07.30.07 Chief Justice John
Roberts Suffered Seizure
John Roberts - Wikipedia
Chief Justice Roberts
Suffers Seizure
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
(07-31) 05:14 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
Doctors who examined the stricken Chief Justice John
Roberts called the episode at his Maine vacation home a
"benign idiopathic seizure," meaning they found no
tumor, stroke or any other explanation.
Roberts, 52, had a similar, unexplained attack in 1993.
The seizure Monday caused the chief justice to fall on a
dock, where he sustained minor scrapes, Supreme Court
spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.
She said he was kept overnight at the Penobscot Bay
Medical Center in Rockport for observation.
By definition, someone who has had more than one seizure
without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy,
said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a Washington Hospital Center
neurologist who is not involved in the Roberts case.
Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to
prevent another is something he and his doctor will have
to decide. But after two seizures, the likelihood of
another at some point is greater than 60 percent.
Epilepsy is merely a term for a seizure disorder, but it
is a loaded term because it makes people think of lots
of seizures, cautioned Dr. Edward Mkrdichian, a
neurosurgeon at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery
and Neuroresearch.
Still, Mkrdichian said anyone who has had two otherwise
unexplained seizures is at high risk for a third, and
that he puts such patients on anti-seizure medications.
"Having two seizures so many years apart without any
known culprit is going to be very difficult to figure
out," agreed Dr. Max Lee of the Milwaukee Neurological
Institute.
The incident occurred around 2 p.m. on a dock near
Roberts' summer home in Port Clyde on Maine's Hupper
Island. He had just gotten off a boat and was returning
home after running errands, Arberg said. Port Clyde,
which is part of the town of St. George, is about 90
miles by car northeast of Portland, midway up the coast
of Maine.
Roberts was taken by private boat to the mainland and
then transferred to an ambulance, St. George Fire Chief
Tim Polky said.
"He was conscious and alert when they put him in the
rescue (vehicle)," Polky said.
Once at the hospital, he underwent a "thorough
neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for
concern," Arberg said.
Named to the court by President Bush in 2005, Roberts is
the youngest justice on a court in which the senior
member, John Paul Stevens, is 87. Bush was informed of
the hospitalization by his chief of staff, Josh Bolten,
the White House said.
Roberts is the father of two young children.
Larry Robbins, a Washington attorney who worked with
Roberts at the Justice Department in 1993, said he drove
Roberts to work for several months after Roberts'
seizure that year. Robbins said Roberts never mentioned
what the problem was and he never heard of it happening
again.
In 2001, Roberts described his health as "excellent,"
according to Senate Judiciary Committee records.
Roberts became chief justice after the death of William
Rehnquist in September 2005, although Bush had first
chosen him to take Sandra Day O'Connor's seat when she
announced her retirement earlier that year.
Roberts has led the Supreme Court to a more conservative
stance. Helped by Justice Samuel Alito, who won
confirmation in early 2006, conservatives have won twice
as often as they lost on the Roberts-led court. The
2006-07 term brought limits on abortion rights,
restrictions on school integration programs and greater
freedom for political advertising.
Roberts earlier served as an appellate judge in
Washington and spent more than a decade before that as a
lawyer at the Hogan and Hartson law firm, where he
specialized in arguing cases before the Supreme Court.
Roberts also served in the Reagan and Bush
administrations in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a clerk
for Rehnquist after graduating from Harvard Law School.
Roberts spent a couple of weeks in Europe in July,
teaching a course in Vienna and attending a conference
in Paris. He was at the court in Washington late last
week.
Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine,
Glenn Adams in Rockport and Lauran Neergaard in
Washington contributed to this story.
|