John Ritter spoke from the grave Thursday at the trial of the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his widow and children.
Jurors heard the late actor's voice in a phone message he left his wife Amy Yasbeck on Sept. 11, 2003, shortly before he was taken to the hospital where he later died.
"Hi honey, this is John. I'm in my dressing room and not feeling very well. I think I have food poisoning," Ritter said in the phone message, left from the set of 8 Simples Rule For Dating My Teenage Daughter. "They're going to call a doctor to look at me."
Yasbeck testified Thursday that she spoke to her husband when he called back a few minutes later to say that he was probably not going to make an event at their daughter's school later that evening.
"He called back and said, 'Now I'm having chest pains and the nurse is coming and they're going to take me across the street,'" Yasbeck said, growing emotional on the stand, per the Associated Press.
Ritter's family is suing a cardiologist who treated the late actor on the day he died and a radiologist who performed a body scan on him two years earlier, claiming that the doctors misdiagnosed his condition.
Ritter died from a torn aorta, but was treated for a heart attack, the plaintiffs claim. They are seeking $67 million in damages.
Yasbeck recalled meeting her husband when they appeared together in 1989's Problem Child and later a sequel. She said they moved in together in 1997 and married in 1999. Their daughter, Stella, was born in 1998.
She said that Ritter was aware he could be prone to potential health problems, given that his father, Tex Ritter, died of a heart attack and his mother had suffered a major stroke.
"It came up all the time," she said. "He always wanted to lose weight. He worked out a lot."
Yasbeck said that in 2001, her husband went to get a body scan at her urging. The results, she recalled, were positive, at least according to Ritter.
Upon showing her the outcome of the scan, "he said, 'This is good. This is not bad for a man of my age.' He said, 'You'd better be good to me because I'm going to be around for a long time,'" Yasbeck recalled.
She said he did not mention any vascular problem diagnosed as a result of the test.
However, radiologist Matthew Lotysch testified Wednesday that he met with Ritter following the scan and told him he had triple vessel coronary disease and should follow up with an internist or cardiologist.
Yasbeck said her husband never mentioned the meeting.
She did not complete her testimony and was scheduled to return to the stand on Monday.
Also on Thursday, forensic economist Tamara Hunt testified that if Ritter had lived and 8 Simple Rules had continued for seven more years, he could have earned almost $41.9 million.