. Fung was asked to compare the glove with the one in a photograph taken by the police near the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman.

Mr. Fung wrinkled his brow and said he could not figure out why the glove in his hand did not have a hole in it, like the glove in the photograph appeared to have.

Both sides are barred by the judge from discussing the case, but sources for the plaintiffs said they believe that what appears to be a hole in the glove in the photograph is actually a piece of debris or a flaw in the photo.

The glove drama unfolded shortly after the judge in the wrongful death trial ruled that Brian (Kato) Kaelin, a former house guest of both the Simpsons could not be questioned about Ms. Simpson’s purported drug use.

The ruling prevented the defense — at least temporarily — from exploring a subject once touted as crucial to Mr. Simpson’s case: allegations that his former wife had been living dangerously in the last few months of her life and could have been exposed to unsavory characters who may have killed her and Mr. Goldman.

Mr. Simpson was acquitted of murder in the slayings in 1995. The victims’ families are suing him for money in the wrongful death trial.

Testifying for the plaintiffs in November, Mr. Fung said he carried the bloody right-handed glove found at Mr. Simpson’s home to the crime scene so it could be compared with the left-handed glove found in the bushes near Mr. Goldman’s body.

Mr. Fung said he remembered a stone or piece of debris embedded in the left glove. He also mentioned an area of damage over the knuckle of the fourth finger.

”Where is the damaged area of the fourth finger of that glove?” Mr. Baker asked. ”Do you see any damage area at all on that glove?”

Mr. Fung said, ”I do not,” as he examined the glove in evidence.

Mr. Baker offered multiple implications, all suggesting that the gloves were tampered with.

Mr. Baker’s focus on the alleged glove switch appeared to catch the plaintiffs by surprise, and they did only minimal cross-examination of Mr. Fung.

More : query.nytimes.com

O. J. Simpson walked away from the courtroom last week a free man, but his legal problems are hardly over as he faces several costly civil suits that legal experts say could take years to resolve.

Mr. Simpson cannot be tried again in the killings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, because of the rules against double jeopardy in criminal cases. But he must deal with three wrongful-death suits in civil court, where he faces a lower standard of proof and may be compelled to testify. If he loses, jury awards in such suits could reach millions of dollars and bankrupt Mr. Simpson, legal experts said.

He also could face legal battles over the custody of his two children with Mrs. Simpson, who are now in the custody of her parents, and over his efforts to register his name and initials as a trademark.

In court papers today in Superior Court in Santa Monica, Mr. Simpson contended that because of his acquittal, he should not have to pay punitive damages in the wrongful-death lawsuit by relatives of Mr. Goldman.

“Since Mr. Simpson has not been convicted, but rather acquitted, of any crime arising out of Mr. Goldman’s death, the plaintiff may not seek recovery of punitive damages,” said the motion filed by Mr. Simpson’s civil lawyer, Robert Baker, The Associated Press reported.

But legal experts said that the acquittal did not free him of liability in a civil suit and that Mr. Simpson could have a difficult time.

Gerald Chaleff, a lawyer in Santa Monica, said: “In a civil case, you just have to tip the scales to your side or convince the jury that your case is 50.1 percent correct, as opposed to 49.1 percent for the other side. In a criminal case, you must prove 99 percent certainty.”

Because of the lawsuits, Mr. Chaleff said he understood Mr. Simpson’s sudden decision to back out of an interview with NBC News that was scheduled for today. “I was surprised he agreed to do it in the first place,” Mr. Chaleff said. “I’m sure his lawyers told him not to do it.” An interview would give lawyers for the plaintiff material to use against him, he said.

More : query.nytimes.com

Re “A Mistake, a Rare Prosecution, and a Doctor Is Headed for Jail” (front page, March 16): Given the American Medical Association-supported movement in Congress to pass tort “reform” laws limiting the right of patients to bring malpractice lawsuits, your report illustrates many important issues.

It is ironic that in Dr. Gerald Einaugler’s case the A.M.A. and the Medical Society of the State of New York advocate that the appropriate remedy for a criminal act, for which Dr. Einaugler was apparently convicted after trial, is either peer review or a civil malpractice suit.

