DOCTOR KEPT PATIENT SLAVE FOR FREE GOODS

PORTLAND - A jury returned a $900,000 malpractice verdict yesterday against
a urologist accused of keeping a car salesman addicted to painkillers to
get free tuneups, tires and gasoline.

Larry Benson said his 15 years of virtual servitude began when he was a
grocery-store manager and the doctor used the drugs as bait to get free
pizzas, cans of soda and slabs of cheese.

"I feel vindicated," Benson said after the verdict in Multnomah County
Circuit Court. "Nobody ever believed the story at first. It was so
incredible. Everybody thought I was nuts. Everybody said that a doctor
wouldn't do it. He did it because of greed and power."

The verdict against Dr. David R. Rosencrantz came nearly two years after
the state Board of Medical Examiners suspended his license for nine months
and fined him $5,000 for prescribing drugs inappropriately to Benson.

Neither Rosencrantz nor his attorney returned telephone calls yesterday.

The one-time physician to the late Oregon Gov. Tom McCall first treated
Benson for testicular cancer in 1979.

He removed one of Benson's testicles and gave Benson samples of painkillers
such as Vicodin and Percocet to relieve persistent migraine headaches.

Benson claimed that for the next 15 years, the doctor demanded free goods
and services in exchange for the drugs, supplying the pills in envelopes or
tissue paper.

It escalated from his supermarket days, Benson said, when the doctor would
make special requests for free food.

"He loved the Kraft cheese," Benson said. "He said his wife was a
vegetarian and they needed it."

"I would call him at 10 o'clock at night and be in tears my head hurt so
bad," Benson said. "At 6 the next morning he would call and say `My
salesman just gave me some more pills, but I need new tires for my Jeep, or
I need a tuneup. I worked on his cars, his mother's car, his kids' cars."

"He would ride around in my cars for months at a time. I sold used cars,
and he didn't like it. I always had new cars for me and my wife and those
were the ones he would borrow," he said.

Benson said his psychologist told him to tell somebody in authority, but he
feared no one would believe him, so he tape-recorded their telephone
conversations.

Meanwhile, Benson's headaches were getting worse, even though he was taking
10 to 12 pills a day.

"The doctor sabotaged efforts to break the addiction," said Benson's
lawyer, Gregory Kafoury. "He turned my client into a junkie and a slave. .
. . This is a case of unparalleled ugliness."

Kafoury said the tapes were damning evidence at trial.

Benson said the doctor said on the tapes that he couldn't tell anyone about
what was going on.

In one of the taped conversations, the doctor advised Benson to lie to his
insurance company about where he was getting the drug samples.

Rosencrantz is heard saying: "You tell them: `Say listen, I'm not getting
samples anymore. The guy moved to Europe, and that's it. What do you want
me to tell you?' You tell them his name is, uh, uh, Bill Devereaux. Just
make up a (expletive) name."

The $900,000 verdict includes $600,000 in compensation and $300,000 in
punitive damages.

Benson, 42, has undergone treatment for his addiction and he said he rarely
gets headaches any more.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)