THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, September 21, 1994          TAG: 9409210439
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: NORFOLK                            LENGTH: Short :   40 lines

MAN WHOSE WIFE KILLED HERSELF WINS $2 MILLION SUIT

A retired Navy man whose wife committed suicide in 1988 won a $2 million jury verdict Tuesday against the psychiatrist and social worker who were treating her.

During a four-week trial in Circuit Court, widower Wade Lovelace said psychiatrist Maria R. Urbano and social worker Douglas B. Johnstone were negligent and had committed medical malpractice.

The widower's attorney, Robert E. Brown, claimed Urbano had not prescribed antidepressant drugs, had not hospitalized the woman long enough, and that Urbano and Johnstone had not removed a gun from the Lovelace home, even though Mary C. Lovelace previously had threatened to kill herself with it.

Mary Lovelace was 24 when she shot herself in the head on March 31, 1988. She had been hospitalized for depression at the Eastern Virginia Medical School for three weeks and was released 30 days before her suicide.

Her husband was a 34-year-old Navy senior chief petty officer at the time. He was stationed in Philadelphia and got home three weekends a month, Brown said. He is now retired from the Navy after 20 years of service and is living in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The jury deliberated for one day, then awarded the widower $500,000, plus $750,000 for each of Mary Lovelace's two children. They were 1 and 2 years old when their mother died.

The judge will automatically reduce the total judgment to $1 million, the maximum allowed by law in a medical malpractice case in Virginia. Defense attorneys asked the judge to set aside the verdict or grant a new trial. Those requests are pending.

KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT JURY VERDICT AWARD MEDICAL MALPRACTICE SUICIDE

by CNB