Tag: Paul Newman

The Verdict is a courtroom drama about a Boston lawyer, Frank Galvin (played by Paul Newman) who brings suit against the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, one of its hospitals and a world-renowned doctor who botched the anesthesia on a woman who was there to give birth.  The woman went into cardiac arrest, the baby died and she ended up in a permanent coma.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Galvin is currently an ambulance chaser who spends most of his time drinking.  Years earlier he had a brilliant career and was married to the daughter of a senior partner at a prestigious law firm.  But when he threatened to expose witness tampering by one of his colleagues, he was indicted on trumped up charges and his career and marriage disappeared.  Now years later his former mentor Mickey Morrissey (played by Jack Ward) throws him one last chance to pull his life out of the gutter.  He gives him the above-mentioned malpractice suit knowing that the Archdiocese will pay handsomely to hush up the criminal negligence.  And he hopes this financial success will give Galvin a chance to revive his law practice.

But when Galvin goes to the nursing home to take photographs of the comatose patient, he has a moment of conscience and decides that instead of settling the case out of court he will prosecute the doctor for negligence to get justice for the destruction of this woman’s life.  The woman’s sister and brother-in-law are enraged thinking Galvin is only interested in the larger settlement that a court case might yield and Morrissey is shocked at what he sees as the foolishness of throwing away a guaranteed $70,000 fee for accepting the settlement.  But Morrissey agrees to help Galvin with his court case.  Likewise, the judge in the case and the defense attorney Ed Concannon (played by James Mason) are astonished that Galvin is determined to go to court.  But Concannon has enormous resources as the head of a powerful and unscrupulous law firm.  He sets to work to destroy Galvin’s case.  He coerces the expert witness on anesthesia not to testify for Galvin and even plants a spy in Galvin’s life by paying a woman, Laura Fischer, who wanted to work for Concannon, to insinuate herself into Galvin’s life and even sleep with him in order to provide the defense team with the details of Galvin’s case.

And Concannon’s tactics work brilliantly.  Galvin’s case is hopelessly inconclusive and it seems inevitable that the jury will come up with a verdict of not-guilty.  The only possible hope is an OR nurse who refuses to testify for Concannon.  But she also refuses to help Galvin.  Her angry defensiveness leads Galvin to suspect she is protecting someone else and upon reviewing the employment records he guesses that Kaitlin Costello, the admitting nurse on that day, is the one being shielded.  Costello resigned shortly after the incident.  By some underhanded tricks Galvin finds Costello and convinces her to testify.  What we learn from her testimony is that the patient had eaten an hour before coming to the hospital and should not have been given anesthesia.  The doctor had worked on five difficult surgeries in a row and had made the mistake due to fatigue.  After the catastrophic injury to the patient the doctor threatened Costello to change the note concerning her pre-op meal from 1 hour to 9 hours by doctoring the admission record.  Costello refused and made a photocopy of the form just in case someone else doctored it.  And that was exactly what happened.

After this riveting testimony, Concannon raises an objection to the photocopied document which is sustained by the judge and then raises an objection to the testimony based on its lack of credibility without the photocopy.  The judge sustains this also and advises the jury not to credit any of the testimony.  But obviously the jury cannot unhear such damning evidence and they find for the plaintiff.

The plot of this movie doesn’t sound very extraordinary when narrated as a synopsis as I have just done above.  But the acting by the principal cast is extremely well done.  I especially enjoyed James Mason’s work as Concannon.  The way he portrays the Boston Brahmin lawyer and his staff rings true.  But the whole cast is strong.  David Mamet wrote a very lively script.  I would say this is easily among Paul Newman’s best films, right up there with The Sting.  I highly recommend this film.