In this episode, we detail the terrifying story of Christopher Duntsch AKA “Dr. Death”. We are joined by attorney Michael Lyons who represented one of Dr. Duntsch’s patients, Barry Morguloff. We discuss reporting requirements for health care professionals, tort reform, and how this affects doctor-patient relationships.
Listen to the full episode using the player below, or by visiting one of the links below. Below is the episode’s transcript which has been edited for readability. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, email us at info@byrdadatto.com.
Transcript
Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. Legal issues simplified through real client stories and real world experiences, creating simplicity in 3, 2, 1.
Brad: Welcome back to another episode of the Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. I’m your host, Brad Adatto. I’m here with my co-host Michael Byrd.
Michael: Thanks, Brad. As a business and healthcare law firm, we meet a lot of interesting people and learn their amazing stories. As you know, this season we are spicing things up a bit. We are here to talk about OPP, other people’s problems.
Brad: Yeah! Michael, for those listening for the first time this season, tell them what we are doing with OPP.
Michael: Instead of telling our own stories, client stories, where we remove the names of the innocent, this year we are going to tell public stories that are in the news and then talk about some legal lessons that we can learn from these high profile and fascinating stories.
Brad: Yeah, and now for those watching us on YouTube, they’ll notice [00:01:00] that we have a guest sitting here. Before we bring on our guest today, besides this podcast, Michael, what are some of your favorite podcasts?
Michael: Number one is Smartless, I listen to it every week. That’s the only podcast that I definitely listen to every week. Well, besides ours.
Brad: Yeah, obviously.
Michael: The others I’ve recently started listening to, there’s one called Marketing Made Simple. It’s kind of a business podcast that’s about really interesting marketing principles. Then, people that listen to us know that we talk about the ticket all the time. There’s a podcast called The Ticket Top 10, and that is a regular player when I’m in the car.
Brad: No doubt.
Michael: Yeah. How about you?
Brad: Yeah. I can’t remember if you introduced me to Smartless or if I was already interested in Smartless, either way, It’s definitely one of those podcasts I listened to every week, and so is ours. I do like the top 10 or anything that has to do with the ticket on the podcast, but the opposite in of smart. And the ticket. I also listen to a podcast called Science Versus. [00:02:00] Science versus is a kind of cool one where they take fact fiction and they go out and interview all these people and kind of put it all together. They’ve done podcasts on 5g, vaping, fast diets, shark attacks, so all very, extremely entertaining. Every once in a while I might listen to a podcast on my Saints, although this season’s been a rough start, so not as much as I normally would.
Michael: Oh, I would say that the Saints are fiction. If that’s what you’re…
Brad: You mean the Saints winning?
Michael: Maybe! I heard just the Saints in general, but yes.
Brad: All right. Well, as much as we love our own podcast, I actually went and looked at the top 100 podcasts on all platforms, and guess what I learned?
Michael: I’m guessing you went to see if ByrdAdatto was listed anywhere and you found that we were not.
Brad: That’s correct. It was very disappointing that I was not listed on top 100. however, to no surprise, if anyone actually follows the podcast world, some guy named Joe Rogan with the Joe Rogan experience was the number one podcast. His podcast [00:03:00] has an audience size of about 11 million for every show, which is insane.
Michael: That’s a little bigger than ours.
Brad: Just by a few million. That’s probably why he got paid about $200 million to move his platform over to Spotify exclusively. I did look into one of our favorite shows. Smartless, which is ranked at number 12.
Michael: Yeah. I think Smartless was purchased by Amazon recently, and I think they sold for 80 million. It makes me think that if the world were more interested in legal podcasts, we could be onto something. Maybe you could up your game a little bit, Brad.
Brad: Okay, yeah.
Michael: Get us into the top 20.
Brad: Yeah. I mean, upping my game, people right here will be worth 250 million bus time by any month now. Now Michael, what’s most interesting about these top 100? The top 10 podcasts, There was a theme I kept seeing over and over again. Serial, a podcast on news and true. Morbid, a comedy podcast on True Crime, Internal Affairs, a podcast on true [00:04:00] crime, Crime junkie, a podcast on true crime. So in the top 10, as you can tell, Americans love a good crime story or crime podcast.
Michael: Okay, well, where are you going with this, for today?
Brad: First, I think we need to start a podcast on true crime. It appears to be where we need to go.
Michael: Or we could pick an OPP BA story based on a story that itself had a top podcast.
