Once Charged With Murder, Woodland Hills Umpire Seeks $10 Million

LOS ANGELES, CA — Jury deliberations are expected to get underway Tuesday morning in a $10 million lawsuit brought against a Los Angeles County coroner's office doctor by a professional tennis referee who was accused -- then cleared -- of beating her husband to death with a coffee mug.

Lois Goodman, 76, alleges that she was deprived of her civil rights by Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Yulai Wang, who she says intentionally or recklessly classified her husband's death as a homicide rather than an accident, without explanation.

Wang contends that he was simply following the evidence to make his determination.

Goodman's lawyers told an eight-member civil jury in Los Angeles federal court last week that she deserves $10 million for pain, humiliation and suffering caused by Wang's "falsified" ruling.

"Let me be abundantly clear -- Mrs. Goodman didn't kill anybody," her attorney, Robert M. Sheahen, told the panel during closing arguments. "The charge is preposterous."

Defense attorney Rickey Ivie countered that Wang was only doing his job and was not under pressure to declare the death a homicide.

"His job is to state an opinion and that's what he did in this case," Ivie said, adding that other doctors who examined the autopsy results supported the homicide classification.

According to her suit, Goodman has suffered ongoing "public humiliation," loss of reputation and work since being wrongly accused of murdering her 80-year-old husband, Alan, six years ago. Goodman was arrested in New York in August 2012 on the eve of a U.S. Open tournament while wearing her referee uniform. Police initially claimed she clubbed her husband to death with a coffee mug in their Woodland Hills home, and then stabbed him with the broken pieces.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office dropped murder charges in December 2012 after Goodman passed a lie detector test and experts retained by prosecutors reviewed the autopsy report and concluded the death was an accident.

Along with millions in damages, Goodman is seeking to have the coroner revise the manner of death on the death certificate.

Goodman initially sued the Los Angeles Police Department and the lead detectives on the case, along with the office of the medical examiner and Wang. A federal judge threw out that lawsuit, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the allegations against Wang.

The jury must determine if Wang intentionally or recklessly falsified the manner of death and, if so, whether the doctor's conclusion was a "substantial" factor in causing Goodman harm.

Sheahen contends that during the 3 1/2 months before Wang issued his report, police were pressuring the doctor to classify the death as homicide rather than undetermined or accidental.

Ivie told the jury that his client's conclusion was based on his interpretation of Alan Goodman's injuries, described as "multiple sharp-force injuries."

The defense attorney said there was nothing "malicious" about the report.

"He just did his job and made a neutral decision about the manner of death," Ivie said. "That's all he was supposed to do. Dr. Wang has nothing to gain by seeing Mrs. Goodman prosecuted."

By FRED SHUSTER, City News Service; Photo: Youtube screengrab