Kansas City, Mo. ? Robert R. Courtney is broke and in jail, and even his own lawyer says the former pharmacist hurt cancer patients when he watered down chemotherapy drugs.

But the civil lawsuit against him continued Tuesday as attorneys for ovarian cancer patient Georgia Hayes tried to persuade a jury to order Courtney to pay damages.

Courtney was the first witness Tuesday, testifying by videotaped deposition. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in declining to answer each question.

Hayes’ lawsuit is the first of more than 400 filed in Jackson County Circuit Court against Courtney to go to trial.

Hayes’ attorney, Michael Ketchmark said that Hayes responded well to chemotherapy treatments until September 1999, when her oncologist, Dr. Verda Hunter, started using Courtney’s pharmacy to prepare chemotherapy drugs.

Hunter’s testimony marked the first time she has spoken publicly about the case.

Hunter said that in May 2001, a nurse told her that a drug salesman for Eli Lilly & Co. had mentioned that Courtney appeared to be selling about three times more of the chemotherapy drug Gemzar than he was buying.

Hunter said she immediately tried to get some of Courtney’s solutions tested. She could not find a lab to test the Gemzar, but a test for the chemotherapy drug Taxol showed that Courtney’s solution contained just one-third the amount Hunter had prescribed.