Fallout from fugitive surgeon, 'The Butcher', unresolved

Ten years after first verdict, hospitals, insurance company spar over millions of dollars

As he reviewed the allegations, Tim James couldn’t believe they were real.

A 79-year-old Nebraska woman had gone into the hospital for spine surgery on March 17, 2010. Within a month, she had two more surgeries. Then more surgeries. Then more surgeries.

Almost a year to the day from that first surgery, Frances Bockholt died in a Yankton nursing home after undergoing more than a dozen surgeries, including some because the first procedures had caused an infection in her spine.

James, a Yankton lawyer, couldn’t fathom how it happened. Surely, he thought, somebody in the hospital would raise an alarm. A nurse, an anesthesiologist, a lab technician. Somebody.

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