The Ledger

9.16 Harm

In this episode (9.16), an old, retired lawyer is found very badly beaten in his home. Was it someone who had an axe to grind over his arbitration work? Yes it was, but the case unexpectedly leads to an investigation into a medical practice where it appears the doctors botched a routine surgery, leading to a woman's death. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, then McCoy and Carmichael seek justice.

The episode begins with the discovery of the unconscious and bloody lawyer by his daughter and granddaughter ("He's taking a nap....He won't wake up"). The murder weapon: a glass beer stein. Sounds like a crime of opportunity, one of those "I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen" types. Briscoe and Curtis learn that the dead guy is a lawyer who occasionally helps out with couples arbitration. They look to see if he had any unhappy clients and come up with a Dr. Weiss and Mrs. Macfarlane, long-divorced but still fighting over the proceeds from his pension plan or something. Eventually they come up with the theory that the victim, Mr. Slattery, was bought off by Dr. Weiss so that he would decide in his favor. They further theorize that Macfarlane learned of the scheme, and killed him in revenge. Mrs. Macfarlane brought in for questioning, and soon enough they find enough physical evidence (blood, etc) to establish she did the assault. She confesses.

Sounds easy, right? Well, not so fast: as they look into Dr Weiss, they discover one case of a woman, Maureen Girard, who went in to have some uterine cysts removed and ended up dead. They ask Weiss what happened, but he's not much help. They begin to believe that his partner, Dr Rudnick had helped Weiss in the Slattery affair, and that Weiss is now covering up the cause of Girard's death to return the favor.

Evidence seems to suggest that a certain medical machine -- one used to pump fluid into a patients body -- malfunctioned during the procedure. Carmichael aks the medical staff to learn what happened, but encounters resistance, especially from a nurse named Panati. She does manage to learn, however, that a woman named Glynnis was in the room at the time of the surgery, operating the machine, but no one named Glynnis is employed at the hospital (at least outside of the cafeteria). Continuing to look for the cause of the equipment malfunction, Carmichael visits the manufacturer of the device, where she unintentionally learns they have a sales representative named --- you guessed it --- Glynnis.

Turns out Glynnis, an untrained person, was demonstrating the machine's use for the doctors, and the machine screwed up, filling the patient with fluid until she died. Carmichael wants to charge Glynnis and the doctors with murder, though both McCoy and Schiff are doubtful they can make it stick.

Judge Wright (the judge who looks like Peter Boyle) reviews the evidence and decides that Murder 2 can't be sustained, byt criminally negligent homicide can be. However, AC visits ole Nurse Panati again and Panati admits that Glynnis was operating the machine at the instruction of the doctors. (Very unusual!)

At trial (which begins 41 minutes in), Panati admits that she falsified the machine's records to cover for the other doctors. Realizing things are going badly, one of the other doctors (Dr Michaels) says he has damaging information about the other two, but Carmichael refuses to dead. He kills himself, but we learn from his lawyer that the other two doctors were receiving kickbacks from the medical equipment company. AC then asks the judge to re-instate Murder 2 charges. He does, and the remaining doctors plea to Man 1, 15 years each.

The episode is notable because Carmichael takes the lead in the trial and runs it herself. McCoy said malpractice cases rarely make good murder cases unless the doctor is stoned at the time of the surgery, so it's doubly impressive that Abbie was so successful. Another funny thing: Schiff makes a comment to Carmichael about McCoy's love life: "Where's McCoy? Out on a date with that history professor?" The line doesn't quite fit either Schiff's style or the rest of the episode, so it feels a little too purposely dropped, as if to throw a crumb to the backstory-fanatics out there.

Casting note: Mrs Macfarlane's defense attorney (who is in the ep for about 2 minutes) is played by Al Sapienza, who went on to play Mikey Palmici on The Sopranos.

The episode's title, I think, come's from the motto for doctors: "First, do no harm."

Posted by adm at April 16, 2004 01:26 AM

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