In 1993, his widow won a $15.7 million malpractice verdict, after claiming that doctors at St. Vincent's Hospital had misdiagnosed swollen lymph nodes when he went to the hospital in 1979 and told a doctor there that he feared that he had cancer.
It was in 1993 that his widow received a $15.7 million judgment against St. Vincent's Hospital for malpractice, stemming from her claim that doctors there had made an incorrect diagnosis of swollen lymph nodes when he sought medical attention in 1979 and expressed concerns about having cancer.