Harm (Season 9, Episode 16)
Premise: The beating of a retired divorce lawyer leads Carmichael to a busy gynecology practice where a patient died after an equipment saleswoman ran an unapproved fluid pump during routine surgery.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 16
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Sam Freed as Dr. Bill Rudnick, Stephen Bogardus as Dr. Peter Michaels, Melinda Wade as Glynnis Ward, Ellen Whyte as Claudia Panati, Maria Tucci as defense attorney Helen Brolin
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- René Balcer & Eddie Feldmann
Summary
The Investigation
“Harm” starts as an assault case: retired divorce attorney Kenneth Slattery, 67, is found unconscious in his apartment by his daughter, struck with a Harvard beer stein. He had been mediating custody disputes for free, and a quarrelsome couple, Javier and Linda Hernandez, are questioned first. A storage company record shows Slattery recently pulled the file of former client Kelly McFarland, whose ex-husband, Dr. Jacob Weiss, is cashing out a pension worth about $3 million. In a deposition, Slattery swore McFarland had given up any claim to it, and she accused him of being bought.
Slattery’s blood turns up in the bathroom of McFarland’s showroom, and she admits hitting him with a mug after he refused to change his account; she later pleads to second-degree assault. Carmichael, though, keeps digging. A message slip shows Weiss’s partner Dr. Bill Rudnick, who once delivered Slattery’s grandson, calling the lawyer. The detectives learn that the practice was sued after patient Maureen Gerard died following routine polyp surgery by Rudnick and Dr. Peter Michaels, and that Weiss moved to quit the practice a week later.
Hospital logs show the only approved fluid pump left the operating room while Mrs. Gerard was still under. A nurse recalls a second machine run by a bespectacled woman called Glynnis. The chart lists a solution strength the hospital’s pump cannot use, which points to a newer system from B and C Medtech whose sales representative, Glynnis Ward, covers St. Mark’s. Ward has no medical license. Carmichael charges her and both surgeons.
The Trial
A judge throws out the depraved indifference murder count and leaves criminally negligent homicide. Nurse Claudia Panati testifies that she warned the surgeons the fluid was not draining, that Rudnick was rushing to another patient, that Mrs. Gerard received nearly 10 liters, and that she altered the chart to shield Michaels. Michaels seeks a deal, offering evidence against Rudnick, but Carmichael insists on prison and loss of his license. He disappears mid-trial and is later found dead in his car in a Putnam County gully.
With the jury apparently deadlocked, McCoy asks the judge to let Michaels’s lawyer reveal what Michaels meant to trade. The judge agrees, ruling that the doctor clearly intended to disclose it. The lawyer testifies that Rudnick, Michaels and Ward had a kickback arrangement worth several hundred thousand dollars if St. Mark’s bought the Medtech system. The judge lets Carmichael bring the murder charges back on the new evidence.
Spoiler, the ending: Ward pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Carmichael offers Rudnick 15 years to life, and his lawyer asks for the paperwork; Carmichael then asks Rudnick whether he ever looked at the faces of the women who passed through his exam rooms.
Why it stands out
- Carmichael spots a possible operating-room homicide inside the doctors’ practice while the Slattery assault case is still under way.
- McCoy wins a ruling letting a dead defendant’s lawyer testify about what his client told him, on the ground that the client had meant to reveal it in a plea deal.
- The opening assault is solved early, and the rest of the episode follows a death in surgery that the hospital’s own review had cleared.