Brad: Ah, that’s an amazing idea. Maybe that’s where we could go today. This reminds me sometime in 2018, I get a phone call from my little sister, Catherine, and she just hits me right away. “Brad, have you listened to the Dr. Death podcast? Did you know Dr. Death? Did you know he’s from Dallas? Do you think it’s all true?” And like before I even had a free moment to even say one word, she’s hit me with five eight questions, all about the Doctor Death podcast.
Michael: Well, yeah. I’m sure most of our audience is familiar with the Doctor Death podcast. I’m curious, what did you tell her when she hit you with all these questions?
Brad: At the time I said I had not listened to the [00:05:00] podcast, but yes, we knew of the story. We knew many of the physicians that were surrounding the podcast and had heard these stories about this guy, this doctor that was pretty bad at doing what he does, and this is before the podcast even was made, much less, became a national headline.
Michael: Scary stuff. I mean, there’s a guest that we’ve had on our podcast that was one of the people that tipped us off and called us and basically said, don’t send any of your family to…
Brad: This guy.
Michael: Yeah. The hospital, because there’s a guy there that’s killing people. I love context, Brad, so maybe we should step back for a second…
Brad: Sure.
Michael: …and give some background on Dr. Death before we bring on today’s guest. Who by the way, was actually on the Dr. Death podcast, so I’ll start by noting that Christopher Duntsch, known as Dr. Death, operated on 38 patients in the Dallas area, leaving 31 paralyzed or seriously injured, and two of them [00:06:00] dead. Also note that this is according to Siri, so our guests could correct me with some of these stats.
Brad: All right, that’s good context there. Now the podcast, Dr. Death, covers all these wrongdoings, and basically his surgeries were more like butchery. The Doctor Death podcast really focused on the surgeries that he performed between 2010 and 2013. A little bit more context. Yes, he did graduate from a medical school on top tier at that. Most of the time, apparently, he did research in labs, but he did complete a residency in neurosurgery. And that’s probably the highest point of his career is that he completed that.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, it gets worse and it gets worse fast. Dr. Duntsch, convicted of gross malpractice after 31 of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them, and then, as I mentioned, two patients died during his operation.
Brad: This sounds like it could be a malpractice story, Michael.
Michael: Yes, and what makes this extremely unique is that in [00:07:00] July of 2015, a grand jury indicted Duntsch on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of harming an elderly person, and he was sentenced to life in prison in February of 2017. For this, he is currently appealing this sentence, but what’s crazy is he actually worked for one of our former clients during his first stop in Dallas.
Brad: Yeah. He only performed one surgery for them and after the surgery he basically was fired because he did the surgery and then immediately left for Las Vegas. Never even looking after the patient to see if they needed care.
Michael: Yeah, and as we learned, even though he was fired, he still had privileges at a local hospital which allowed him to continue to provide services. This eventually lead to these horrible surgical stories in 2012. First in February of 2012, according to public record and elective spinal fusion [00:08:00] surgery on Jerry Summers, who was also a friend of Duntsch, Summers woke up after surgery and he was a quadriplegic.
Brad: This is terrible. This is his own friend! Michael, Total side note, just because we’re friends, still means you’re never operating on me, though.
Michael: A, I think that’s a wise idea, Brad. B, I think I could do better than Dr. Death.
Brad: That’s true.
Michael: Yes, but it does actually get worth it. In April of the same year, Kelly Martin had experienced chronic back pain and sought out surgery to alleviate it. For those who don’t know, this is a pretty basic standard type procedure. Martin would become Duntsch’s first casualty when she bled out in intensive care. After this common procedure, the next patient, Flo Brown, went under his knife in July of 2012 and shortly after her surgery, she suffered a massive stroke caused by Duntsch slicing her [00:09:00] artery during surgery, and unfortunately the list goes on and on.
Brad: Yeah, it’s some horrible context, Michael. Unfortunately, the medical community did notice, but were unable to stop him. During the Dr. Death podcast, we first learned about Dr. Robert Henderson, a respected surgeon here in the Dallas area. He works at Dallas Medical Center. The hospital administrator called him and asked him to do some corrective surgery that had gone really badly by Dr. Duntsch. He agreed, and soon afterwards he just couldn’t believe the nightmare stuff that he was learning about this surgeon. We later learned on the podcast that there was a nurse who was assisting Dr. Duntsch and during the surgery she said he appeared to be on something. He was wearing the same scrubs with a hole in the pants with no underwear for three days straight, basically. For our audience members listening for the first time to this story, they might be wondering, who approved the surgeon to do these surgeries? Did anyone try to stop him? What [00:10:00] did the State Medical Board do when they learned about all these surgeries and botched surgeries? So, Michael that gives us a little bit of context, so we can bring on our guest who has some firsthand knowledge on this crazy story that he might be able to share some of it with us.
