Preston J Douglas – Lawyer with a Crooked Edge

Following is a transcript of the video Preston J Douglas – Lawyer with a Crooked Edge. It has been modified slightly in order to make it more readable.

Preston J. Douglas claims that he’s a lawyer with an edge, his edge allegedly being his biology degree. Now you would think that if an attorney has a biology degree it might give him better insight into the medical and anatomical parameters of a medical malpractice lawsuit, but unfortunately that turns out not to be the case as far as Preston J. Douglas is concerned and the only edge that I see that he has is severely rusted, crooked, and dulled. As a matter of fact, it appears his so-called edge has had the exact opposite effect.

In other words, instead of making him more competent it has made him less competent and the reason for that is since he has the degree he thinks he knows more than all the doctors involved in this case put together. Now let me show you what I mean. Here are Crooked Edge Douglas’s handwritten consultation notes that he took when he spoke to his expert witness.

We have already reviewed these in detail so we’re not going to go over them but we’re going to go into some new direction here. You will notice that they’re dated 7/89. July 1989. We are now seven months into this case and by the way what has Crooked Edge done up to this point in time during the first six months to prosecute the case? Well, we know for a fact he didn’t read the medical records nor did he depose a single witness and as best as I can ascertain he did all the following.

He met with me initially to discuss the case. He filed a legal document that needed to be filed in the courts to keep the case moving along. I believe he attended a meeting with the judge and the opposing attorney to discuss some procedural issues I would imagine and he sent a cover letter with some medical records to his expert witness and I probably spoke to him over the telephone a couple of times during that period of time. And as best as I can tell that’s it.

How much total time did he spend doing that? My guess is maybe four to five hours at most. I mean unless the judge served cocktails and hors d’oeuvres I don’t see that meeting taking more than an hour or so. Even with travel time and everything my guess is four to five hours in the first six months.

As I stated he didn’t read the medical records and didn’t depose a single witness. Now Crooked Edge specifically told me that it is standard procedure not to get written reports from expert witnesses. Well it appears to be Crooked Edge’s standard procedure but nobody else’s.

I’ve reviewed numerous cases online both civil and criminal where the attorneys always get written reports from expert witnesses and there’s no reason not to. At least you have something in writing to refer to. Crooked Edge on the other hand would rather speak to his expert witness over the phone for a few minutes, take a few handwritten notes and then head back to the coffee bar and pool table. Crooked Edge’s methodology of dealing with expert witnesses is just as incompetent as everything else he does which is about what you expect from a lawyer with a Crooked Edge and the reason is obvious.

Crooked Edge has now set himself up as an intermediary and an interpreter between him and his expert witness. Well what if Crooked Edge has too much wax build up in his ears and doesn’t hear what his expert witness is saying? What if Crooked Edge just misinterprets something? What if Crooked Edge twists something around the way he twisted the entire lawsuit legal argument around? That’s the problem. That is why it’s mandatory you get something in writing so there is no question whatsoever as to what the expert witness’s opinion is.

Furthermore Crooked Edge’s expert witness charged two thousand dollars for what turned out to be an unwritten opinion. That was a pretty hefty fee back in those days. Let me put it in perspective.

I paid seven hundred and fifty dollars for an entire autopsy at a major New York City hospital that included a pathological and a neuropathological study, a detailed written report and they provided transportation for Phyllis from St. John’s Hospital in Queens to Albert Einstein Medical College in the Bronx for seven hundred fifty dollars. Crooked Edge’s expert witness charged almost three times that amount. Well if a client is going to pay that kind of money for an expert witness it’s the attorney’s responsibility to make sure that the client gets his money’s worth.

How do you do that? Simple. You provide the expert witness with every major medical record that was filed in this case starting with the Booth Memorial angiograms, followed by the Mount Sinai angiograms, followed by the patient consent form for the surgery, Dr. Holland’s operative report and all the other documents until the autopsy report where you have specific detailed questions that need to be answered: such as is it standard procedure for a surgeon to lie to a patient and her family and tell them she has one aneurysm when in fact he knows she has two? Is it standard procedure for a surgeon to wrap an aneurysm and give no legitimate reason for not clipping it? Is it standard procedure for a resident neurosurgeon to file a falsified discharge sheet and falsified hospital report shortly after the operation and gone through every medical record in that fashion with specific questions that need to be addressed. And then of course the expert witness has to provide a complete summary of the entire case. This way you have it in writing and there is no question whatsoever as to what the expert witness’s opinion.

All Crooked Edge did was provide his expert witness the medical records that regarded Dr. Holland’s involvement in the surgery and the follow-up care. That’s all Crooked was interested in. Everything else he deemed completely irrelevant. So when Crooked Edge’s expert witness couldn’t conclusively say the small aneurysm couldn’t be clipped, Crooked Edge then came to the conclusion that that somehow legitimized the surgery.

Now expert witnesses are supposed to provide useful information to the attorney on the prosecution of the case. Any competent expert witness would have suggested to Crooked Edge that he depose the other two surgeons. After all there was a question about the surgery. Obviously they would have some information as to why the aneurysm wasn’t clipped and if Crooked Edge’s expert witness did not suggest that to him then he should find another expert witness because this particular one doesn’t really know the full extent of his job as being an expert witness. Now I don’t know if this was mentioned to Crooked Edge he ignored it which frankly wouldn’t surprise me in the leas.t or whether it was just not mentioned but this is all on Crooked Edge.

Crooked Edge was the attorney on record. He was a self-proclaimed expert in the field. He should have known right off the top of his head that the other two surgeons had to be deposed especially Dr. Klein and confronted with his falsified medical records but of course as we know he didn’t even bother to depose Dr. Klein.

Here’s another interesting point. As I mentioned in one of the earlier videos that neurologist friend of the family that examined Phyllis at St. John’s Hospital when she was you know in a coma and then he read Dr. Hollin’s  operative report and he took me aside and he said he suspected medical malpractice because Dr. Hollin didn’t say why it didn’t clip the aneurysm. He immediately picked up the fact that felt could thus be handled was no legitimate reason not to clip an aneurysm. As I mentioned in the earlier video if the neck isn’t big enough or it’s too close to another artery where it might block the flow of blood those are legitimate reasons. Felt could thus be handled is obviously just total nonsense and this neurologist picked up on that immediately.

Yet this didn’t seem to bother Crooked Edge’s expert witness who was a neurosurgeon. At least he never mentioned it to me. I spoke to him on the phone for a few minutes and he said it was the worst case of follow-up care he ever saw and he never heard of another case of multiple berry aneurysms on the right internal carotid artery where the smaller aneurysm wasn’t clipped. So it’s interesting how this raised red flags in the mind of a neurologist who happened to be 100% right and had this case nailed down right at the beginning but it didn’t seem to raise any red flags with the neurosurgeon which I thought was kind of interesting.

Now we’re going to review a few medical records that we’ve already looked at but take a fresh look at them.

Here is the patient consent form for the surgery. You will notice that it is neatly printed. You’ll also notice that they originally wrote in ICA but then crossed it out and wrote in intracranial aneurysm because unless you’re a medical personnel you probably wouldn’t know what ICA means so they wanted to make it a little more detailed. But there’s no question whatsoever that Phyllis and her parents were told in writing at the hospital that she had one aneurysm, it was going to be clipped and Dr. Hollin told them that she would be completely cured and could live a normal life. Here we have Dr. Hollin’s operative report. There is nothing questionable about what he has to say.

He lists two aneurysms as a pre-operative diagnosis and he then confirms it post-operatively and says same. So it’s obvious he concealed the second aneurysm from Phyllis and her parents.

Now here is Dr. Bresnick’s notes. You’ll also notice that they are neatly handwritten and not written in some physician’s illegible scrawl. And he wrote them neatly because he knew that this was a very important consultation because a woman with a history of berry aneurysms is at greater risk during a pregnancy. So he wanted to make absolutely certain there was no question about what Dr. Hollin told him and he was told the patient had one aneurysm which was resected or clipped is the same thing and was showing no further symptoms from it. This doesn’t say had aneurysms resected nor does it say there’s a second aneurysm that was wrapped with muslin. So Dr. Hollin obviously told them the same BS story he told Phyllis because he was actively involved in concealing the fact that she had a second aneurysm growing on her artery for all those years.

Here is Dr. Papier’s Equifax report. Another insurance company, I don’t remember the exact circumstances of this, had Equifax contact Dr. Papier the family doctor, for a written status report on Phyllis’s health and again in the report he says Phyllis was operated on for a single aneurysm. No mention of aneurysms, aneurysm.

So again it’s totally obvious what Dr. Hollin was up to. He was concealing the fact that the patient had a second aneurysm growing on her artery from her obstetrician and her family doctor. Obviously this is consistently lying and this is over a period of seven years that he’s doing this and he’s lying to people at different times.

He lied to the patient, her family before he even operated. He lied to them at every time they went to visit him for follow-up care. He lied to the obstetrician, that was about seven years after the operation and he lied to the family doctor within the first five years or so and I think Dr. Papier spoke to Dr. Hollin a few times during that period but Crooked Edge didn’t bother to obtain Dr. Papier’s office records which clearly should have been done because he may have had some notes regarding consultations he had with Dr. Holland.

Now let’s start off with Dr. Hollin lying to the patient and her parents at the hospital. This is obviously a critical piece of evidence necessary to get the case into the courtroom and as we already reviewed instead of just presenting the patient consent form for the operation and Dr. Hollin’s operative report saying Dr. Hollin lied and concealed the aneurysm, Crooked Edge wrote this as me finding out later on. As a matter of fact he doesn’t even mention this in his legal arguments at all it’s in the statement he had me sign that this is brought up.

Well clearly no normal plaintiff’s attorney thinks that a doctor lying to a patient and a family about anything is the husband finding out later on especially a lethal ailment like an aneurysm. So this shows how distorted and crooked his thinking is and he has an explanation for all this by the way. According to Crooked Edge this is irrelevant information and this is completely acceptable  medical practice by a doctor to not just to lie to the patient but to lie to all these other people in the following years.

Now clearly no normal plaintiff’s attorney thinks it’s okay for a doctor to lie to a patient about anything especially a lethal ailment and the treatment which resulted in a death like this. But according to Crooked Edge this is perfectly acceptable and that’s supposedly why he didn’t point this out and he presented it as me finding out. Of course he left out the critical part that the reason I found out is because Dr. Hollin lied and concealed the aneurysm. That he doesn’t mention of course. Yes you know that’s an indication that he’s pretty much of a wimp lawyer frankly as far as I’m concerned.

And of course we have Dr. Bresnick’s uh and Dr. Papier’s report. Well according to Crooked Edge’s legal arguments this represents that he reassured them about the old aneurysms. Well Crooked Edge was fully aware of the contents of both these documents and it’s totally obvious that they don’t refer to aneurysms they refer to one aneurysm.

So that that is a blatant misrepresentation. As far as me finding out later on I guess one could chalk that up to an attorney who just know can’t correlate information between medical records properly on behalf of his client. As we already reviewed he came to the conclusion that the Mount Sinai angiogram showed one aneurysm when Dr. Hollin listed two as a preoperative diagnosis. So he just ignored Dr. Hollin’s report and tried to figure it out himself and of course got it completely wrong.

So we could chalk this one up to as sort of another version of that just as twisted and distorted but pro-defendant biased thinking. However there was no question whatsoever as to what the obstetrician and family doctor were told. Crooked Edge was fully aware of that. So not only does he apparently think that it doesn’t matter if the doctor lies to the patient he apparently thinks that since it doesn’t matter if they operate on one or two aneurysms that that it’s okay to Crooked Edge to blatantly misrepresent critical facts like this in his legal arguments.

Now when an attorney submits a legal argument to the court he swears under penalty of perjury that his legal arguments are accurate. Well Crooked Edge was fully aware that Dr. Hollin told Drs. Bresnick and Papier about one aneurysm but he claims they were told about two so as far as I can tell this constitutes perjury frankly.

I mean perjury is a blatant known misrepresentation of the facts and that is exactly what we have here. As I said as far as Dr. Hollin and me finding out later on we could just leave that up to just gross incompetence but these other ones are blatant misrepresentations so I really don’t see any way around that one as far as Crooked Edge is concerned. And remember Crooked Edge is doing this not to win the case he is doing it to lose the case and prove a false premise.

Yes he’s rewriting critical facts like this to lose the case in order to try and prove that the entire malpractice is Dr. Hollin’s failure to advise a CT scan at the last appointment. I mean I could sort of understand an attorney doing something like this to try and win the case like Kathleen M. Beck did with the altered the falsified CT scan document but to do it to lose the case. I mean like how pathetic is that but that appears to be exactly what Crooked Edge has done.

I mean his legal arguments are obviously a total rewrite of the actual facts and they were all done to prove that the entire malpractice was Dr. Holland’s failure to advise a CT scan even though all the evidence proves otherwise. Now in order to prove that the entire malpractice was failure to advise a CT scan there is only one way to do it and it’s exactly what Crooked Edge did. This he is able to figure out.

First he had to provide no real medical evidence, then he had to provide no real medical explanation, then he had to find the most worthless and idiotic medical record in the entire file which really doesn’t disprove certain claims he makes, then he had to rewrite certain critical facts so it wouldn’t raise any red flags in the mind of the judge and finally he had to cite no case law which sealed its fate and guaranteed it wound up in thr dumpster. That’s how he managed to prove that the entire malpractice was Dr. Hollin’s failure to advise a CT scan.

Now Crooked Edge’s entire medical synopsis of all the medical records we reviewed, eight and a half years of malicious medical activity designed to cause the patient’s death and cover it up according to Crooked Edge’s legal arguments is reduced to Dr. Hollin repaired two aneurysms, the repairs were doomed to slip and open and he didn’t advise a CT scan to check up on the status of the repairs. That is it. That is his entire medical explanation of this case and he hasn’t provided a single medical record to back any of it up.

First of all what he’s saying is totally simplistic, explains nothing and is blatantly false on top of it. Now Crooked Edge didn’t submit a single medical record that even has the word aneurysm in it which is totally unbelievable. I mean clearly the judge is expecting in a case of this nature at minimum a diagnostic report, an operative report and an autopsy report of if one had been performed none of which exists in this case.

Even if you’re claiming the entire malpractice is in the follow-up care the judge still expects to see that with a detailed explanation of medical parameters so he can understand what the heck is going on with this case. Not only that, due to Crooked Edge’s little synopsis which explains nothing, the judge does not have time to empathize with the patient and what she went through. You’ll notice on the Dr. Sidney Hollin website I start at the beginning which of course is the logical place to start and I explain how Phyllis was originally diagnosed with the aneurysm.

Her parents found her semi-conscious and unresponsive one day. They took her to the family doctor who referred them to a neurologist who admitted her to the hospital and ran tests and found one aneurysmm who then referred her to Dr. Hollin who ran more tests and found the second aneurysm. Now by doing this the judge has time to empathize with the patient.

He could see the patient had to go through all these tests and went to two different hospitals and this that and the other and so the judge can start to empathize what the patient went through. In Crooked Edge’s legal arguments he doesn’t have time to empathize with anything because Crooked Edge’s starts right off with Dr. Hollin repaired two aneurysms. That’s the start of his legal argument. He doesn’t mention how they were discovered.

He doesn’t mention that angiograms were performed anywhere. Doesn’t mention the Booth Memorial or the Mount Sinai angiogram you know and then he proceeds from that point. The judge was probably wondering  where are the medical records in this case? I mean the judge knows there’s a medical records file but you sure as hell wouldn’t know it reading Crooked Edge’s legal arguments because none of them appear here.

This is probably the only medical malpractice case on record where the plaintiff’s attorney has decided that the entire medical file contains useless information, from operative reports to diagnostic reports to patient consent forms. You know this is all completely irrelevant for the simple reason that it doesn’t fit into Crooked Edge’s theory of the case.

If he provides all this information, you know Dr. Hollin lying to all these people obviously he’s going to say whoa there’s got to be something else going on here so what’s Crooked Edge’s solution to this? Write it out of the case entirely. Dr. Hollin didn’t lie to the patient or family. I found out later on. He didn’t lie to the obstetrician and family doctor by telling them she had one aneurysm, he reassured them that the old aneurysms didn’t need any further checking up on. So it’s obvious what Crooked Edge did here. Instead of letting the documented facts mold the legal arguments, he molded the legal arguments to reflect his bogus theory of the case.

Yet he came to the conclusion that the entire malpractice was Dr. Hollin’s failure to advise a CT scan and this was based upon his own bumbling and stumbling around for seven months doing no work on the case and providing his expert witness with incomplete medical records. So then he decided to write the legal arguments in a manner to make it look like that was the case here and there was only one way to do that and that’s dump the whole medical record file. If he starts presenting all these medical records the judge is going to see that there’s something wrong here and that apparently is what he did.

In other words, the actual facts are irrelevant. It’s only what Crooked Edge thinks is done and that goes to what I said at the beginning. Crooked Edge thinks his biology degree gives him some sort of edge. It’s just another useless piece of paper like his law degree. I mean he has a biology degree? Oh whoop-dee-doo for that. Like he’s going know more than neuropathologists and neurosurgeons? That’s a joke.

And this goes back to what happened on day one. The very first day I spoke to him about the case I told him exactly what Dr. Haroupian said, that, you know, Dr. Hollin concealed the aneurysm, he wrapped it instead of clipping it, and that Dr. Harupian said that it was the wrapped aneurysm that grew and ruptured and caused the patient’s death. There is your case in a nutshell right there. And instead of Crooked Edge picking up on that and say whoa the operation caused the death of the patient and he concealed an aneurysm, we can use that to go after all of them and maybe the hospital.

Nope. Crooked Edge completely ignored that as if it was some irrelevant information. And like I said in the other video he looked at me kind of funny like how can that be? There are three surgeons in on the operation and Dr. Hollin so it has to be legitimate. Yeah what does the neuropathologist know? He’s only working out of a major New York City hospital and performed the autopsy.

Yeah but Crooked Edge with his biology degree thinks he knows better and of course no doubt it was his pro-defendant bias thinking that kicked in. Yes oh it must be a legitimate operation if there are three surgeons on it. And you know what else I think is going on here? I think there is a financial motive here and this has to do with Crooked Edge’s business mentality of cutting corners and nickel and dimeing the case to death.

You see if Crooked Edge relies on his expert witness it doesn’t cost his law firm a penny since I paid for that. If Crooked Edge deposes Dr. Haroupian well now all of a sudden he has to spend some of his law firm’s money and he has to do some work and we know that Crooked Edge does not like to spend money or do work on behalf of his clients. First he has to hire a process server to serve the subpoena which in those days I think was around $60 or so and then he has to hire a stenographer to transcribe the deposition. You know maybe we’re talking about a few hundred dollars at best. Whatever it was Crooked Edge was not about to spend it.

Oh and then he has to do some work. He has to draw up a list of questions to ask the witness although he could have had a paralegal assist with that. He could have had a paralegal assist with this entire case. So now Crooked Edge has a balancing act to do. Yes now he has to balance, let’s see if I depose Dr. Haroupian we have to spend the law firm’s money and I have to do some work. Shiver me timbers. But if we use my expert witness it doesn’t cost us a penny because the client’s paying for it.

It’s a no-brainer. We go with my expert witness and as far as a neuropathologist is concerned. Neuropathologist? What neuropathologist? I don’t see any neuropathologist do you? Yes Crooked Edge then buried his head in the sand and made like the neuropathologist didn’t even exist and this would also explain why he didn’t even bother to call Dr. Haroupian.  You see if he even calls Dr. Haroupian and starts discussing the case it’s going to be totally obvious that Dr. Haroupian has critical information regarding this case and has to be deposed. Well Crooked Edge wasn’t going to have any of that. His solution, don’t even bother calling up the neuropathologist who clearly was a key witness and should have been deposed under any circumstances whatsoever.

And here’s another interesting point. You would think that even if an attorney has a nickel and dime the case to death attitude like Crooked Edge does that at some point in time he might look at the aggregate of evidence and say whoa we have a strong case here against all these doctors and the hospital. It pays for us to invest the time and financial resources to properly prosecute it. Well you can rest assured that that never happened with good old Crooked Edge Douglas.

Apparently all he ever did was look at the date of last appointment and then he provided his unnecessary expert witness with incomplete medical records and came to the completely wrong conclusion about it. That apparently is all he did. He obviously just completely ignored all the other facts as it was completely irrelevant.