Second Opinion (Season 5, Episode 1)
Premise: A teacher with breast cancer dies after skipping surgery for an unapproved treatment, and the DA’s office tries to hold the woman who sold it responsible for her death.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 1
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Jan Maxwell as Dr. Nancy Haas, Tony Roberts as Nicholas Bennett, Elizabeth Ashley as Gwen Young, Mitchell Greenberg as Dr. Alan Friedlan
- Director
- Ed Sherin
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Jeremy R. Littman
Summary
The Investigation
“Second Opinion” opens when fifth-grade teacher Ann Bennett collapses at St. Andrew’s Academy and dies in the ER, where a nurse passes out from a smell like cyanide. The ER is evacuated and the body is quarantined. Her husband, antique dealer Nicholas Bennett, says she died of breast cancer.
Briscoe and Logan learn that Ann’s cancer was a preexisting condition her school insurance would not cover, and that Nicholas’s business has been sinking under her medical bills. A tox screen finds cyanide in her blood. Ann had been seeing Dr. Nancy Haas, a molecular biologist with no medical degree who sells a “metabolic therapy” as an alternative to surgery. Ann’s former oncologist, Dr. Friedlan, says he urged a mastectomy, and that three earlier patients who chose Haas are dead.
After Nicholas goes to court to get the body released, the autopsy shows Ann died of liver cancer; the cyanide traces were not fatal and the nurse’s collapse was panic. Haas’s formula turns out to use apricot seeds, an unapproved substance.
The Trial
Jack McCoy, newly named Executive ADA, meets Claire Kincaid, who pushes to charge Haas with selling an unapproved cancer remedy. Haas’s lawyer, Gwen Young, offers community service; McCoy refuses and looks at larceny instead. Interviews with patients show about a dozen say Haas promised a cure, many others on her list are dead, and she charges $75,000 a course. When an oncologist estimates Haas shortened Ann’s life by at least five years, McCoy has her arrested for murder.
Schiff doubts that a failure to act can be murder. Young moves to dismiss, and Judge Ianello lets the case go forward but bars any evidence of promises Haas made to other patients. Nicholas testifies that Ann was transformed after starting with Haas, but on cross says his wife never told him Haas promised a cure. McCoy notices Young never asked whether Haas made the promise to Nicholas directly, and he presses Nicholas, who finally admits they both trusted her.
Spoiler, the ending: Facing Nicholas’s new testimony, Haas takes a plea to first-degree manslaughter and is headed to prison at Bedford. McCoy predicts the other husbands will not sue her, held back by the same denial that drew them to her.
Why it stands out
- This is Sam Waterston’s first episode as Executive ADA Jack McCoy, who replaces Ben Stone.
- Kincaid raises McCoy’s past relationships with assistants at their first meeting; he says there were three in 24 years, including his ex-wife.
- The legal fight turns on whether a lie that keeps a patient from treatment counts as a guilty act for murder.