Day 6 of trial: Former client didn’t want Snyder to flip to ‘their side’ under consultancy

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Michele Sanders hired medical malpractice lawyer Stephen Snyder to seek justice for her husband, Jeffrey Sanders, in early 2018 as his health was rapidly declining after a kidney transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

UPDATE: Stephen Snyder found guilty of attempted extortion

Before his transplant, Jeffrey Sanders, the owner of CJ’s Crabhouse and Grill in Owings Mills, worked full-time and was on dialysis. Snyder and Michele say he functioned well and was happy despite the dialysis treatments.

He died at 61 at the hospital in February 2018, about 13 months after his transplant.

Hospital officials say the quality of the kidney and the transplant surgery were not the causes of his death, but rather that the team of doctors did not monitor him properly as blood flow to the kidney decreased.

RELATED: Snyder held in contempt, minutes after closing arguments at federal trial

Sanders and Snyder believed systemic issues with the hospital’s transplant division were to blame; they said the division prioritized profit over safety and gave healthy patients high-risk kidneys without their knowledge. The kidney Sanders received had a Kidney Donor Profile Index score of 97 out of 100, indicating that it was high-risk.

As she sought a malpractice settlement, Michele Sanders also wanted Snyder to enter into a consulting agreement with the hospital system to prevent other people from experiencing the same suffering and loss.

“I just wanted to know this would never ever ever happen to anyone again, ever,” she said Wednesday at Snyder’s trial for attempted extortion. She added that she wanted Snyder to confirm the doctors in the transplant division at the time of her husband’s surgery and death were no longer working there.

They prepared a video that included footage of Sanders in his hospital bed, with much of his right leg amputated; parts of his fingers and feet were necrotic. (Hospital officials considered the video “inflammatory.”)

Day 6: Former client didn’t want Snyder to flip to ‘their side’ under consultancy

But in her testimony on Wednesday, Sanders appeared not to understand the details of the consulting agreement she advocated for, even though she signed a document authorizing Snyder to move forward with it. The $25 million agreement did not require Snyder to perform any work for the University of Maryland Medical System, and would have stopped him from representing plaintiffs against the transplant division.

Sanders said she didn’t want Snyder to be “on their side,” and wouldn’t speak to Snyder again if, as the agreement said, he would have to stop representing “people like me.”

Sanders eventually agreed to a $5 million settlement, and UMMS never agreed to the consultancy despite alleged threats by Snyder. On the advice of her lawyer, Andrew Radding, Sanders declined to answer many questions that could violate the nondisclosure agreement she signed as part of her settlement.

Sanders was prepared to testify on Wednesday and was seen praying in the vestibule outside the courtroom. Inside, Snyder caused delays by asking repetitive and irrelevant questions of witnesses and by not following rules of evidence.

Snyder got into a verbal fight on Wednesday with Radding over the order in which she would testify. Both raised their voices; Snyder got close to Radding’s face and nearly pressed a finger into his chest. A prosecutor said one alternate juror may have witnessed the argument.

The confrontation prompted U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Boardman to remind the jury that they could only consider what happened in court, and to let her know if they witnessed anything that might affect their ability to judge the case fairly and impartially.

After Sanders testified, Snyder brought in Jesse Schold, a surgery-transplant professor at the University of Colorado, who is also a statistician. Snyder paid Schold in 2018 to prepare a report on the transplant program at UMMS.

Aggregating publicly-available data, Schold found that UMMS accepted high-risk kidneys at a rate higher than the national average, and saw a higher rate of graft failure than the national average. He said the department had a slower transplant rate and higher waitlist mortality rate than the national average.

But on cross-examination, Schold described the close regulation of the transplant industry by the federal government. He also described the value a high-risk kidney can provide to certain patients experiencing kidney failure.

In his report, he wrote that a transplant with a high-risk kidney “may still portend a longer life expectancy than waiting longer for a donor with fewer risk factors.”

Boardman scheduled closing arguments for Thursday after at least one more witness.

Day 5: Prosecution rests, Snyder tells witness to ‘go back to Fenwick’

Day 4: Snyder struggles to follow rules during cross-examination

Day 3: ‘I felt very threatened by Mr. Snyder’

Day 2: ‘I don’t want to do it, so don’t make me do it’

Trial begins in lawyer Stephen Snyder’s attempted extortion case