Look back in time (1993)

It's an unforgettable image for any local sports fan: Boston Celtics captain Reggie Lewis staggering down the court and falling onto the parquet of the Boston Garden in the middle of an NBA playoff game.

But even more memorable was the subsequent news of the 27-year-old basketball star's death while practicing jump shots. His death in 1993 came only months after Lewis had stood hand in hand with his pregnant wife, Donna Harris-Lewis, and renowned cardiologist, Dr. Gilbert Mudge, at a press conference during which Mudge announced to the world that Lewis had "a normal athlete's heart" and was fit to play.

Mudge's opinion that Lewis had only a benign fainting condition ran counter to that of a 12-member "dream team" of doctors that had said Lewis had a life-threatening, potentially career-ending heart condition. But Lewis had rejected that opinion, walked out of the hospital, and received a clean bill of health and the green light to play from Mudge.

Although Harris-Lewis publicly supported Mudge in the weeks following her husband's death, the relationship deteriorated when she filed a lawsuit three years later, claiming that Mudge and two consultants had misdiagnosed and mistreated Lewis' condition and seeking millions of dollars in wages that the basketball star would have earned.

There was speculation that the suit was filed in retaliation for a 1995 article in the Wall Street Journal — in which Mudge was quoted — that alluded to Lewis' cocaine use. While his widow vehemently denied her husband's drug use, it remained a subject at the first trial, which ultimately ended in a hung jury in 1999.

At the retrial, Mudge testified that Lewis admitted using cocaine and said that this drug use made a conclusive diagnosis difficult. But Superior Court Judge Thayer Fremont-Smith said there was no evidence that drug use contributed to Lewis' death and instructed the jury to disregard the testimony.

After four weeks of grueling testimony, a jury in 2000 found that Mudge was not negligent in his care of the Celtics star.

"I think the case is important [because] it shows that jurors are not swayed by the popularity of individuals, but rather [they] are willing to pay attention to the liability issues and to put aside the extraneous," William J. Dailey Jr. of Boston, who represented Mudge, said at the time.

In 2004, Harris-Lewis' bid for a third trial was rejected by the Appeals Court, putting an end to the legal battle 11 years after her husband's death.