Originally published by Carrington Coleman .
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas v. Burch
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-14-00665 (January 22, 2015)
Justices Evans (Opinion), Brown, and Schenck
Tinnard v. Dallas County Hospital District
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-13-01161-CV (January 22, 2015)
Justices Bridges, Lang (Opinion), and Evans
The Dallas Court of Appeals issued two opinions further clarifying what is and what isn’t a health care liability claim subject to the expert report requirements of Chapter 74 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code. In Tinnard, it found that the character of a health care liability claim cannot be changed by artful pleading or by the invocation of the Texas Tort Claims Act. In Burch, it found that a slip and fall that happened to take place in a hospital did not give rise to a health care liability claim.
In the first case, Tinnard v. Dallas County Hospital District, the plaintiff sued the Dallas County Hospital District d/b/a Parkland Health & Hospital System (“Parkland”) and the University of Texas Southwestern at Dallas (“UT Southwestern”) for an alleged “error in medical judgment and decision-making” in discontinuing antibiotic treatment for his gouty arthritis. The case was dismissed because the plaintiff, Zene Tinnard, failed to timely file an adequate expert report as required by Chapter 74. Tinnard argued that his claims were brought under the Texas Tort Claims Act, not Chapter 74, and that his request for declaratory judgment that Parkland and UT Southwestern were not entitled to sovereign immunity was not a “health care liability claim.” The appeals court disagreed, holding that the underlying nature of the claim was not altered by the fact that it was pleaded as a Texas Tort Claims Act claim and a request for declaratory judgment.
In the second case, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas v. Burch, the Court agreed with the trial court that a slip-and-fall case does not become a health care liability claim merely because the fall took place in a hospital. The plaintiff, Dena Burch, slipped and fell in a puddle of water while she was at the hospital visiting her mother, and she brought suit against the hospital. The hospital filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that Burch failed to file an expert report, but the trial court denied the motion. The Dallas Court of Appeals agreed. Although certain claims based on accepted standards of hospital safety do constitute health care liability claims—for example, a claim based on the failure to train hospital employees in dealing with violent psychiatric patients—the safety claim must not be “completely untethered from health care.” The Court reiterated that “the mere fact that the alleged injuries occurred at the hospital is insufficient to transform a negligence claim into a health care liability claim,” and that there must be some at least indirect relationship with health care.
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