Actor James Woods listens to motions prior to opening statements in his lawsuit against Kent Hospital on Monday.

AP / Stew Milne

WARWICK — More than three years after Michael J. Woods died in the Kent Hospital emergency room, a group of six jurors and four alternates were in a Kent County courtroom yesterday, beginning the legal process of determining if he died because of medical negligence or an unavoidable health condition.

Kent Hospital is being sued by Woods’ surviving brother, the Oscar-nominated actor James Woods. The suit, filed on behalf of Michael’s son Peyton, charges that the doctor who treated Michael Woods, Kelli A. Naylor, ignored obvious warning signs that the 49-year old former mayoral candidate and local businessman was in danger of a fatal heart attack.

Mark B. Decof, the lawyer representing James Woods as executor of his brother’s estate, told the jurors they were a board of inquiry charged with finding the truth of what happened in the Kent Hospital between 4:25 p.m., when Michael Woods went in, and 7:30 p.m., when he was pronounced dead, a result of severe clogging of one of his heart arteries.

But Kent Hospital lawyers David W. Carroll and Jason C. Preciphs countered that when Michael Woods showed up at the emergency room, his symptoms were ambiguous; he was complaining of a sore throat and insisted he was suffering from an anxiety attack. Naylor and the hospital staff were trying to ascertain what was wrong when he suffered the sudden heart failure, Carroll said.

Preciphs claimed that Michael Woods’ arterial disease was so extensive that even if hospital staff had diagnosed it sooner and followed proper procedures, Woods still would have died.

Woods reported to the emergency room about 4:30 p.m. complaining of a sore throat and vomiting. At 5:30 p.m., Woods was sweating profusely; Naylor examined him and ordered a series of tests. One of them was an electrocardiogram (EKG), which indicated an abnormal heartbeat.

“What Michael Woods was suffering from was not a common sore throat,” Decof said.

Woods was sent for x-rays and returned to the emergency room, but all the treatment rooms were full, and his gurney was parked in the hallway.

“They left him in the hallway,” Decof said. Preciphs countered that it was near the nurses’ station.

Lisa J. Konopka, Woods’ fiancée, spending her birthday at the hospital with him, was beside him when, his heart deprived of blood because of a blocked coronary artery, failed. Woods slumped over and subsequently died.

Decof hammered on the EKG report. The computer printout clearly indicated that Woods had an abnormal heartbeat, Decof said, and that should have been an immediate red flag.

He argued that had Naylor taken the warning seriously, she could have prescribed blood thinners to improve flow to the heart, aspirin to widen the arteries or even a catheterization that might have saved Woods’ life.

At the very least, he said, Woods should have been put on a heart monitor to constantly check his heartbeat.

“You must take it as if it’s a ticking time bomb,” Decof said. “It’s a life-threatening situation.”

Carroll and Preciphs argued that it was easy after the fact to suggest courses of treatment, but given the information that was available to the hospital staff, they made the correct decisions. Naylor and hospital staff were trying to narrow the cause of Woods’ condition, he said, when he was stricken.

Woods had a history of weeks-long sore throats, Carroll said. The symptoms he described, sore throat, swollen glands and vomiting, were not signs of a heart attack, Carroll said.

At one point, Carroll presented an autopsy photograph of Wood’s heart, showing what he said was the coronary artery, cut open to show a large white mass clogging it. The autopsy described Woods, 5-foot-10 and weighing 235 pounds, as slightly obese and said he suffered from severely constricted coronary arteries.

James Woods, sitting at the plaintiff’s table, flanked by lawyers, shielded his eyes with his palms and plugged his ears with his thumbs while the autopsy photo was on the screen.

Carroll argued that the EKG was not a definitive diagnosis. It was meant to be combined with a doctor’s observations of the patient, he said, and Woods was showing symptoms consistent with an anxiety attack and sore throat.

Preciphs argued that a follow-up test of enzymes in Wood’s bloodstream, ordered by Naylor after the EKG, didn’t show the enzyme traces normally seen with an impending heart attack, but those results didn’t come back until after Woods had died.

The trial is expected to take three to four weeks and Associate Justice Daniel A. Procaccini has ordered the lawyers and principals not to comment publicly.

But in an interview in September 2006, as he was starting a new television series, “Shark,” James Woods remembered his recently departed brother, who’d gotten a small part in a TV movie with James.

“We never had arguments, we were always each other’s best friends,” he said then. “I never didn’t want to be in my brother’s presence. I was never bored with the idea of being around him. I wanted to be around him all the time. I just loved my brother, and vice-versa … We were just lucky that we loved each other unconditionally, and we knew it.”

With reports from Andy Smith

jhill@projo.com