Michael: Well, I know you won’t be surprised, Brad, but the audience probably also won’t be surprised that we enlisted one of our friends to come on again.
Brad: Yes.
Michael: In addition to that, our guest, Mike Lyons, was right in the middle of this case and has a different perspective than that of a lot of people. As we mentioned, he was actually on the Dr. Death podcast on a few of the episodes. Mike is a founding partner of the law firm, Lyons, and Simmons. He concentrates his practice on complex catastrophic personal injury and business litigation on the plaintiff’s side. Lyons has recovered hundreds of millions in judgments and settlements on behalf of his [00:11:00] clients. He’s got all the trophies. He’s been in Super Lawyers, Top 100 attorneys in Dallas, Law Dragon 500 leading plaintiff, consumer lawyer list, named in D Magazine as best lawyer in Dallas under 40, and later after he graduated from the under 40 club to best lawyer in Dallas. He was recognized for a host of other awards, including being recognized by Dallas CBS affiliate Channel 11 as a Texan with character for his philanthropic work in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex with children who were victims of abuse or neglect. Mike is married to his wife, Jenny. They have three amazing kids. He is a huge football fan, maybe even a bigger UT fan than me, and he was a guest of ours in season five under the college football fumbled college football contracts episode and most importantly, Mike’s a [00:12:00] great dude and I’m very glad you’re here. Welcome!
Mike: Hey, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me back, guys.
Brad: Yeah. So, Mike, before we jump into today’s podcast OPP story, besides our podcast, do you have any favorite podcasts?
Mike: Well, you stole my thunder a little bit. My favorite podcast is Smartless. I wait for that to break on Mondays and I download it and usually listen to it on my morning run. I love it. It’s hilarious
Brad: Yes, yes. For those audience members who have not listened to it, it’s definitely hysterical. There’s some good 15 year old humor in there also.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Michael: The banter is fantastic.
Brad: Yes, the banter is fantastic.
Michael: Well, good. So let’s jump right in, Mike. Tell me, when was the first time you heard the name Christopher Duntsch?
Mike: Well, not surprisingly, the early fall of 2012, I was on my way back from a Texas football game, I don’t remember who we had played, but I know that I was [00:13:00] on my way back and I got a phone call from an area neurosurgeon who was a friend of mine who said, Have you heard what’s happening at a local hospital here in town? And I said, Well, no, you’re gonna have to fill me in. And he basically said, Look, I just performed a remedial procedure on a former patient of mine and it looked like a bomb had gone off in his back. I started doing some research and it’s this Chris Duntsch guy, and then I started doing some more research and it’s, hey, you realize that this guy has killed some people. That was the first conversation. Man, you talk about opening up a can of worms because there were a lot of people, particularly in the Neurosurgical realm in Dallas, that were up in arms about this.
Brad: Yeah, so, when you started making those phone calls around, Mike, what were some of the things you were hearing?
Mike: Yeah, the first thing that I will never forget was Dr. Henderson, and this is actually for your listeners that know about this, they probably have also seen the movie. There’s a movie [00:14:00] that depicts Alec Baldwin as Dr. Henderson and Christian Slater is Dr. Randy Kirby. Two friends of mine, two great doctors. It was Dr. Henderson, in a conversation I had with him, and this again made the movie, he said, I can’t believe that a medical doctor could have done this to another patient. After upon looking at what he did to Mary Efford, he picked up the phone, he called the medical school at the University of Tennessee Memphis, where Dr. Duntsch had received his fellowship training and said, Well, can you fax me a picture of this Fellowship trained neurosurgeon named Duntsch, so that I can verify that he’s actually a medical doctor.
Brad: Wow.
Mike: I’ve never heard of a doctor having to do that for another doctor.
Brad: So, let me take a bigger step back. In the movie, did Tom Cruise play you?
Mike? You know, sadly, I was not depicted in the movie.
Brad: Oh.
Mike? Instead, Michelle Schuger kind of stole my thunder. [00:15:00] She was really the center point of the movie because of the prosecution. I guess they found that far more interesting than what we do as civil lawyers.
