A Closer Call Than It Should Be

Adam at Universal Hub already has a short post up about the Appeals Court's decision in Kennedy v. Beth Israel Deaconess Med. Ctr., Inc., No. 06-P-1918. It's worth digging into the facts a bit more, since this is one of those rare Appeals Court cases where a justice takes the time and effort to draft a dissent.

The Court flipped a trial judge's decision to reopen a case after it had been dismissed. Why was it dismissed? Because the plaintiff's lawyer, H. Paul Carroll, couldn't manage to properly deliver a copy of the complaint to the defendant after receiving six emergency time extensions to do so.

That's right: six!

Let's run down counsel's reasons for these six extension.

• The First One: he needed to talk to an expert and he put down the wrong deadline on his calendar.
• The Second One: he still needed to talk to that expert and he'd been assaulted (the lawyer, not the expert).
• The Third One: he needed to talk to the expert some more and was in discussions with the hospital to get the complaint delivered informally.
• The Fourth One: the sheriff who was supposed to deliver the complaint couldn't guarantee delivery by a certain date.
• The Fifth One: recent inclement weather.
• The Sixth One: he needed to draft a new complaint that more fully set out the complicated medical issues.

Wow.

By sheer coincidence, there's a lawyer in Newburyport who goes by the name H. Paul Carroll (same guy? maybe?). His website touts his ability to provide timely solutions to his clients, which is a little bit bizarre. There also seems to be a lawyer named H. Paul Carroll (same guy? maybe?) who was suspended by the New Hampshire Bar for failing to pay a special fee after, you guessed it, he didn't file some administrative paperwork on time.

From a strict legal perspective, this is actually a pretty tough case. That's why there's a dissent. This might just be one of those cases, though, were a mechanical interpretation of the law produces a result that wouldn't inspire a whole lot of public confidence in the profession.