ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 4, 1996 TAG: 9610040062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
A federal judge offered no relief Thursday to chronic-pain patients in search of a new source of huge amounts of narcotics.
The patients had been seeing Dr. William E. Hurwitz, who lost his medical license for overprescribing narcotics and not sufficiently monitoring his patients. Arlington lawyer Laura D. Cooper went to court on their behalf asking that the patients be permitted to get similar treatment elsewhere.
U.S. District Judge James Spencer declined the group's request for a temporary restraining order Thursday. But Cooper, a former patient of Hurwitz's, said she may seek a preliminary injunction in her class-action lawsuit.
``Ultimately, I think we have a very good chance,'' she said. ``There's something wrong with the law and I am going to fix it.''
Cooper filed the lawsuit against John Hasty, director of the Virginia Department of Health Professions; the state Board of Medicine; Gov. George Allen; and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
The suit challenges the revocation action against Hurwitz. The restraining order sought by the plaintiffs asked for judicial authorization for comparable treatment from other doctors until the suit is heard.
Hurwitz treated about 220 chronic-pain patients throughout the country by prescribing huge doses of narcotics. The Virginia Board of Medicine began investigating Hurwitz after two of his patients died. The board suspended his license Aug.10.
The District of Columbia Board of Medicine, citing the Virginia board's action, suspended Hurwitz's license a week later.
Hurwitz, who lives in McLean, can get his Virginia license back if he completes 250 hours of continuing medical education and complies with other conditions. But he said he has filed his own lawsuit in Arlington Circuit Court challenging the license revocation.
Hurwitz said outside federal court that he has been busy sending his former patients' records to other doctors and ``trying to figure out how to feed my family.''
Cooper said his former patients have been unable to get the same amount of drugs from other doctors because those physicians are afraid of putting their licenses in jeopardy. She said the patients are so desperate that one committed suicide after his high-dosage treatment was stopped.
Hurwitz is a defendant in a $3million lawsuit filed by the mother of a Tennessee man who died of a drug overdose.
Joan L. Bresko of Kinnelon, N.J., sued Hurwitz in August on behalf of Steven Kenneth Bresko's estate. Bresko's death in January was one of the two investigated by the state Board of Medicine.
Bresko, 36, collapsed in his Pigeon Forge home, where police found dozens of prescription drug bottles, as well as needle tracks on his body.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB