Tracy Safian (played by Nicole Kidman) sues Dr. Jed Hill (Alec Baldwin) for medical malpractice after Hill performs emergency surgery on Safian for a ruptured ovary and removes Safian’s other ovary—healthy, as it turns out—as well, making it impossible for her to ever have children.
Scene: In a deposition, over Hill’s lawyer’s objections, Safian’s lawyer, Dennis Riley (Peter Gallagher), asks Hill whether he has a “God complex.” Hill’s lawyer tries to dissuade Hill from answering. When he is not successful, he tells the stenographer: “Stop typing. This is off the record.”
Hill answers: “When someone goes into that chapel, and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn’t miscarry, or that their daughter doesn’t bleed to death, or that their mother doesn’t suffer acute neural trauma from postoperative shock, who do you think they’re praying to? Now, you go ahead and read your Bible, Dennis, and you go to your church, and with any luck you might win the annual raffle. But if you’re looking for God, he was in operating room No. 2 on Nov. 17, and he doesn’t like to be second-guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something. I am God. And this sideshow is over.”
Safian is subsequently awarded $20 million, which is paid out by Hill’s medical-malpractice insurer.
Lesson for lawyers: Los Angeles solo Alex Craigie thinks the scene is useful for two reasons. “It illustrates two points when defending a witness at deposition. First, if you can’t control your client sufficiently to prevent him or her from saying ‘I am God’ at the wrong time, then look into another line of work,” he wrote on his blog, At Counsel Table. “More technically, though, the clip illustrates the importance of securing a stipulation among all counsel to go ‘off the record,’ meaning that the stenographer will no longer record testimony or colloquy. In the movie, one of the lawyers tells the reporter to stop reporting, and that seems sufficient. And I’ve found it usually is sufficient for one of the attorneys to say ‘off the record’ or something similar. But, technically, an actual stipulation is required [in California]. … If you think you’re off the record, make sure the reporter’s hands aren’t moving, or your client’s declaration of divinity, or other gaffe, could become a bone of contention in the case.”
—Sarah Mui
