DATE: Thursday, September 4, 1997           TAG: 9709040452

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   86 lines

MAN WHO CUT OFF HIS HAND SUES DOCTOR AND HOSPITAL HE REFUSED SURGERY TO RE-ATTACH IT.

Thomas W. Passmore raised his right hand to be sworn as a witness - but where the hand should have been was a silver metal hook.

How it got that way is a $3 million question.

On Wednesday, testimony began in one of the oddest cases to enter Norfolk Circuit Court in years. It poses the question: Can a man who intentionally cut off his own hand, then refused to let a doctor re-attach it, later sue the doctor and hospital for following his instructions?

Passmore says he was psychotic when he cut off the hand, thinking it was possessed by the devil. He says he was psychotic when he refused re-attachment surgery. Therefore, he says, he was not competent to make informed medical decisions, and the doctors should have known that.

He is suing Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and a hand surgeon, Dr. Tad E. Grenga of Portsmouth, for $3 million.

Passmore says the doctor should have ignored his wishes and gotten a court order to re-attach the hand.

``Dr. Grenga, with the hospital's acquiescence, determined that this man that just cut off his hand in a psychotic state . . . had the capacity or competence to make a decision,'' Passmore's attorney, Robert E. Brown, told the jury Tuesday.

Sentara and Grenga disagree. They say Passmore, now 33, is a competent adult who made a series of bad decisions throughout his young life - drinking binges, refusing to take medication, quitting school and jobs - and now must take responsibility for his acts.

Grenga's attorney, John M. Fitzpatrick, called it ``about as frivolous a lawsuit as it gets.''

``No one acted more reasonably and no one wanted to put the hand back on more than (Grenga),'' Fitzpatrick told the jury Wednesday. ``It's sad that (Passmore) lost his hand. But the responsibility for that decision lies with this man, Mr. Passmore.''

The trial is expected to last at least a week.

Last year, when the lawsuit was filed, it attracted national attention from mainstream newspapers like The Washington Post and supermarket tabloids like the Weekly World News. This year, as the trial neared, advice columnist Ann Landers weighed in on the case.

An unlikely series of events prompted the dispute.

Passmore was 30 years old and had been unemployed and homeless when he cut off his hand at a construction site in Kill Devil Hills. He had a history of alcoholism and psychotic disorders.

Passmore was on the first day of a $7-an-hour construction cleanup job on April 27, 1994. He testified that his father had kicked him out of his Outer Banks home and given him $300, with no prospects for work or housing.

A week earlier, Passmore said, he had stopped drinking. But he also had stopped taking his anti-psychotic medicine about a year earlier.

At the construction site, Passmore spied a table saw. ``That was kind of like a sign for me to cut my hand off, in a way,'' Passmore testified.

A few minutes later, Passmore said, he hallucinated that he saw the numbers ``666'' on his right hand. ``It meant that I was evil,'' Passmore testified.

Recalling the biblical verse ``If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee,'' Passmore did just that. He cut off his hand at the wrist.

Horrified co-workers saw what happened, saved the hand in an ice chest and applied a tourniquet to Passmore's arm. He was flown to Norfolk General, where surgeon Grenga met him.

At first, Passmore agreed to surgery and signed a consent form. But in the operating room, just as surgery was about to begin, Passmore changed his mind. ``I said it's against my religion,'' Passmore recalled in court. The doctor asked: What religion? Passmore replied: ``My own.''

Passmore warned the doctor, ``If you sew it back on, I'll cut it off again,'' according to the opening court statement of Grenga's attorney.

Unsure what to do, Grenga called Norfolk Circuit Judge William F. Rutherford. He told Rutherford that Passmore appeared to be competent. The judge replied that if Grenga proceeded with the re-attachment, then Passmore might have grounds to accuse the doctor of assault and battery.

At that point, Grenga closed the wound but did not re-attach the hand.

In court Wednesday, Passmore said he missed the hand. He said he has had trouble finding work as a computer programmer since the incident, and his keyboard skills have slowed badly.

During his testimony, Passmore climbed down from the witness stand and stripped off his suit jacket, tie and white button-down dress shirt - laboriously, one-handed - to show jurors his hook. He demonstrated how it fitted over the stump of his arm and how it was held in place with straps and wires over his shoulder.

This proved too much for Grenga's lawyer. ``He has it because he cut it off!'' Fitzpatrick shouted, in front of the jury.

The trial continues today. KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT

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