Winner asks to see loser's hand. Is the hand live?

[mblax10]

Playing in a real good 3/5 NL game last night at Potawatomi. A big pot goes heads up to the river. Winner bets $150, loser thinks for a while before calling. Winner shows down 3rd pair. Loser re-checks his hand than tosses it face down in the middle of the table.

Winner asks to see the loser's hand, dealer (who is one of the better dealers their) says loser's hand is still live, and flips over his ace high.

Now another regular solid player chimes in that dealer should have tapped the hand on the muck to kill the hand. Dealer says "I'm sorry you're incorrect since the player who won the hand asked to see the loser's hand, the loser's hand is still live. If another player asked to see loser's hand dealer would've killed the hand before exposing it." The player and dealer argue about it pretty civily into the middle of next hand and dealer says this is the correct ruling everywhere, regular player disagrees and the dealer calls the floor.

Now all of a sudden some guy at the table next to us who was playing 3/6 limit and watching our game wants to fight the regular because he's "Being an ass and trying to show up the dealer."

While all of this commotion is happening, I'm proceeding to lose a $1500 pot and get up to go home before the whole situation was resolved. Was the dealer correct to not kill the loser's hand since the winner of the hand asked to see it?