|
|
 |
 |
  |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Agreement in doubt Lawyers return to mediation on Earnhardt photo deal
Updated: Wednesday March 21, 2001 5:49 PM
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- Lawyers for Dale Earnhardt's widow and the Orlando Sentinel are headed back to mediation four days after they reached an agreement over access to the racing legend's autopsy photos. The mediation will allow the newspaper to address its concerns about a Daytona International Speedway doctor having viewed the photos before they were sealed, Sentinel attorney David Bralow said Tuesday. Bralow emphasized the agreement was still in place. The meeting will take place in the Daytona Beach office of mediator John J. Upchurch IV Thursday morning. "Both parties can always change the agreement," Bralow said. "You can always modify a contract by a meeting of the parties." Dr. Steve Bohannon, a NASCAR medical expert, looked at the photos three days after Earnhardt's fatal wreck at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18. The next day, a Volusia County judge temporarily sealed them from public viewing at the request of Teresa Earnhardt. Sentinel attorneys subpoenaed Bohannon on Tuesday to take his deposition before the meeting. They later withdrew the subpoena because the doctor was going on an extended trip to China on Wednesday. Earnhardt attorney Thom Rumberger disputed whether the agreement could be changed. "It can't be anything about Bohannon, or setting aside the mediation," Rumberger said. "[Upchurch] doesn't have the authority to do that."
The deal reached last week limits access to the photos, which are public records under Florida law. The Sentinel had tried to have its own medical expert review the images. Under the agreement, an independent medical expert will look at the photos and then submit a report to the newspaper and the Earnhardt family on the cause of death and an explanation of certain head injuries. The photos then will be permanently sealed as requested by Teresa Earnhardt because of privacy concerns. "Do you think we would have been as accommodating had we known that NASCAR had an opportunity for its own expert to review them?" Bralow said Tuesday. "As far as I'm concerned, when something is private, it's private." But Earnhardt attorney Thom Rumberger said the Sentinel should think twice before trying to get out of the agreement. "As far as I'm concerned, the Sentinel has pledged their honor, their faith and their fortunes to that agreement," Rumberger said. Volusia County officials had contended that nobody other than the medical examiner's staff had viewed his autopsy photos. But a visitor's log obtained by the Sentinel showed that Bohannon looked at the photos for 35 minutes on Feb. 21. Bohannon is director of emergency services at the speedway and accompanied Earnhardt in the ambulance to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. The day after Bohannon viewed the photos, Volusia County Circuit Judge Joseph Will granted a temporary injunction requested by the Earnhardt family that sealed the photos from public viewing. A day later, Bohannon said at a NASCAR news conference in North Carolina that Earnhardt might have survived the crash if his lap belt had not broken. Earnhardt probably was thrown into the steering wheel because he wasn't fully supported, Bohannon said. The Sentinel is investigating whether safety devices available to stock-car drivers could have saved Earnhardt. NASCAR President Mike Helton said Saturday that a NASCAR medical expert had reviewed the autopsy photos as part of the circuit's investigation into Earnhardt's death. NASCAR spokesman John Griffin confirmed Tuesday that the medical expert was Bohannon, but said "he went to view the pictures as an extension of his duties as the attending physician." Bralow disputed that conclusion. "Bohannon is talking about seat belts as a NASCAR expert, not as Earnhardt's personal physician," he said. Bohannon doesn't have a published home phone number and Kate Holcomb, a spokeswoman at Halifax Medical Center where he works in the emergency room, said Bohannon wasn't granting any interviews. Rumberger said Tuesday he wasn't sure when Mrs. Earnhardt found out that Bohannon had viewed the photos. The lawyer said he was under the belief that Bohannon viewed the photos in his role as the attending physician, not a NASCAR medical expert. "I have no reason to believe that she would be concerned," Rumberger said. "It was done by the attending physician and not an intruder or outsider, someone trying to invade Mrs. Earnhardt's privacy." Sentinel executives had said repeatedly they had no intention of publishing the photos but only wanted a medical expert to review them for an investigation into NASCAR safety. But Mrs. Earnhardt's attorneys argued that other news organizations would be able to have access to the photos if the Sentinel was granted permission. An independent student newspaper at the University of Florida, the Independent Florida Alligator, and a website are pursuing their own cases to gain access to the photos and aren't part of the agreement.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
