A malpractice action was bought on behalf of a child who had been seen for symptoms including chest pain, fever, headache, sore throat and coughing several times over the course of about four days by his private pediatrician and an Emergency Medicine physician in the Hospital’s ED. We represented all defendants. The plaintiff alleged that the defendants had merely diagnosed strep throat by rapid strep test, but had negligently omitted to draw blood for laboratory analysis, order head scans to investigate the etiology of the persistent or recurring headache, and perform a lumbar puncture to rule out bacteria in the spinal fluid, and therefore negligently failed to timely diagnose the child with a bifrontal epidural abscess. That diagnosis had been made when he presented to another hospital on the sixth day after the onset of the initial symptoms, complaining of experiencing seizures an hour before arriving. He underwent a bi-coronal craniotomy to drain the abscess, followed by IV antibiotic treatment. Supported by the affirmations of our experts in pediatric infectious disease and pediatric emergency medicine, we moved for summary judgment, asserting that the mother had been directed but refused to bring the child back to the emergency room when she telephoned the pediatric group on the fifth day to report persistent symptoms, that all the symptoms reported to the defendants had been consistent with strep throat—a diagnosis confirmed by the rapid strep test—and that a proper antibiotic had been prescribed for it. We asserted that blood tests, head CT scans and lumbar puncture had not been indicated by any symptoms appearing during the first four days after onset, after which the defendants did not see the child because his mother did not bring him back in as requested. The child had no signs of meningismus during his examinations by the defendants. Further, we pointed out, the organism detected by the rapid strep test—group A streptococcal bacteria—is not the same as the one cultured from the bi-coronal abscess—streptococcus viridans—so the strep throat infection had not caused and was unrelated to the epidural abscess, and there had been no medical basis upon which to suspect the presence of the second infection during the first four days of the child’s illness. Indeed, the infection causing the abscess could have arisen in the 24 to 48 hours before the occurrence of the seizure, while the child was kept at home. After receiving our motion papers, our adversaries, attorneys at a well-known and aggressive plaintiffs’ law firm, contacted us to advise that they simply could not defeat the motion, and had obtained their client’s consent to voluntarily discontinue the entire action, which they then did.