Fleeting Victory

When Mrs. Lucy Rines, 56, died in Boston's Beth Israel Hospital almost five years ago, her husband put on a black necktie and made a vow. He vowed that he would not discard his badge of mourning until he had won a victory in court over the doctors he blamed for his wife's death.

Russian-born Rines, a patent attorney, went about his vendetta in businesslike fashion. He enrolled for courses at Harvard Medical School (he says he was dropped when the faculty learned the purpose of his studies) and at Massachusetts

Institute of Technology. He worked as an orderly in Boston City Hospital, pored over medical books in public libraries. When he felt that he was ready, he brought suit for damages against five doctors, three nurses, and the Beth Israel Hospital.

Last fortnight Rines changed his black tie for a red and grey striped one. He thought he had won a partial victory. A jury in the grey courthouse* at Dedham, Mass, returned verdicts against two of the doctors by finding that they had performed their duties "in such a negligent manner" that it caused Mrs. Rines's injury and death. Damages assessed against the doctors totaled $15,000. Verdicts were returned in favor of three other physicians; the cases against the three nurses and the hospital had been dropped.

Last week Rines put on his black tie again. Judge Paul G. Kirk had thrown out the awards, dismissed the jury, ordered a new trial on a single count against one of the doctors. Rines, who has spent $30,000 on litigation so far, planned to take the unsettled questions to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Rines had tried to prove that the specialists called in had covered up each other's mistakes. Both sides agreed that Mrs. Rines entered the hospital for treatment of a wrenched back, was put in a cast, died a little more than a month later from what the autopsy proved to be blocking of the pulmonary artery.

Said black-tied widower Rines: "I want it determined whether a doctor can lie to you.... Medical ethics requires that doc--tors are responsible to one another. I want a ruling on that. . . . Doctors are always passing the buck."

* Scene, in 1921, of the murder trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

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