Woman fights 12-year uphill battle in court over sight loss

Malia Spencer

Friday, Aug. 29, 2003 | 4:44 a.m.

Anya Duke says she has always been a fighter.

In her 65 years she has survived a world war and a communist dictator, only to find her greatest fight in the state of Nevada's legal system and bureaucracy.

Born near Kiev, Russia, in 1938, Anya fled the the Nazi invasion with her family. Her mother gathered Anya, her older sister and younger brother, and the four traveled roughly 149 miles to a border town in neighboring Uzbekistan.

"I remember explosions," she said. "I recall running through open fields and bombs falling in the background."

For four years the family stayed in Uzbekistan, trying to achieve some sense of normalcy, she said.

They escaped that oppressive regime only to return to Russia to live under another -- the rule of Joseph Stalin.

"What was in Russia was unbelievable," she said. "Stalin was a dictator, not any better then Saddam."

She recalled standing in line all night at the grocery store just to buy a loaf of bread. She also remembers her parents being dragged from their home one night and interrogated by police. As she described the incident, the fear was still evident in her voice.

"I was scared they would throw them in jail," she said. "They throw you in Siberia and you die up there."

But she never gave up and survived Russian communist rule.

She went on to learn seven languages, live in five countries, marry an American special forces officer and fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming an American citizen. It was in the United States, however, that Anya found her fighting spirit tested to its limit.

She has been engaged in a legal battle that has spanned 12 years, and most recently she has been fighting a state organization for the assistance she thinks she deserves.

"It's like a flea taking on an elephant," Jim Duke, Anya's husband, said. "We being the flea."

Her toughest fight began when Anya and Jim Duke retired to Las Vegas in 1991.

That year she went to the eye doctor for treatment of an inflammation in her left eye. When she mentioned she had small black spots in her right eye, her regular doctor referred Anya to another medical firm.

The resulting treatment, she claims, left her completely blind in her right eye and legally blind in her left.

So Anya Duke filed a malpractice suit against the medical firm and the doctor who treated her.

A decade later she is still fighting, not only to get what she considers a fair hearing in court, but also to save the sight in her left eye, her "good" eye.

Her legal fight started with lawyers by her side, but she fired one after the other, thinking they were not serving her interests, and finally decided to represent herself.

"For 12 years she has been fighting this," Jim Duke said. "She is creating all these pleadings without legal training against the most powerful firm in the state."

She lost motions to allow crucial evidence, including testimony that she was blind, setbacks for which she blames the lawyers she fired.

When the case went to trial in August 2000, it ended five minutes into her opening argument with the District Court judge dismissing the case, saying she didn't have enough evidence.

Anya Duke appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, and won her first victory in the case when the high court ruled in May that the District Court should not have dismissed the case.

"Order reversing and remanding, those four words made me so happy. I cry from happiness," Anya said.

But her victory may be superficial.

She still has issue with the many errors she sees in the District Court's handling of the case. This includes the quick dismissal, the exclusion of much of her evidence and her inability to tell the jury she is blind.

But the appeals court upheld those District Court decisions, so much of her evidence is still barred from court. She is afraid when her case is again heard, it will be again dismissed.

She has filed another appeal asking the state Supreme Court to hear her case.

She knows it is a long shot and doesn't expect the court to hear her case but, she said, it is her last option and her last chance for justice.

The battle has cost she and her husband their retirement savings, $100,000.

"This has ruined us. Ruined our savings, garnished my husband's wages, ruined our health," Anya Duke said. "This is just killing us."

The once vibrant and active woman said she now barely sleeps, suffers from an anxiety disorder and rarely leaves her home.

The loss of sight has caused her to age prematurely and affected her ability to take care of her appearance, which at one time she was proud of.

"My anxiety is sky-high," she said.

In addition to the legal fight, Anya Duke is confronting the bureaucracy of a state agency.

She has been a client of Services of the Blind and Visually Impaired, an agency designed to provide vocational rehabilitation, mobility training and adaptive training.

Anya Duke is trying to open up her own grant writing business from her home. She is seeking a $20,000 grant from the agency to start the business, she said.

But she has been asked to rewrite her business plan five times and denied the assistance she seeks, she said. She is frustrated because, she claims, she cannot get a straight answer from anyone.

The fight in her has been defeated, she said.

"They used to say if they put me out the door I would climb in the window," she said.

Now she is running out of windows. Doctors have told her that she would have to have her right eye removed because it is shrinking and causing her pain.

With the sight in her left eye quickly failing, the once strong-willed woman faces the possibility of being completely blind at the age of 65.

"If I was totally blind I don't know if I want to live," she said. "I went through a lot of humiliation from what I was before."