Stress lines show at the Botox trial

Stephen Fraser, the younger, more energetic attorney on dermatologist Arnold Klein's legal team, paced around the courtroom like the leading man on opening night.

"Let's do this thing!" he shouted. "Let's get this show on the road!"

It was Week 5 of the so-called Botox trial -- the first time Allergan's miracle wrinkle cure has been the subject of a lawsuit -- and closing arguments were imminent.

Allergan stacked its side of the audience with well-dressed allies until the room grew stuffy with them. Klein's nurses filed into the back row, not a frown line among them, while their boss shuffled to the front.

And Irena Medavoy, the Hollywood socialite suing the drug company and the doctor for a months-long illness she says was the result of Botox poisoning, offered a wan smile to her small cadre of supporters.

It has been a memorable trial, particularly for those with an appreciation of the absurd. (Although there were weeks of medical testimony, so much that even the judge struggled to stay awake.) There was the time Medavoy's attorney Jeff Benice mistakenly called her "Mrs. Prozac" in front of the jury, and that unforgettable shouting match between Klein and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victor Chavez, and the claim by one psychiatrist that Saddam Hussein and his infamous "weapons of mass destruction" were indirectly to blame for Medavoy's illness.

The jury began deliberating the case Wednesday. And at this point it's a toss-up as to which has been worse for Medavoy: the four-month migraine she says started after a March 2002 Botox treatment and cost her $92,000 in medical bills, or the merciless scrutiny she has endured in court.

For weeks, the jury has studied nearly every one of her life crises of the last 25 years (the deaths of immediate family members, her divorces, her career struggles, the pending sale of the Medavoys' $15-million mansion in Beverly Park) and their resulting physical and emotional manifestations (herpes outbreaks, digestive problems, anxiety and depression).

It's possible that such intimate study has helped humanize Medavoy. She may be rich and beautiful and count Denzel Washington and Bill Clinton as friends, but she takes antidepressants just like everyone else. Sure, she can afford to have them delivered to her house, but the multitudes of have-nots can still cling to the notion that money can't buy happiness.