Are surgical malpractice cases dead in N.C.?
By MARK McGRATH Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a two-part series in which Mark McGrath takes a look at surgical malpractice cases in North Carolina. In the first, he explored the application of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur by the N.C. Court of Appeals. Imagine the following scenario. Police are called to the house of a prominent businessman. They find the man in bed, quite dead, with a massive laceration to his throat. In the basement of the home, they find a bloody straight razor bearing the fingerprints of his estranged wife and traces of the victim’s blood. Upon questioning, the woman confesses that she had been shaving her husband earlier in the day when, suddenly, “there was blood everywhere.” “I must have inadvertently pressed down too hard while I was shaving his neck,” she sobs hysterically. Upon further investigation, police determine that the wife had taken out a $5 million life insurance policy on her husband only a week earlier and has recently been s
