COURT HEARS PAIN DOCTOR'S APPEAL

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- A jury should have been told it could consider
whether a doctor acted in good faith in prescribing massive doses of
OxyContin and other painkillers, the physician's lawyer told a
federal appeals court Friday.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, meeting
at the College of William and Mary Law School, heard arguments Friday
in the case of William E. Hurwitz. A ruling is expected in a few weeks.

Hurwitz, whose northern Virginia pain clinic attracted patients from
more than 39 states, was convicted in December 2004 of conspiracy and
drug trafficking resulting in a patient's death. He was sentenced to
25 years in prison.

The physician frequently prescribed 100 tablets or more of OxyContin
for patients--many of them obvious drug addicts and dealers,
prosecutors said. According to an FBI agent's affidavit, 21 percent
of Hurwitz's patients had criminal records.

Hurwitz's attorney, Lawrence Robbins, said the trial judge's
exclusion of a jury instruction on good faith "contravenes 80 years
of unbroken precedent" in similar cases.

But federal prosecutor Richard Cooke argued that good faith was not
applicable in Hurwitz's case because the doctor knew he was
prescribing to addicts and dealers and operating outside accepted
medical standards.

Hurwitz attracted a national following by prescribing huge doses of
opiates for chronic pain sufferers, once touting his theories on "60
Minutes." His supporters testified at his trial that Hurwitz relieved
them of crippling pain that other doctors refused to treat.

State regulators suspended Hurwitz's medical license in 1991 and
again in 1996, when he was ordered to attend classes to learn how to
spot patients trying obtain drugs by scamming the medical system.