With respect to peer review, we are certain readers were comforted to learn that the New York State Board for Professional Medical Conduct concluded that mistaking a dialysis tube for a feeding tube (and then attempting to cover up that mistake) is not a “flagrant or dramatic departure from standards.”

With respect to bringing a malpractice lawsuit, even without the enactment of any tort “reform” proposals, New York State law places a minimal value on the life of a 78-year-old nursing home patient. The courts have repeatedly held that the life of a 78-year-old human being who dies without pain and suffering and who suffers no economic loss has no monetary value whatsoever.

This is because in a wrongful death action the law allows a recovery for two elements of damages. The first is actual economic loss. The second is the pain and suffering endured prior to death. In the case of Dr. Einaugler’s patient, the only economic loss would be the cost of medical care rendered during the four days that she survived after his care.

Ultimately that recovery would accrue to the benefit of the insurance carriers that paid for the care. With respect to compensation for pain and suffering, Dr. Einaugler’s patient was reported to have been unconscious for the four days she survived after his care. Accordingly she has no recovery for pain and suffering.

Thus, the irony of the position advocated by the A.M.A. and the Medical Society of the State of New York is that, while they claim peer review or a civil malpractice lawsuit is the appropriate remedy for Dr. Einaugler’s actions, a peer review found no malpractice and, as a practical matter, a civil malpractice action for wrongful death is foreclosed.

More : query.nytimes.com

IN almost any other court case, the murder charges against O.J. Simpson for killing his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman would qualify as history: the jury, after all, acquitted him, and he walked away from the courtroom a free man.

That, at least, is how the system typically works. Of course, almost nothing about the Simpson case has been typical, and three wrongful death suits in civil court that have been brought against him by the families of the victims — suits that could cost him millions of dollars and force him to the witness stand — may ultimately prove to be among the most meaningful developments of all.

Until recently, questions of dollars and cents were rarely raised in the aftermath of a killing. But just as the criminal charges against Mr. Simpson heightened public awareness about domestic abuse and police misconduct, the pending civil suits may well be as instructive, bringing new attention to a little-noticed movement by angry victims and their relatives who want to get even.

Civil damages in wrongful death actions were first fashioned in English law during the Middle Ages, not only to provide recompense to bereaved family members, but also as a means of curbing vengeful impulses. Such suits now are routinely filed against doctors and other health professionals, for example, who are accused of causing a patient’s death by improperly prescribing medicine or botching an operation. Even more common are wrongful death suits against drunk drivers.

But until recently, wrongful death civil suits arising from murder cases have been rare. “Most of the types of people who are enmeshed in the criminal justice system for crimes such as murder or sexual assault are people who don’t have much in the way of assets, so it doesn’t make sense to bring a civil suit against them in the first instance,” said Robert L. Rabin, a professor at Stanford Law School. Suing the Indigent

But that hasn’t stopped some survivors from seeking recompense in civil court. In the early 1980’s, in a widely publicized case, the parents of Bonnie Joan Garland, a slain 20-year-old Yale University music student, sued her former boyfriend and convicted killer, Richard J. Herrin, seeking more than $2 million in damages. They said they hoped to set a precedent for other crime victims; a civil-trial jury awarded them $40,000, a symbolic victory against Mr. Herrin, who was indigent.

Not long afterwards, in what is regarded as a landmark action, the jailhouse author Jack Henry Abbott, who was convicted of manslaughter in the stabbing of an aspiring actor, Richard Adan, was sued for $10 million by Mr. Adan’s widow. Interestingly, the widow, Ricci, was represented by F. Lee Bailey.

More : query.nytimes.com

The widow of a New York City paramedic called yesterday for a criminal investigation into the death of her husband, who died Thursday after receiving the wrong type of blood in a transfusion at Coney Island Hospital. She said she had retained a lawyer to press a wrongful-death lawsuit against the City.

The 30-year-old paramedic, Ira Medjuck, was being treated at the hospital for critical injuries suffered during a July 20 car accident on the Belt Parkway.

“Every single person in every single bed in that hospital has loved ones and this should not happen to anyone,” Mr. Medjuck’s widow, Leah, said yesterday. “Everyone says this should never happen. Everyone is trained to test blood. It is a basic, basic thing.”

