SHORT TAKES : Actor in Apparent Suicide Bid

David Rappaport, the diminutive British actor last seen in a Thanksgiving episode of “L.A. Law,” was listed in stable condition today after suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning in what police said appeared to be a suicide attempt.

The 3-foot, 11-inch Rappaport, 38, was unconscious and not breathing when he was found by Los Angeles police Sunday evening, laying in an idling white Volkswagen in Hollywood, not far from his home, police said. A hose had been hooked up from the exhaust pipe to the inside of the car “in an obvious attempted suicide mode,” Detective Russell Kuster said.

An employee for Rappaport’s agent, Triad Artists Inc., denied that it was a suicide attempt, adding that “there are other extenuating circumstances which we cannot comment on.”

Rappaport has guest-starred in three episodes of the popular NBC series, in which he played the cunning maverick attorney Hamilton Scheyler. He also starred as a jovial genius toy maker in the 1986 CBS fantasy, “The Wizard.”