AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) - A woman who won a $14.1 million malpractice verdict for brain damage she suffered after gastric bypass surgery should have had the award reduced by the multimillion-dollar settlement her daughter received over the same injury, the Texas Supreme Court ruled.
An appeals court wrongly decided applying the daughter’s $3.3 million settlement with the hospital where her mother was treated would violate the Open Courts clause of the Texas Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in a Feb. 17 decision. The state high court also overruled lower courts to find that state law required the bulk of the verdict, which was for future medical expenses, to be paid over time instead of in a lump sum. As the woman at the center of the case died while it was on appeal, that will substantially reduce the cost of the total verdict.
In 2011, Jo Ann Puente underwent “Roux-en-Y” gastric-bypass surgery by Dr. Nilesh Patel at Metropolitan Methodist Hospital. She was later admitted for complications and accused a hospital physician, Dr. Jesus Virlar, of failing to notice symptoms requiring thiamine supplements. She developed Wernicke’s disease, a brain dysfunction associated with thiamine deficiency, which progressedto more debilitating Korsakoff’s syndrome. Puente ultimately died.
Puente, her minor daughter, C.P., and her mother, Maria Esther Carr, sued the doctors and Metropolitan Methodist. Before trial, Carr and C.P. settled with all defendants or dropped their claims. Puente settled with everyone but her doctors for $200,000. A jury then awarded her $133,202 for past earnings, $888,420 for future earning capacity lost and $13,262,874.86 for future medical expenses.
Virlar and his employer moved for a retrial on evidentiary grounds. They also argued C.P.’s $3.3 million settlement with Metropolitan Methodist Hospital should be counted toward Puente’s award and the rest should be paid over time. The trial court rejected both arguments, crediting only Puente’s $200,000 settlement toward the judgment and ordering the remaining $14.1 million to be paid at once.
An appeals court granted some defense motions but upheld most of the verdict and held that applying Section 33 to reduce Puente’s damages would violate the Texas Constitution. Chapter 33 reduces the damages a claimant may recover by “the sum of the dollar amount of all settlements.” The law applies to any “claimant,” defined as “a plaintiff, counterclaimant, cross-claimant, or third-party plaintiff.
“C.P. sought damages for her loss of Puente’s services and consortium, which resulted from the brain injuries to Puente,” the Texas Supreme Court ruled. “Thus, the claimant here is C.P. as well as Puente, and Chapter 33 requires that the total damages awarded to Puente be reduced by the dollar amount of C.P.’s settlement with Metropolitan Methodist Hospital: $3.3 million.”
The high court rejected the appeals court’s ruling that applying the settlement would violate C.P.’s right to sue under the Open Courts clause of the state Constitution. That clause only protects plaintiffs against losing a common-law remedy, the Supreme Court ruled. In this case, Puente’s jury verdict would have been cut in half under another Texas common-law rule had her daughter's settlement remained separate.
The Supreme Court also ruled Subchapter K of the Texas Medical Liability Act requires courts to award future payments for medical care over time if the defendants request it and provide enough evidence to support such an order. That law says periodic payments of future medical expenses “terminate on the death of the recipient.”