Guilty of negligence?

My husband and I grew up and qualified in England. In 1974 he was invited to join a family practice residency at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. We had planned to stay abroad for two years but we stayed for 15. We worked as family doctors in Canada, New England, and Texas. Many experiences we must have shared with doctors the world over, but some were unique to America. Here is the aftermath of one of them.

The jury are locked in the juryroom. We are waiting for their verdict after five and a half years of anguish and anxiety.…

She was a thin, pale woman, asthmatic, menopausal, mildly depressed, and angry. She had come to hate her husband. He aggravated her so much. She was making plans to leave him and return to Toronto, but she did not want to leave her nice home in Texas.

That day they had another argument. She said that she did not want him around any more. She grabbed her handbag and took the car. The car and she were found along a dirt road not far from home. A map was left open at the wrong place. …