Man files lawsuit to take wife's name

By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 12, 5:52 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Mike Buday isn't married to his last name. In fact, he and his fiancee decided before they wed that he would take hers. But Buday was stunned to learn that he couldn't simply become Mike Bijon when they married in 2005.

As in most other states, that would require some bureaucratic paperwork well beyond what a woman must go through to change her name when marrying. Instead of completing the expensive, time-consuming process, Buday and his wife, Diana Bijon, enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union and filed a discrimination lawsuit against the state of California. They claim the difficulty faced by a husband seeking to change his name violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. "Diana and I feel strongly about gender equality for both men and women," Buday said. "I think the most important thing in all of this is to bring it to a new level of awareness."

Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU in Southern California, said it is the first federal lawsuit of its kind in the country. "It's the perfect marriage application for the 17th century," Rosenbaum said. "It belongs in the same trash can as dowries." Only six states — Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York and North Dakota — have statutes establishing equal name-change processes for men and women when they marry. In California and other states, men cannot choose a different last name while filing a marriage license.

In California, a man who wants to take his wife's name must file a petition, pay more than $300, place a public notice for weeks in a local newspaper and then appear before a judge. Because of Buday's case, a California state lawmaker has introduced a bill to put a space on the marriage license for either spouse to change names.

The Census Bureau does not keep figures on how many U.S. men are taking their brides' names. But clearly it happening more and more. Milwaukee County, Wis., Clerk Mark Ryan estimated that one in every 100 grooms there now takes the name of his wife. Bijon, 28, approached Buday about the idea when they were dating. She had no brothers but wanted to prolong the family name. Buday, a 29-year-old developer of interactive advertising, was estranged from his own father and was not attached to his own last name. "I knew immediately it was pretty important to her or else she wouldn't have brought it up," Buday said.

At one point, the couple tried the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a name change. But Buday said he was told by a woman behind the counter: "Men just don't do that type of thing." Couples who want to hyphenate or combine their names also must endure the lengthy court procedures in California. One of the more notable examples was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who went to court to fuse his last name, Villar, with his wife's, Raigosa, when they married in 1987.

Laws giving women an easy choice of names were largely a byproduct of the feminist movement. A 2004 Harvard University study found that the number of college-educated women who kept their surnames upon marriage rose from about 3 percent in 1975 to nearly 20 percent in 2001.

Rehnquist Addicted to Painkillers for Years

By PETE YOST

AP

WASHINGTON (Jan. 5) - A physician at the U.S. Capitol prescribed a powerful sleep aid for William Rehnquist for nearly a decade while he was an associate justice of the Supreme Court , according to newly released FBI records.

The records present a picture of a justice with chronic back pain who for many months took three times the recommended dosage of the drug Placidyl and then went into withdrawal in 1981 when he abruptly stopped taking it.

Rehnquist checked himself into a hospital, where he tried to escape in his pajamas and imagined that the CIA was plotting against him, the records indicate.

Although Rehnquist's drug dependency was publicly known around the time he was hospitalized in 1981, the release of the FBI records provides new details.

The justice was weaned off Placidyl in early 1982 in a detoxification process that took a month, according to the records. The hospital doctor who treated Rehnquist said the Capitol Hill physician who prescribed Placidyl for Rehnquist was practicing bad medicine, bordering on malpractice. Both doctors' names were deleted from the documents before they were released.

The FBI documents were prepared in 1986 when Rehnquist - who began serving on the court on Jan. 7, 1972 - was nominated for chief justice, years after his problems with the drug had ended. They were released by the agency in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The agency said one of the seven folders of Rehnquist documents could not be found.

A psychiatrist told the FBI that Rehnquist's family in 1981 noted "long-standing slurred speech which seems to coincide with administration of Placidyl," one FBI interview report stated. The psychiatrist also indicated that Rehnquist's chronic back pain led to his heavy use of such substances as Darvon and Tylenol 3, which the psychiatrist said also played a part in Rehnquist's condition.

An attending physician at the U.S. Capitol detailed Rehnquist's problems with Placidyl for the FBI, saying that prior to his seeing the justice in 1972, Rehnquist was prescribed the drug by another doctor for relief from insomnia. The attending physician told the FBI he continued to prescribe Placidyl for the entire 10-year period that he treated Rehnquist.

The physician said that Rehnquist had been prescribed 500 milligrams of Placidyl per evening, but that Rehnquist was actually taking 1,500 milligrams each night. The doctor said this increased consumption may have coincided with Mrs. Rehnquist's illness and treatment for cancer.

Rehnquist had told the physician that he was taking one pill before going to bed and he would take other pills if he awakened during the night.

The physician indicated that he decided to discontinue the drug's use and to try another medication. Rehnquist said the new medication was not strong enough, an FBI interview report stated. The physician said he then prescribed a substitute and then another, at which point Rehnquist went into the hospital..

The hospital doctor who successfully weaned Rehnquist from the drug told the FBI that the toxicity of Placidyl causes blurred vision, slurred speech and difficulty in making physical movements. Once a patient stops taking the drug, the withdrawal symptoms of delirium begin, which is what happened to Rehnquist at the hospital.

The doctor who helped Rehnquist get off the drug said the justice's wife was highly upset and felt that the prescribing physician and the pharmacist who filled the prescription were probably intimidated by such high-ranking officials as Supreme Court justices and senators and probably would have agreed to almost any request.

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2007-01-05 10:40:48