Pretty Situation

In a Rockland County, N. Y. stone quarry one day last spring was found the bruised corpse of a youth named Charles Lewis. As a matter of routine, County Coroner John Clarence Dingman performed an autopsy. In Supreme Court at New City, N. Y. last week Charles Lewis' father sued Coroner Dingman for $10,000, claiming he had suffered that much mental anguish because his son's brain and spinal cord, which he said the coroner had removed, had not been buried with the rest of his remains.

Unenviable is the legal lot of a coroner or medical examiner. Unlike a private physician, who can abandon plans for an autopsy if relatives of the deceased refuse permission, he is ordinarily required by law to make such examination whenever violence is suspected or cause of death cannot otherwise be determined. But he may thereupon, like any private investigator, be sued by disgruntled relatives of the deceased. Last week medical examiners flocked to New City's court, hoping to see a precedent set against suits over the condition of a body after an official autopsy.

New York City's Acting Chief Medical Examiner Thomas Arthur Gonzales is currently working for a new State law to protect medical officials from suits brought by relatives whose consent to an autopsy has not been obtained. Meantime, New York City is appealing a verdict against an assistant medical examiner in Brooklyn who, sued by the widower of a woman on whom he had performed an autopsy, was lately ordered in Municipal Court to pay $1,000 in damages. Declared Chief Examiner Gonzales last week: "If [the verdict] goes through we might as well shut up shop. If medical examiners and coroners are going to be handicapped by the refusal of relatives to permit an autopsy, we'll be in a pretty situation. A brother might poison a sister and prevent us from determining the cause of death by refusing to permit an autopsy."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.