Brad: Yeah, that is crazy. I remember hearing that in the podcast and thinking about the fact that they’ve been thinking this guy had to be an imposter because no trained person would have done this. He was like, there’s no way because they don’t even know where the anatomy is, whether he should be operating.
Mike: No, you nailed it on the head. The thing that kept coming up as I’m talking to these extremely well respected surgeons is this is a person who has somehow become a neurosurgeon, a fellowship trained neurosurgeon, with no understanding of regional anatomy. I can’t remember if it was you or Michael that mentioned it, but yeah, he’s transecting vertebral arteries.
Brad: Yeah.
Mike: He’s doing fusion procedures, there’s no reason for that to happen. That’s not a complication that should ever occur.
Michael: So, I [00:16:00] know you have some boundaries where you can and can’t talk about, but I’d love just to hear what was your role? How did you actually become involved in the Christopher Duntsch story?
Mike: So I got a call from, ironically, my client was a guy named Barry Guloff, and Barry happened to be the pool guy who serviced the pool for a doctor named Randy Kirby, who’s a vascular surgeon here in town. Randy was concerned because he had actually assisted a lot of these procedures that Duntsch was doing, were called a-lip procedures, so it’s an anterior approach to doing spinal surgery. And if you’re gonna do an anterior approach, in other words, going through the front instead of the, what I would call the back, you’ve gotta have a vascular surgeon oftentimes to help you with that approach. So Kirby is actually, the operating room witnessing the malpractice as it’s occurring in my patient.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Mike: He described Duntsch as [00:17:00] basically performing at a first year resident-type performance level. I can go into greater detail about that, but you know, he went to check on, Barry and was wondering how he turned out because he knew there may be some complications. He had suggested to Barry, you know, you may want to consult somebody. So, I don’t know that it was necessarily Randy that sent him to me, but somehow along the lines, Barry Guloff ends up calling me and so I end up representing him. Barry was operated on in January of 12, so it proceeded essentially, Duntsch decapitated, Jerry Summers, which is what he did. He basically took Jerry Summer’s head and removed it from his neck.
Michael: Wow.
Mike: He basically had no ability to control his head in addition to being paralyzed from the neck down. And then the following, that is when he [00:18:00] killed Kelly Martin, sadly. And, which precipitated them suspending.
Brad: So sorry, back up for our audience. When you said for suspended, who suspended him? The hospital? The medical board? For the audience who’s trying to play catch-up.
Mike: Well, I think this is public record, but essentially what happens is that the credentialing committee at Baylor Plano suspended his privileges pending an investigation.
Brad: Yeah.
Mike: Big surprise Duntsch ends up going somewhere else. He winds up at Medical Center Dallas, which you guys may know is the old Deadman Medical Center. This is where he malpractices, and kills Flo Brown. Transcends her rot artery while she’s bleeding out in the recovery room. He is malpracticing with a woman named Mary Efford; he actually takes the surgical cage, and drives the [00:19:00] pedicle screws through the Musculature. Damaging all kinds of nerves, and nerve roots in the process. Mary, Mrs. Efford, who was rendered, partially paralyzed and permanently disabled, was the center point of the indictment, which led to bunches of prosecution.
Brad: During this timeframe, Mike, were there any of the physicians reaching out to you that you were friends with saying, or asking you if they should call the medical board on this guy or did you recommend that to your clients?
Mike: Well, yeah. Sadly, most of these people did report Duntsch to the medical board. The Texas Medical Board was involved very early on, and I could tell you in 2012 when I got hired on the Barry MorLaw case that was one of the first things we did was we reported them to the Texas Medical Board. Do you know what they did?
Michael: I’m guessing nothing.
Mike: Drum roll, [00:20:00] they rejected it. They said, Nah, we don’t see anything wrong with this medical care.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Mike: And that happened over and over again. What ultimately happened, and I don’t want to steal the conclusion, but Randy Kirby and Dr. Henderson gathered up consents from a number of patients that they were aware Duntsch had treated and got consents to look at their medical records; reviewed those records and films, and Dr. Kirby wrote an affidavit and letter to the Texas Medical Board demanding that they hold a hearing to suspend his right to practice medicine. Which they did eventually.
Brad: Yeah.
Mike: But it was far too late.
Brad: Yeah. At this point, obviously two people have died because of him and what? 30-something plus have been either severely injured or even paralyzed.
