Courtroom AI on a ghost-surgery deposition

Chunk 1 · 0:05:00

Qualifications

Standard qualifications block. Analyzer correctly low-graded the Daubert score (35/100) and flagged a small evasion: witness ducked a yes/no on whether his primary focus is patient surgical outcomes ("I'm not sure I understood that question"). Suggested locking the answer before substantive cross.

Chunk 2 · 0:15:00

The abridged-record foundation

Witness admits he reviewed only the abridged 634-page record sent by defense counsel earlier today and doesn't have it in front of him during the deposition. Analyzer surfaced three high-priority cross-exam questions to lock the record-review limitation before any "the record shows…" answers downstream.

Chunk 3 · 0:33:42 · CRITICAL

The ghost-surgery admission

When pressed on whether he has ever told a patient he would perform their surgery and had other doctors perform it, Dr. Thorani testified:

"uh that is a possibility because there's emergencies that happened there and so uh surgeons and uh uh don't always perform their own surgery depending on what happens with the situation"

Pressed on the specific Crowden case, after initially redirecting to "we have a team effort", he conceded:

"no I was not the P the surgeon that was there for that trans cath eortic Val rep placement"

Analyzer output (verbatim):

{
  "daubert": {
    "vulnerabilityScore": 92,
    "topFinding": {
      "criterion": "FRE 702 — Specialized Knowledge / Personal Participation",
      "issue": "Witness admits unequivocally that he was NOT the surgeon for Mr. Crowden's TAVR. Any standard-of-care opinion he offers on the procedure he did not perform is vulnerable to a personal-knowledge / specialized-knowledge attack.",
      "severity": "high"
    }
  },
  "crossExam": {
    "topQuestions": [
      {"question": "Doctor, so we're clear — Mr. Crowden's TAVR was performed by Dr. Sarin and Dr. Deets, not you. Correct?", "priority": "high"},
      {"question": "And you've already told us — earlier in this deposition — that you have, in your career, told patients you would be performing their surgery and then had OTHER doctors perform it. That's true, correct?", "priority": "high"},
      {"question": "When you told us 'that is a possibility' regarding telling patients you would operate and then not operating — that wasn't a hypothetical, was it? That happened with Mr. Crowden.", "priority": "high"},
      {"question": "And in this case — Mr. Crowden — the consent form he signed listed YOU as the surgeon, correct?", "priority": "high"},
      {"question": "You don't recall whether you spoke to Mr. Crowden at any point before the surgery — true?", "priority": "high"}
    ]
  },
  "priorTestimony": {
    "inconsistencies": [{
      "current": "no I was not the P the surgeon that was there for that trans cath eortic Val rep placement",
      "earlierInSameSnippet": "we have a team effort we have a surgeon and a cardiologist uh perform that procedure",
      "severity": "high"
    }]
  },
  "evasion": {
    "isEvasive": true,
    "pattern": "qualifier-hedge",
    "evidence": "uh that is a possibility because there's emergencies that happened there"
  },
  "elements": {
    "breach": { "advanced": true,
      "quote": "no I was not the P the surgeon that was there for that trans cath eortic Val rep placement" }
  },
  "informedConsent": {
    "ghostSurgeryRisk": "high",
    "evidenceQuote": "have you ever told any patient that you would be performing that patient surgery and had other doctors perform that patient surgery — uh that is a possibility"
  }
}

For a plaintiff attorney watching this live, that's a 5-question ready-to-read sequence delivered 5-10 seconds after the moment. The pattern-conduct admission is especially valuable — it converts a single-incident case into evidence of routine practice.

Chunk 4 · 0:35:50

Supervising physician + PA consent flow

The complaint alleges (¶41-43) that Dr. Thorani's PA, Ms. Maduri Eraw, presented Mr. Crowden with a consent form listing Dr. Thorani as the surgeon. The witness's testimony in this chunk:

• "I cannot recall what Amy Simone wrote" (Amy Simone is the plaintiff's drafter named in the complaint)
• "I do not recall that" (re: paragraph 41)
• "I don't obtain the consent forms and so that's not something that I do"
• Admits PAs must work under a supervising physician; cannot recall whether he supervised Ms. Eraw in September 2014

Analyzer flagged this as a memory-failure evasion pattern — particularly damaging when records would resolve the question objectively. Vulnerability score 78/100; breach element advanced.

Chunk 5 · 0:36:40

The systemic-failure admission

Asked what he remembers about Mr. Crowden, Dr. Thorani redirected to a routine-practice explanation:

"a lot of patients are sent to me from the southeast … commonly it's the patients are done by the team depending on who's available"

This collides directly with the standard-of-care admission earlier in the same chunk (patients DO sign consent forms naming a specific surgeon, and "that's required, right? yes"). The analyzer surfaced the collision as a high-severity prior-testimony inconsistency and generated this fork question:

"So there's a structural gap between what the patient consents to (a specific surgeon) and what your practice actually does (the team available that day). Correct?"

The system has just laid the foundation for both individual-case liability (Crowden) and a systemic-practice argument that survives even if Mr. Crowden's individual consent dispute somehow doesn't.