DAMAGE AWARD UPHELD IN DEATH OF ILL BOY TREATED WITH PRAYER.

Byline: Aaron Epstein Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

The first civil jury verdict against Christian Science spiritual healers became final Monday when the Supreme Court refused to review a $1.5 million award against the mother and religious care-givers who treated a diabetic Minnesota boy with prayer.

The boy died.

At the same time, the justices left the Christian Science Church itself free of a $9 million judgment imposed by a jury to punish the church.

Still, several other large churches said the outcome threatens the freedoms of all religions because it permits "clergy malpractice" suits in Minnesota.

The decision "leaves four individuals to shoulder the extraordinary burden of paying $1.5 million in damages for practicing their religion . . . in good faith," said Michael Born, spokesman for the Boston-based First Church of Christ Scientist.

But James H. Kaster, a Minneapolis lawyer for the boy's father, who filed a wrongful death suit, said the legal lesson of the case is that "exclusive reliance on prayer treatment instead of medical care for a seriously ill child can give rise to liability."

The conflict between religious freedom and the government's duty to protect the lives of children originated in Independence, Minn., where 11-year-old Ian Lundman complained of stomach pains on May 6, 1989.

His mother, Kathleen McKown, a lifelong Christian Scientist, prayed for him in accordance with her religious belief in spiritual healing without medical intervention.

The next day, when the boy did not improve, McKown obtained help from Mario Tosto, a Christian Science practitioner, and Quinna Lamb Giebelhaus, a Christian Science nurse.

On May 9, three days after his initial complaint, Ian died.

A police officer summoned to the McKown home said the boy looked "very fragile, like he had lost weight recently, very skinny, and just basically to tell you the truth, didn't even look human." An examination showed he had suffered from diabetes.

In the 1993 trial of a suit filed by Douglass Lundman, McKown's ex-husband and Ian's father, doctors testified that the boy's disease could easily have been treated with insulin.

"The undisputed facts show that Ian's care-givers failed to seek medical help . . . despite continuous and dramatic indications that . . . he would die, given continued reliance on Christian Science prayer. The undisputed facts indicate that (they) had no lawful choice but to seek medical help."

The appeals court left intact $1.5 million in damages against the boy's mother and stepfather, William McKown, together with Tosto and Giebelhaus.

But it struck down a jury assessment of $9 million in punitive damages against the Christian Science Church, which teaches that conventional medicine interferes with the effort to heal through spiritual methods.

Churches aren't exempt from damages intended to punish them, the court said, but in this case "the risk of intruding . . . upon the forbidden field of religious freedom is too great."

On Monday, the Supreme Court turned down a petition seeking to restore the punitive-damage award against First Church, which asserted that thousands of people have been cured through Christian Science healing.

Michael W. McConnell, a University of Chicago law professor who specializes in religion issues, wrote in a legal brief that more than 40 states have passed laws recognizing the value of spiritual treatment as an acceptable form of health care for children.

But in the past decade, courts in California, Florida and other states have nullified the protections of those laws, said McConnell, who represented McKown and the other defendants.

Now, "for the first time, Christian Science parents are threatened with criminal and civil sanctions for the practice of their religion," McConnell declared.