Dr. Benjamin Stone is a hotshot young surgeon who longs to leave the drudgery of a Washington , D.C. emergency room and finally leaps at his chance at more money and less death as a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills .  On his last day , Ben's relationship with his co-workers is presumed to be anything but a warm one .  None of his colleagues will join him for a drink and a cake in his honor has an iced portion of the phrase `` Good riddance , asshole '' sliced out .  Ben's cross-country drive in a 1956 Porsche 356 Speedster is interrupted when he crashes in the rural hamlet of Grady , South Carolina .  The crash damages the fence of local Judge Evans , who sentences him to community service at a nearby hospital .  Ben offers to pay for the fence , but the stern judge increases his community service each time he talks back .  Defeated , he reports to the hospital , where Nurse Packer humbles him by ordering him to clock in and out , as would a factory worker .  Though upset , Ben quickly makes friends with Mayor Nick Nicholson , the town cafe's proprietor/head waitress , and Melvin , the local mechanic tasked with repairing Ben's car .  Ben soon finds his clinic work to be much more laid-back than the emergency room .  He has simple cases such as spots before the eyes , fishing hook impalings , and even reading mail for a young illiterate couple , whose baby he later delivers .  The experience also humbles Ben when he mistreats a case of mitral valve regurgitation leading to late cyanosis in the child . 
Where did Judge Evans live?
In Grady,South Carolina