Mike: So, you know, the numbers that Michael used are new numbers for me; but I will say that things have evolved subsequent to my involvement in that case. At [00:21:00] the time, my understanding was that there were around 33 patients that he had operated on, and that they had found no therapeutic benefit to any of them
Michael: Wow.
Mike: That many of them were either paralyzed, maimed, or sadly in the case of Ella Brown and Kelly Martin, effectively killed, murdered, depending on your perspective.
Brad: Well, and obviously that leads us to the perspective that you weren’t part of the trial, because, obviously you’re not on the prosecution side, on the criminal side. That’s where it did lead to.
Mike: Yeah. I don’t want to steal anything away from Michelle Sugar, and, the team that tried that case, but I was involved tangentially. And I’ll tell you how, what’s not depicted in the movies is that there was a group of plaintiff’s lawyers, good lawyers, that had the cases early on. So that was it. Certainly K Van Way, Jim Gerard’s and Rob Crane. And I can recall being on phone calls both with the Colin [00:22:00] County District Attorney’s Office and the Dallas District Attorney’s office, and without naming names of who we were talking to, we were banging the gong pretty loudly, saying, you’ve got to do something. This is not just a civil case. Prosecute this guy, you need to stop this. And you know, not surprisingly, they were reluctant to get involved, but that did lead to the prosecution that occurred in Dallas. And I’ll tell you that, I think most of the civil lawyers gave the DA’s office our, our files. Said, here, here are the experts, here are the films. Here’s our analysis. Go do something. And I could tell you that every one of my medical causation and liability experts testified. In the criminal trial, and I prepped them for their testimony.
Michael: I want to see your observation on this, but it’s pretty unprecedented for a malpractice case to result in criminal prosecution. [00:23:00] Is that correct?
Mike: Yeah. So, just to make sure the audience understands the nomenclature. I would say a malpractice case by its very nature, cannot be. Well true, the source of a criminal case it would have to arise. So malpractice would be a breach of the standard of care…
Brad: Yeah.
Mike: Which relates resorts and damages and injuries to the patient here, what the prosecution was arguing, what he was indicted for was multiple counts of aggregated aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The deadly weapon was a scalpel.
Brad: Right.
Mike: What they developed through the course of the criminal case was that Duntsch knew that by operating on these patients, he was going to hurt him. I mean, just the laws of probability were catching up to him. He reasonably knew that, so whether it’s because he’s a terrible surgeon or he was impaired, you know, those were all arguments that were made. He knew he was hurting these patients and he did it anyway. That’s criminal.
Brad: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, that’s amazing. [00:24:00] Well, we’re kind of hitting our wrap-up point, but do you have any kind of final takeaways for the audience that you want to leave them with? Any final thoughts?
Mike: Yeah, so I would say that, two thoughts. One of which is we need to reform what we’ve done to the law in Texas. If you’ve listened to the Dr. Death podcast, you’ll hear me whine about tort reform, and I know if your listeners are physicians or professionals they may sort of cringe at that idea. I’m not saying some reform isn’t a bad idea, but they’ve Gotta fix what they’ve done to the damage caps because effectively what they’ve done is they’ve created an incentive for Christopher Duntsch not only to exist, but for him to have a job. I could spend an entire day talking about that. The second thing, don’t close your eyes as a healthcare professional to somebody who’s doing wrong and you know, a lot of times it’s the lawyers to get the accolades for whether it’s a [00:25:00] criminal prosecution or civil prosecution going after these guys. It’s an important part of the process. I said this on the Dr. Death podcast, if these doctors didn’t do what they were supposed to do, Texas Medical Board wasn’t going to do anything. As a consequence, it’s because of some courageous doctors and some lawyers that ultimately led to this happening. So, that’s kind of my final word on that.
Michael: Love it! Your passion comes out and your advocacy for people that can’t stand up for themselves comes out. It’s great! Thank you for joining us today. What we’ll do next is go to commercial and then on the other side, Brad and I will try to come up with a legal comment or two to wrap up our episode today. We really appreciate you coming on and joining us again.
Mike: That’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys.
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Brad: Welcome back to Legal 123s. I’m your host Brad Adatto, with my co-host Michael Byrd. Now, Michael, this season our theme is OPP. We just learned a lot about a surgeon who really butchered his patients criminally. It was great hearing a perspective from Mike who was actually part of the whole process, obviously being on the Dr. Death podcast himself, hearing his opinion. But, you know, one of the things that kept coming up was, do you have an obligation to report Dr. [00:27:00] Death to the medical board?
