Dan's Papers - January 16, 2009 - I DIVORCE YOU AND I WANT MY KIDNEY BACK

The beat for this newspaper is the Hamptons. And sometimes we write about Manhattan. But sometimes, even though those giant walls are up on the Long Island Expressway to keep Dan's Papers from writing about the goings on in that sinful, wacko land known as central Long Island, occasionally, a story seeps through that we have to write about.

This story has made national news. A man from Ronkonkoma has sued his wife in a divorce case for his kidney. He donated it to her in 2002 in happier times. Now, in not so happy times, he wants it back, or he wants $1.5 million in cash for it back. In other words, it's either the cash or you're dead, because if she gives it back, she dies. She was at death's door in 2002 when, in the 10th year of their marriage, her kidneys failed and her body rejected two earlier kidney donations. And so, her husband, Dr. Richard Batista, from the goodness of his heart - or kidney - donated one of his. In any case, for the last four years, these two have been locked in a really nasty divorce that began when, according to Dr. Batista, his wife, Dawn Batista, after injuring her knee in a karate class, began having an affair with her physical therapist. Among other things, the physical therapist's underwear wound up in his laundry.

Though the media is having a field day with this story, the real story is, I think, about the very successful and flamboyant attorney that Dr. Batista hired to take over his case. He chose Dr. Dominic Barbara, the attorney who in the past represented two other high profile central Long Islanders, Joey Buttafuoco, the garage mechanic who was having an affair with Amy Fisher, a 16 year old kid who appeared at Buttafuoco's house in Amityville one morning with a pistol and shot his wife. (She lived.) And Jessica Hahn, a secretary in a Massapequa church who claimed she was raped by TV evangelist Jim Bakker when he came by the church to deliver a sermon. Her claim pretty much ruined Bakker, the king of bad hair, who would give his TV sermons with his long false-eyelashed wife Tammy Faye Bakker by his side on the podium.

I cannot prove this, but Dr. Batista waited four years after starting his divorce case to ask for his kidney back, and he only did so after Barbara, his new attorney, got involved. It may not have been such a wise move. The national media attention, which has resulted from this demand, could negatively affect the reputation of this surgeon, who for the last 15 years has been affiliated with the Nassau University Medical Center. I mean, would you be inclined to go under the knife at this point with this man? Well, maybe all the media attention will pass.

The upside to this, I think, is that Dr. Batista means well. As Alec Baldwin pointed out in his new book A Promise to Ourselves, going through a divorce for five years or more, as he has with Kim Basinger, can be a form of hell on earth because of the gleeful encouragement of the legal profession.

Dr. Batista says today that when he donated the kidney, he did so without hesitation. "My first priority was to save her life. Today, even with all I have been through, I would do it again."

He also says there is no feeling on earth like that of saving another person's life.

His move - legal papers have been filed in Islip - was taken out of the enormous frustration he is going through today getting through the thicket of barriers his wife has put up to keep him from seeing their three kids, age 14, 11 and 8, he says. He also says he doesn't really want the kidney back, just the value of it in terms of what it cost him, both in medical costs and in the value of the organ, in making the financial settlement with her.

As far as attorneys go, it is a financial jackpot. The time passes, the clock clicks off the costs. The more time, the more bucks.

Dawn Batista is now going to have to bring legal and financial experts in to court to state whether a person can ask for financial compensation for a kidney, and to calculate what a kidney is worth.

Apparently, organ donors sign agreements that say they give their organs willingly and without expectation of financial remuneration at a later date. (Joe Organreceiver wins the lottery. Bill Organgiver cannot ask for a percent of it.)

"It's a non-starter, this claim," said one legal expert, probably billing somebody for 0.1 hours of his time for saying that.

Dawn Batista's attorney, Douglas Rothkopf, has already waded in with a claim that Dr. Batista is in violation of agreements made in court that he wouldn't say anything derogatory about his wife while this divorce is in session. So she may sue him or have him jailed or something for that.

I read somewhere that the value of everything in the human body, if sold as metals or mineral on the open market, is $27. I think the government puts this value on the death of a person when they die in some calculation or other, and I think I read somewhere recently, due to the sudden increase in the value of copper and aluminum, that this value has now been recalculated to be $55.

On the other hand, this doctor really did spend a whole lot of money to save his wife's life, no doubt about it.

A few final thoughts.

"She's a wonderful person," Dawn Batista's mother recently told a reporter.

Another reporter asked Jill Brooke, the editor of FirstWivesWorld.com for a comment. "What next, he wants his sperm back for his kids?"