The Houston [14th] Court of Appeals has reversed a Harris County district court’s denial of a hospital’s Chapter 74 motion to dismiss on the basis of a deficient expert report.
Memorial Hermann Health System v. John Doe (No. 14-25-00038-CV; February 19, 2026) arose from an alleged rape of a 65-year-old male during a hospital stay. Plaintiff filed suit, alleging negligence, gross negligence, and vicarious liability. He served an expert report opining that the hospital violated three Joint Commission Hospital Accreditation standards relating to patient rights and safety. The hospital objected to the report and moved to dismiss on the basis that the report failed to establish a breach of the standard of care. The trial court sustained the objection and granted Plaintiff 30 days to cure the deficiencies. Plaintiff filed an amended report containing several pages of “specific things hospitals should do to prevent assault and rape, such as analyzing the criminal histories of hospital employees, controlling access to patient rooms, enhancing lighting both inside and outside the hospital, and upgrading and monitoring their surveillance cameras.” Defendant objected once more, but this time the trial court overruled its objections and denied the motion to dismiss. Defendant sought interlocutory relief.
In an opinion by Justice McLaughlin, the court reversed and dismissed the case. Defendant argued that while Plaintiff’s report identified dozens of applicable standards, it never specified which of those standards Defendant breached. The report thus failed to “provide a basis for the trial court to conclude that the claims have merit” (citations omitted). Specifically, in the case of a sexual assault claim, “a report must describe what the health care provider should have done to forestall an assault, or it does not serve the purpose of ensuring that only meritorious health care claims survive dismissal.” Jacksboro Nursing Operations, LLC v. Norman, No. 02-20-00262-CV, 2021 WL 1421431, at *14 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Apr. 15, 2021, no pet.) (mem.op.). In this case, however, “it [did] not satisfy the standard under the TMLA for [the expert] to simply state that Memorial Hermann must be liable because there as an alleged assault.”
Plaintiff requested remand for further discovery if the court found the amended report deficient. The court rejected this request because “there is no equitable mechanism under Chapter 74 whereby a trial court may grant additional discovery or an equitable extension of time to file an expert report. To the contrary, Chapter 74 specifies that a plaintiff must file an expert report within 120 days of the defendant filing its answer; this strict deadline may only be extended by ‘one 30-day extension.’” § 74.651(c), CPRC. Since Plaintiff already had a 30-day extension, the court could not remand. The court rendered judgment dismissing the suit.
Justice Wilson concurred but wrote separately “to highlight the difficulty a plaintiff faces in submitting an expert report in a sexual abuse case.” He observed that Plaintiff’s expert “detailed the necessary standards that a reasonably prudent hospital must implement in order to prevent sexual abuse ….” The problem was the difficulty in discovering evidence of the specific violations of the standards the hospital may committed. Chapter 74 generally limits pre-report discovery to the medical records relating to the plaintiff’s care, but in sexual abuse cases plaintiff’s medical records won’t address those the possible breach of those standards. Nevertheless, Justice Wilson pointed out that Plaintiff’s expert could have done more to strengthen his report, “including interviewing plaintiff to determine what the hospital did and did not do in advance of and after the assault.” Absent that extra effort, the majority opinion correctly determined that the report was deficient.
