Appeals Court Affirms Higher Negligence Standard for COVID-related Cases
Houston's 14th Court of Appeals affirmed a healthcare provider's affirmative defense under the Pandemic Liability Protection Act in a pair of parallel cases. Both underlying cases arose from the death of a nursing home resident from COVID-19.
Thirty-two states, a significant majority, have granted healthcare workers and facilities limited liability protection in battling the COVID-19 outbreak, either through executive order or state law.
The willful and wanton standard in the Pandemic Liability Protection Bill mirrors the standard that applies in Good Samaritan law and in Texas' emergency care protections, which have been in force in our state since 2003.
These are the first Texas cases we have seen in which healthcare providers have invoked the Pandemic Liability Protection Act's heightened defenses in trial court only to be rebuffed.
Texas Added More Due Process Protections in 2023 Legislative Session for End-of-Life Care
End-of-life care and the Texas Advance Directives Act have long been contentious. Doctors and patient surrogates have sometimes disagreed about whether an intervention is helpful or harmful, transformative or cruel, medically, ethically, or morally appropriate.
Families are facing deep personal loss with understandable emotion while physicians try to balance complicated medical care with their ethical and moral duty to do no harm, including prolonging a life that might include pain and suffering but no hope of recovery.
Stakeholders in these issues finally reached a workable compromise in the 2023 Legislative Session with the passage of HB 3162, an agreed bill that was two decades in the making. HB 3162 is the fourth iteration of the Texas Advance Directives Act, initially passed in 1999.
Nice try, New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham, but respectfully, no thank you.
August 8, 2024
Austin American-Statesman
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's clever ad campaign to lure Texas physicians and health care workers to New Mexico was creative, but it misses a few key points.
Texas doctors know there are many reasons why record numbers of physicians flock here year after year to practice medicine. Texas doesn’t need to advertise our many strengths.
First, Texas’ medical liability laws help ensure good physicians caring for Texans can practice without constant fear of a frivolous lawsuit ruining their career.
Second, our state recognizes patients deserve physician-led care.
Additionally, increasing numbers of quality medical schools and residency programs provide outstanding educational opportunities for aspiring physicians.
TMA Moment in Time: Medical Liability Reform on this 20th anniversary of tort reform, Texas physicians look back on the coalition that ended our-of-control lawsuits
By Sean Price
Texas Medicine August/September 2023
In 2002, David Cantu, MD, was the only Spanish-speaking physician in the Fredericksburg area delivering babies. But like many Texas physicians at that time, the family physician’s medical liability insurance premiums soared so high that he had to stop all obstetric services.
“Even though I was doing five or six deliveries per week, it was just barely making the overhead for the insurance - or less,” he said.
Some of Dr. Cantu’s patients could turn elsewhere. But many couldn’t because of the language barrier or because they had Medicaid coverage, and no other local physician could afford to take them.
Federal Judge Dismisses Challenge to Caps on Non-economic Damages
Texas Civil Justice League
April 27, 2023
Austin Federal District Judge Lee Yeakel has dismissed a challenge to Texas’ cap on noneconomic damages in medical liability cases. Plaintiffs in Winnett, et al. v. Frank, et al. (No. 1:20-cv-01155-LY) contended that: (1) the Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment and made applicable to the states; and (2) Texas’ cap on noneconomic damages in health care liability claims violates the Seventh Amendment’s guarantee that the right to a jury trial shall be “preserved.” There has been a long-held view, supported by U.S. Supreme Court precedent, that the Seventh Amendment’s right to a jury trial does not apply to the states.
