THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300361
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 93 lines
Dr. Faruk B. Presswalla will not go quietly into the night.
For three years, Hampton Roads' chief medical examiner, a quiet man with a knack for making loud headlines, has conducted a running feud with the Allen administration.
Now Presswalla, after 20 years in office, has one last bit of unfinished business before retiring on June 30. And it is not another autopsy.
Presswalla is threatening to sue the state - his employer - for allegedly abandoning him in a legal fight with grieving grandparents in Texas.
It is the third time since 1994 that Presswalla has threatened legal action against Virginia. Twice in 1994 he actually sued: once to stop his boss from imposing new overtime rules, another time to censure the attorney general for a perceived insult.
Both failed.
Now, the coroner says he is ready for court again. He says he has had enough insults from the state. He says he wants respect. He says he wants, at least, to be repaid for defending himself against a Texas lawsuit.
He claims the attorney general should have defended him, as it would defend any state employee.
``After all these years of dedicated service, at the tail end of my career, I'm being abandoned,'' Presswalla says.
The state does not buy that argument.
``We think Dr. Presswalla was a very good medical examiner, there's no question about that,'' says Mark Miner, a spokesman for Attorney General James Gilmore. ``We just don't feel state taxpayers should pay the bill for a private matter.''
And so Presswalla, the longest-serving medical examiner ever in Hampton Roads, says he is ready to file two new lawsuits as soon as he leaves office.
One will be against the attorney general. The other will be against a Texas couple that, he claims, libeled him in a complaint to his boss in Richmond.
It started with a dead baby.
The red-headed boy was just a month old. He died in November 1994 after lingering 10 days in Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters. An autopsy by Presswalla's colleague, Dr. Leah Bush, concluded the child was a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome. The father was charged with murder. His trial is set for September.
Normally, that would be the end.
In Texas, however, the baby's grandparents don't believe the autopsy. They believe the baby died from a morphine overdose at the hospital, and they want someone in Norfolk to reinvestigate.
In November the grandparents, Andrew and Caryl Rosenthal of Abilene, wrote an angry letter to Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro in Richmond. Among other things, they complained bitterly about the autopsy and cited a 1993 book that, they said, criticized Presswalla by name in a previous case.
Trouble is, the book - ``Cause of Death,'' by Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist from Pittsburgh - mentions Presswalla in only two paragraphs, and not in the way the couple claims. The book reserves its harshest criticism for another medical examiner in Presswalla's office.
Furious over the Texas letter, Presswalla hired a private lawyer, Thomas Harlan of Norfolk, who wrote to the Rosenthals for him. Harlan demanded: apologize or face a libel suit. ``Nowhere in the book `Cause of Death' . . . is there any criticism of Dr. Presswalla. . . ,'' Harlan wrote.
The Rosenthals shot back. ``We must have read different versions of Dr. Cyril Wecht's book,'' they wrote. No apology was offered.
Finally, on March 13, after receiving another threatening letter from Harlan, the Rosenthals sued Presswalla in Texas for $5,000. They accused him of ``intentional infliction of emotional distress and harassment due to threats of an unmeritorious lawsuit.''
Presswalla asked the attorney general to defend him, arguing that the lawsuit stemmed from his official duties as a public official. The attorney general refused, however, saying the Texas case was a private dispute.
Eventually, Presswalla hired a private lawyer in Texas, who got the lawsuit dismissed in April. That ruling is now on appeal.
Presswalla says the lawsuit, and the attorney general's reaction to it, was the last straw in his two-year running feud with the Allen administration in Richmond.
On March 28, Presswalla informed every commonwealth's attorney, sheriff and police chief in Hampton Roads that he would no longer offer opinions on investigations or deaths because of the attorney general's refusal to defend him in Texas.
``This action is necessary,'' Presswalla wrote, ``because the Commonwealth will not stand behind me in a lawsuit filed Pro Se (without a lawyer) by a family in a child abuse case. . . I apologize to all of you and to the citizens of Tidewater that I have to refuse to you my expertise. I cannot be constantly looking over my shoulder and personally defending these lawsuits.''
Now, Presswalla says, he wants the state to repay his legal expenses in Texas, about $1,000 and growing.
``It's not the amount that's important. It's the principle,'' Presswalla says. ``They're supposed to defend me, even if I do wrong. . . I've given 20 years of loyal service in a place. I expect when I do my duty, the state will stand behind me when something happens.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
After 20 years as Hampton Roads' chief medical examiner, Dr. Faruk
B. Presswalla will retire June 30. by CNB