Michael: Well, depending on how you look at it, it’s complicated. First, we will talk about the kind of rules and, you know, there are state rules. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Let’s just first take a big step back from a moral perspective. So, yes, based on the horrific outcomes and lack of basic understanding of the human body, everybody who worked with Dr. Death should have said something or done something. It sounds like from talking to our guest that a lot of people were doing stuff.
Brad: Yeah.
Michael: So, I guess the human side of the answer to your question is, should you do something? But as lawyers, our job is to answer based on the law, not just on morals. Yeah, and so let’s talk about that for a minute. Brad, what are some of the rules that would [00:28:00] have required others to report Dr. Duntsch?
Brad: Yeah, Let’s go with the AMA first. The AMA encourages medical professionals, which is the American Medical Association, to report certain situations and conducts when a medical provider’s doing something that’s unethical or that could lead to some type of possible investigation to the boards. Now understand, it’s not mandatory; it’s highly encouraged from an ethical standpoint, and we have discussed this in other shows, the American Medical Association doesn’t have any direct control or physician’s medical license. Only state boards have the actual authority.
Michael: Yeah, you’re right, the AMA does not have authority over state boards. When we have looked at this question for clients in other states, it’s interesting to, you know, is this a may or a must? And if it’s a may, you morally could choose to report someone if you see something happening that shouldn’t happen. If it’s a must, the board might actually say, you’ve gotta report [00:29:00] this action. If you see it in California, for example, the law does not specify any other mandatory reporting requirements for other healthcare professionals to, but it does require a peer review committee, most commonly found in hospitals to report specific information to the medical board. They call these eight oh five reports in California.
Brad: Yeah, Yeah. In other states like Florida, state law outlines certain situations for mentoring and reporting. A person who is a licensee, someone who is known to be unable to practice medicine or with reasonable skill and obviously safety of the patients by reasons of illness or use of alcohol, drugs, and other chemical influences are mentally or physically unable to continue to treat patients, that you’re supposed to at that part. Report them to the impaired practitioners program in Florida rather than the actual medical board. Basically, this involves some type of reporting, but not to the board. So basically, and then in Florida, the nursing board has basic, [00:30:00] exact same rules. Failure though, to report this to those particular providers can be a denial of your own license or disciplinary rule. Michael, let’s take a bigger step back, or let’s jump back into our story today, which is the Dr. Death story. We’re here in Texas. As of today, if this story is going on, what does the Texas law provide currently?
Michael: Yeah, I mean, Texas is a must. The duty to report is codified in the Texas Medical Practice Act. It applies not only to physicians licensed in the state, but also to medical peer review committees, physicians and graduate medical school education, medical students, physician assistants, and even acupuncturists. The medical profession must report relevant information to the medical board if that person believes that a physician poses a continuing threat to the public welfare through the practice of medicine. If a medical professional knowingly or willingly fails to report, they can potentially become subject to [00:31:00] an investigation and face their own licensing issues.
Brad: Yeah, so I mean, for our audience members, if you haven’t caught on to it, it was a horrific story about someone who most likely should have never touched a patient. And luckily, as Mike mentioned, there were these doctors who were brave enough to step up to the mic and say, Hey, someone needs to stop this person. They are doing massive harm in this case, criminal harm to individuals. Michael, final thoughts?
Michael: Yeah, I mean, as we started the episode talking about podcasts, the world loves true crime and Dr. Death was true crime and it was a hit podcast that’s now been made into a movie. Telling the story and reliving how it applies, brings at home that there was a lot of people affected, that there’s some rules out there for, many in our audience or medical professionals and they need to be aware that they may need to stand up and do something if [00:32:00] they see something happening.
Brad: Absolutely. Well, audience members, next Wednesday, for our next OPP, we’re going to talk about a potential doctor death copycat story. So, tune in to find out if there’s more than one doctor death.
Outro: Thanks again for joining us today, and remember if you like this episode, please subscribe, make sure to give us a five-star rating and share with your friends. You can also sign up for the ByrdAdatto newsletter by going to our website@byrdadatto.com. ByrdAdatto is providing this podcast as a public service. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast does not constitute legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney client relationship. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by ByrdAdatto. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please consult with an attorney on your legal issues. [00:33:00]
