The Verdict: Movie Analysis

“The Verdict” is a movie not only portraying a medical negligence case, but also showing the corruption of the American legal system. Frank Galvin, the lawyer, needs to prove that there was an injury, duty, breach of duty and causation to win this case. However, the judge is seemingly doing everything in his power to make sure that Mr. Galvin loses the case so the highly known doctors can clear their names.

Injury – Deborah Ann Kaye was a mother getting ready to deliver her third baby. When given the wrong anesthetic, Deborah started to vomit in her oxygen mask. This caused a lack of oxygen and soon, cardiac arrest. They were able to get a heartbeat back, but the lack of oxygen gave her permit brain damage. Deborah has been in a comatose

Keep them safe, keep them motivated, and keep them alive. The doctors job in that delivery room was to keep both mom and baby alive to any extent. This is also a point that I believe the jury can easily understand without going into detail. You go to a hospital to get better, not for the doctors to make a stupid mistake that ends in the loss of lives.

Breach of Duty – This is when it starts to get tricky. It wasn’t hard for us to prove of the injury and the duty of the doctors. It is hard to prove that Dr. Towler was the one who broke his responsibility to the patient. Especially with the government on his said. He claims that he looked at the patients record and everything was good to go. So the reason that this patient is dead, wasn’t because of him. Later we find out that Dr. Towler asked Nurse Kaitlin to change the record of the last time the patient ate from a “1” to a “9” or else he would make sure she got fired.

Causation – when Nurse Kaitlin tells the jury of the threat of Dr. Towler and how he cut corners to hide the fact that the death of a mother and her unborn child was not his fault, the causation was found. The judge can say all he wants to the jury to forget about what Nurse Kaitlin said, but that is something you cannot get off your mind. The selfishness and laziness of this Doctor caused so much pain. We trust that doctors look over the information we hand over and use it to keep us