Roger B. Hargrave told his estranged wife, Yvette Cade, that he would fry her like Crisco. Then he doused her with gasoline. Then he chased her and set her on fire. Cade suffered third-degree burns over half of her body in the October 2005 assault and is permanently disfigured.
Hargrave is now serving a life sentence in Cumberland, Maryland and is on the hook for a $40 million civil judgment subsequently secured by Cade.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer dismissed a bid by Hargrave to seek $45 million from the Washington Hospital Center. The very definition of an unsympathetic plaintiff, Hargrave had claimed that he lost his civil suit because the hospital failed to respond to his request for Cade's medical records. Judge Collyer reasoned that Hargrave didn't have a negligence claim to make against the hospital because the hospital did not owe him a legal duty to produce the medical records of another.
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