Doctor’s Letter May Be Key to Suit Over Boy’s Death in Gym Class

Willie Wallace was the kind of kid everyone liked. A big, open-faced, friendly boy who always had time to listen.

The 14-year-old’s good heart did not extend to his real heart, however, where a narrowing below his aortic valve sometimes left him short of breath.

The condition--diagnosed by pediatric cardiologists when Willie was a kindergartner--was being monitored by his doctors; when it became severe enough, it would probably require surgery. In the meantime, Willie was to refrain from extreme physical activity, according to medical records filed at his school.

But on the warm afternoon of May 10, 1995, Willie was out running laps with his physical education classmates at East Los Angeles’ Lincoln High School. He dropped to the ground as if struck by lightning. Emergency medics could not revive him.

Willie’s cardiac arrest would be old history in this fast-moving city were it not for the fact that his father wanted revenge.

When William Wallace Sr., a former Marine with burly arms, heard that the Lincoln P.E. coach had never been informed about Willie’s heart trouble, he took his fight to the courts. Why did the coach not get the message? Why were there no walkie-talkies on the distant field, leading to a 12-minute lapse before help arrived? Why did the district’s lawyers seem to blame his son for his own death?

These questions and more form the foundation for William and Linda Wallace’s wrongful-death lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is set to go to trial in early August pending results of a settlement conference scheduled today.

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In court papers and interviews, the school district tells a vastly different story. Officials say that the key document on file--a letter from Willie’s doctor to his middle school nurse--describes his heart problem as “mild” and says he can “undertake a full school program, including moderate involvement in sports and running games.”

“There were no recommendations with regard to the heart situation,” said L.A. Unified spokesman Brad Sales.

It was a tragedy, Sales acknowledges, but was not the district’s fault.

In court filings the district accused Willie’s doctor, Dr. Martin Reisman, of being vague in his letter to the district. But it never filed a threatened cross-complaint against him and his hospital, Kaiser Medical Center.

If the case goes to trial, the dispute probably will focus on what Reisman meant when he wrote “moderate,” and what he intended when he added: “However, he should not be committed to any sustained, grueling, competitive training or conditioning program, such as might be undertaken with varsity football or basketball.”

School nurse Christina Torres told attorneys that she interpreted that statement to mean that Willie needed no special handling--no warning note to the coach and no specially restricted P.E. as is prescribed for children with severe health problems.

The Wallaces’ attorney, Christopher Hennes, interprets the letter as clearly calling for limitations on physical education once the heavyset boy hit the more competitive high school setting.

Kaiser attorney Tony Santos said Reisman was following recommendations of the American Heart Assn. in trying to balance the need to limit Willie’s activity with the need to combat his weight, which also could strain his heart.

In Reisman’s deposition, he stood by the language of his letter, but said he had intended its wording to be interpreted generically to mean that Willie should avoid extremes.

“I think it’s very clear to anybody who is running a gym class that this is someone who shouldn’t be pushed,” he said.

Because Willie had a learning disability, state and federal law required an annual assessment meeting of teachers, administrators, the school nurse and the school psychologist. District documents indicate that in November 1994, the psychologist requested a new medical evaluation for that meeting.

But neither the meeting nor the medical evaluation took place, a topic that Hennes intends to question at trial.

A key witness in the case is coach Louis Moreno, whose sadness about not being told of Willie’s weak heart comes across even in a formal deposition. He might have kept the boy from running that day had he known of Willie’s weak heart, he said. He probably would have started cardiopulmonary resuscitation immediately--instead of holding off for what might have been crucial minutes because he thought that the boy was coming through an epileptic seizure.

Moreno rushed to Willie after he fell face down and checked for broken bones before turning him over. With no walkie-talkies or other contact with the outside world from the field, he sent one boy running to his office to call 911 and another to fetch school nurse Torres.

“Once I realized nothing was broken and I just thought he was having a seizure, I just stayed there with him and I was just talking to him,” Moreno said in his deposition.

Concerned about setting the record straight, Moreno came to the mortuary on the night Willie’s body was being viewed. Hundreds of students were milling around, but William Wallace, a machine operator, remembers that the coach made a beeline for him, tears in his eyes.

“I said, ‘If it wasn’t for my other three kids [whom Moreno had coached previously], I’d be coming after you when this is over,’ ” Wallace said. “He said, ‘I know what you mean, but the school did not tell me about his heart.’ ”

It was a shock. But more shocking, Willie’s parents say, is their subsequent treatment by the district and its attorneys. They see slights even in the common legal sparring over documents and court dates that have followed the September 1995 filing of the lawsuit.

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The lowest blow for them, they say, was that the district ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Linda Wallace to test her claim of continuing mental anguish.

In the court papers defending the need for such an evaluation, L.A. Unified attorneys say it is not “usual” for Linda Wallace to continue to suffer insomnia, nightmares and depression more than two years after her youngest son’s death.

“Who’s going to measure?” asked Linda Wallace, a department store merchandise processor. “Can they tell me how long this should last?”

Attorney Hennes claims that the evaluation, which occurred this month, was a thinly veiled attempt to cross-examine the mother without her lawyer present. According to a transcript, amid questions about Linda Wallace’s mental anguish over the death, Dr. Eugene Malitz asked her whether Willie played sports outside of school and then followed with 15 questions related to his participation in Little League baseball at age 11.

Did his doctor allow that? (Yes, she said, he had told her baseball was all right because it did not involve constant running, but football and basketball were off limits.) Was Willie ever short of breath during baseball? (No.) Did he ever play football or basketball on the sly? (No.)

Willie was pushing his counselor to let him try out for the football team shortly before his death, according to court depositions of school officials, and the school district contends that he never took the initiative to tell the regular P.E. coach about his heart problem. The district blames the boy for his lack of vigilance--in legal language saying that “the deceased had knowledge of, appreciated and voluntarily assumed the risk of probable and likely injury or death.”

That suggestion infuriates the Wallaces most of all. They raised their son to respect authority, they said, and taught him not to be fearful about his heart problem--to trust adults to watch out for him.

“With Willie, if an adult told him to do it, he just did it,” said Willie’s elder brother, Richard Graziano. “He never asked questions.”