BOSTON -- The lawyer for Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis said Tuesday that doctors failed to recognize life-threatening complications after Weis' gastric bypass surgery, resulting in him bleeding internally for more than a day.

Weis' lawyer, Michael Mone, made his comments at the start of the coach's malpractice trial.

Weis had the surgery in June 2002 while he was an assistant coach for the New England Patriots after battling obesity for years. He weighed about 350 pounds at the time.

Weis alleges in the lawsuit that Massachusetts General Hospital physicians Charles Ferguson and Richard Hodin acted negligently and left Weis so close to death that he received the Roman Catholic sacrament of last rites. He was in a coma for two weeks.

The doctors maintain they did nothing wrong.

Weis reported complications, including difficulty breathing, in the early morning a day after his surgery, Mone said in an opening statement in Suffolk Superior Court. The following day, doctors performed another surgery to fix problems caused by the initial procedure.

"For more than 30 hours, Mr. Weis continued to bleed," Mone said.

William Dailey Jr., an attorney for the doctors, told jurors the doctors acted appropriately and that Weis was believed to be in good condition the morning of the second procedure.

"There was no carelessness," Dailey said. "Unfortunately, Mr. Weis experienced one of the complications that is known to exist."

Ferguson performed the surgery, then left for the weekend. Hodin was charged with caring for Ferguson's patients while the doctor was gone, and performed the follow-up surgery.

Weis, who is seeking unspecified damages, could testify today.

In a gastric bypass, an egg-sized pouch in the upper stomach is created by stapling it off from the rest of the organ and then connected to the small intestine. The most dangerous complication is leakage from any of the connections. In Weis' case, the connection between the pouch and the small intestine leaked.

Mone claimed Hodin failed to conduct a diagnostic test in which the patient swallows a solution that radiologists track to find leaks. He said that by Saturday morning, Weis was showing "classic signs" of internal bleeding.

"He should have intervened at that point," Mone said. "He chose not to operate. It was not going to correct itself."