AUSTIN DOCTOR, PREVIOUSLY DISCIPLINED, CAUSED PATIENT'S DEATH, SUIT SAYS

Lawsuit Accuses Doctor Of Prescribing Fatal Cocktail Of Drugs And
Using Patient's Prescriptions For Himself

The parents of a woman who died two years ago while in the care of an
Austin doctor who later gave up his medical license are suing him and
the alternative health clinic where he practiced.

A lawsuit filed last week in state district court in Travis County
names Lewis Zingery, 53, and Nature's Healthcare & Medical in Austin.
It also seeks payment from an unnamed pharmacist and pharmacy that
dispensed medications that the suit says led to the death of
29-year-old Keri Atkins in October 2003.

The lawsuit says Zingery prescribed a "cocktail" of drugs for Atkins
that proved to be fatal. It also says Zingery used Atkins to obtain
narcotics for his own use.

But the suit does not give details about how Atkins died, and a
lawyer for her parents declined to elaborate.

Zingery, who last had a Leander address, could not be reached Monday.
A spokeswoman for Nature's Healthcare said it was not involved in the
suit because it is no longer the same company with which Zingery worked.

Zingery delivered a baby with forceps at Darnall Army Community
Hospital at Fort Hood in 1995 who was severely brain damaged, leading
to a $32.7 million verdict against the federal government, which owns
the hospital. Zingery was not named in that suit.

In 1996, the Texas Medical Board put Zingery on probation for five
years based on allegations of alcohol abuse, substance abuse and
improper prescribing.

The board said Zingery denied the alcohol and substance abuse but
admitted that he wrote prescriptions without following proper procedures.

The board later said he could not deliver babies or practice
obstetrics without its permission. Zingery instead started an
alternative medicine practice at Nature's Healthcare in 2000, medical
board documents say.

The lawsuit, filed by Janis and Robert Atkins of Bryan, said their
daughter went to Zingery for pain after twice injuring her neck and
back in 2002.

The suit claims that Zingery prescribed "an increasingly potent and
addictive cocktail of narcotics in exchange for her filling
additional prescriptions made out in her own name on Dr. Zingery's
behalf and for his own recreational use. . . . Unfortunately for Keri
Atkins, the prescriptions provided by Dr. Zingery, when taken in
combination, are fatal."

Zingery did not warn his patient about the drugs, the suit says. The
lawsuit does not name the drugs Atkins took.

The Atkinses declined to comment and referred questions to their
attorney, Gaines West of Bryan. In declining to provide details, he
said "new case law" limited what he could say.

Keri Atkins' body was found Oct. 20, 2003. An autopsy performed by
the Travis County medical examiner's office Nov. 3, 2003, said Atkins
was found dead and alone in her apartment several days after friends
last saw her alive. The death was apparently an accident, the report
said, a result of "mixed drug toxicity."

The toxicology report on Atkins showed a mixture of ethanol
(alcohol), carisoprodol (muscle relaxant), meprobamate (anti-anxiety
agent), methadone (narcotic), promethazine (antihistamine) and trace
amounts of diazepam (anti-anxiety agent), nordiazepam (related to
diazepam) and hydrocodone (narcotic pain killer).

The suit says Nature's Healthcare should have ensured that Zingery
was competent when it hired him.

Joy Blaney, business operations manager at Nature's Healthcare, said
the clinic that Zingery operated was his own practice and that it
closed when he left, more than a year ago.

Nature's Healthcare, which has two locations where Zingery practiced,
now operates a chiropractic clinic, but "we don't employ medical
doctors," she said.

"As far as I know, the suit doesn't concern us. . . . We haven't been
served or anything."

After Atkins' death, Zingery was disciplined again by the medical
board, in February 2004. The board said his treatment of 32 patients
at Nature's Healthcare was "below the standard of care."

The board order did not mention any patient deaths but cited such
problems as prescribing opiates to patients before examining them;
prescribing psychiatric drugs without an evaluation or without proper
monitoring by a mental health provider; and excessive prescribing and
dose escalation of combinations of potentially addictive and central
nervous system-altering medications.

At that time, Zingery, a 1979 graduate of the University of Texas
Medical School at San Antonio, gave up his medical license.