Mrs. Medjuck and a family friend, Aaron Menche, spoke to reporters in the living room of her Mill Basin, Brooklyn, apartment during a break from the traditional Jewish mourning rituals and accused the hospital of trying to duck responsibility.

Hospital officials conceded that Mr. Medjuck, who had received several commendations for his work during his two years with the Emergency Medical Service, had been given an “incompatible type of blood” during a transfusion after six hours of surgery shortly after he was admitted to the hospital. But officials have not said if or how the botched transfusion might have factored into Mr. Medjuck’s death. They have only said that he “succumbed to the extensive injuries” sustained in the car crash and that a determination of the officaial cause of death would be forthcoming from the Medical Examiner. The state Health Department is investigating Mr. Medjuck’s death and is expected to release a report within two weeks.

Mr. Medjuck’s family blames his death directly on the hospital and has hired Judith A. Livingston, a Manhattan lawyer, to sue for wrongful death.

“The family would appreciate for Coney Island Hospital to admit what everyone already knows,” Mr. Menche read from a prepared statement. “Ira died due to complications associated with receiving the wrong blood. The current posturing by hospital officials has been very hurtful to a family that has already been through so much.

“We are calling upon the Mayor of New York and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office to open a criminal investigation into Ira’s death. “We are hoping that all the people responsible will be prosecuted for negligent homicide.”

Source : query.nytimes.com

Palestinian leaders have a history of self-inflicted wounds in their long struggle for a national homeland: acts that hurt their political cause. Now, at a time when they have widespread sympathy for their position in an unraveling peace process, they have done it again.

Ten days ago Yasir Arafat told a meeting of his cabinet that a growing number of Palestinians were selling land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for Jewish settlements. The next day the Palestinian Authority’s Attorney General, Khaled al-Qidra, described land sales to Israel as ”high treason” deserving punishment up to death.

A few days later a Palestinian real estate dealer suspected of selling land to Israelis, Farid Bashiti, was found bludgeoned to death in Ramallah in the West Bank. Many Palestinians concluded that the Authority had somehow arranged his death.

The director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, Bassam Eid, said there was ”no doubt for us that the Palestinian Authority is the likeliest suspect. His $(Mr. Bashiti’s$) death came right after it was announced that selling land to Jews could be punishable by death. It was a kind of warning, in my view.”

The killing of Mr. Bashiti was a brutal act and, if done because of land sales, a lawless one in the most literal sense. The Palestinian Council, the legislative body for Palestinian-controlled territory in the West Bank and Gaza, has been asked to pass a law forbidding land sales to Israelis but has not acted on the proposal.

Murder is bad enough when done by individuals. It is worse when it is carried out at the order of political authorities, or condoned by them. And by all signs this one was at least condoned.

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrama Sabri, declared Mr. Bashiti’s body unfit for Muslim burial. He said, ”Anyone who sells land to the enemy should not be washed, prayed for or buried in a Muslim cemetery.” The Mufti was appointed by Mr. Arafat.

All of this — the murderous threats by Palestinian officials, then Mr. Bashiti’s killing — can only harm the chance for peace, and for a Palestinian homeland. Israelis committed to peace will be disgusted. Opponents of the Oslo peace process will find confirmation of their view that Palestinians are not appropriate partners for peace.

There are reasons that land is a powerful issue for Palestinians. Anyone familiar with the history of the Middle East conflict understands those reasons.

Before the founding of Israel in 1948, the Zionist movement acquired land by purchase in Palestine and held it in trust for an eventual Jewish national home. In Israel today most land is still held in trust by an agency devoted to furthering the Jewish homeland.

As a practical matter, land used by Israeli Jews for home or business or farm is hardly ever sold to Arabs. So the idea of Palestinians wanting to keep what land they have is not unusual.

Since 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, Israel has taken large amounts of what Palestinians consider their land. Some was taken for Jewish settlements on the legal theory that it was ‘’state land” or that individuals, though they had used the land for years, had not gone through the proper procedures to establish clear title to it.

In recent years Jews outside Israel have given large amounts of money to buy property from Palestinians, especially in Jerusalem. Offers to buy are tempting for poor families, and they are sometimes accompanied by pressure. I know one family in the Old City of Jerusalem whose garden was destroyed after they refused to sell.

More : query.nytimes.com

On the eve of his release from prison, Robert Chambers said he regretted his actions on the day in 1986 when Jennifer Levin was killed, according to a statement released by his lawyer.

Mr. Chambers, 36, will leave the Auburn Correctional Facility on Friday after serving the maximum time on his manslaughter conviction for killing Ms. Levin, 18, in Central Park on Aug. 26, 1986.

”There has not been a day since Jennifer Levin’s death that I have not regretted my actions on that day,” the statement said. ”I know that the Levin family continues to suffer her loss, and I am deeply sorry for the grief I have caused them.”

Mr. Chambers will not conduct a news conference after his release, according to the statement. The statement also said that he would like to pursue a college degree and begin paying the $25 million wrongful death settlement awarded the Levin family.

Msgr. Thomas Leonard, Mr. Chambers’ priest, said in a New York Post article published today that Mr. Chambers ”would like to work as a counselor in a federal program for prisoners.”

The victim’s mother, Ellen Levin, said Mr. Chambers had not shown any remorse in her daughter’s death, nor admitted any guilt.

Mr. Chambers, who pleaded guilty in 1988, was punished in jail for a number of violations. He spent a third of his time in solitary confinement and was rejected for parole five times. He pleaded no contest in the $25 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by Ms. Levin’s parents, and will have to pay them any lump sum payments he earns and 10 percent of his wages, according to his lawyer, Brian O’Dwyer.

Ms. Levin’s sister, Danielle Roberts, has said she is ”haunted by a feeling of dread” over Mr. Chambers’ release.

Mr. Chambers lived on the Upper East Side at the time of the murder, but plans to live outside of New York City upon his release, Monsignor Leonard said.

Source : query.nytimes.com

The police officers who shot and killed Amadou Diallo and were acquitted of criminal charges in his death will be questioned about the incident today by the Police Department for the first time in administrative hearings, police officials said. The shooting will then be reviewed by the department’s Firearms Discharge Review Board, which will decide if the officers — Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy — will face administrative charges. Officials said a decision could come next week. The Fire Department said its tentative decision to hire Officer McMellon was contingent on the police review. William K. Rashbaum (NYT)

BUFFALO: BAIL DENIED IN ABORTION CASE — A United States magistrate judge has denied bail for a woman accused of aiding James C. Kopp, left, the recently arrested fugitive accused of murdering a doctor who provided abortions. Judge Hugh Scott refused a request on Wednesday for bail for the woman, Loretta Marra. She and her husband, Dennis Malvasi, have pleaded not guilty to sending money to Mr. Kopp and plotting to help him return to the United States from Europe. If convicted, the couple face up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Mr. Kopp, arrested in France last month, is accused in the shooting death of Dr. Barnett A. Slepian of Amherst in 1998. Tara Bahrampour (NYT)

MANHATTAN: MOLINARI LETTER WRITER SUES — Lawyers for Terence Hunter, who was arrested after he wrote a sharply critical letter to Guy Molinari, the Staten Island borough president, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city yesterday. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani acknowledged in February that the arrest of Mr. Hunter, a city budget analyst, appeared to be a mistake. The lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Mr. Hunter, who was arrested in January after sending the letter and pictures of lynchings to protest Mr. Molinari’s plans to close a youth center. William K. Rashbaum (NYT)

MANHATTAN: FERRET-OWNERSHIP BILL — Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday ridiculed a bill to legalize the ownership of ferrets, or small weasels. ”Spending this much time on ferrets,” he said, ”doesn’t say something really good about the way our government operates.” The ferret bill would overturn a 1999 Health Department regulation that makes it illegal to keep them as pets. The bill, passed in committee, is subject to a vote by the full Council before going to Mr. Giuliani. Diane Cardwell (NYT)

MANHATTAN: ELLIS ISLAND WEB SITE — A new Web site allowing visitors to trace their ancestry through Ellis Island records has been so popular that the site’s administrators are struggling just to count the visitors. In its debut on Tuesday evening, the site (www.ellisislandrecords.org) averaged eight million requests per hour. By 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, the last time the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation was able to check, traffic had soared to 97 million hits per hour. The foundation plans to double computer capacity today to 200,000 simultaneous users, a spokeswoman said. Hope Reeves (NYT)

More : query.nytimes.com