The San Antonio Court of Appeals has reversed a Bexar County district court denial of health care providers’ Chapter 74 motion to dismiss for failure to timely serve an expert report.
Tontiplaphol v. Urdiales, (No. 04-24-00433-CV; April 30, 2025) arose from the death of Plaintiffs’ mother, who died a few days after being admitted to Methodist Hospital in San Antonio suffering numerous condictions, including dehydration and malnutrition, acute renal failure, anemia, hypoxic respiratory failure, and cardiac instability. Decedent began choking and was resusciated, but the attending physician and nurse practitioner told the family there was nothing more they could. Plaintiffs alleged that the providers refused the family’s request that she be kept alive long enough to say goodbye to her husband but that the providers refused life support. Plaintiffs sued the hospital and the providers, but Plaintiffs failed to serve an expert report within 120 days. After the deadline, Plaintiffs emailed an expert report signed by a physician. Defendants moved to dismiss for failure to timely serve the report under § 74.351. CPRC. Plaintiffs later filed a second amended petition asserting vicarious and derivative liability claims. After a hearing, the trial court signed an order granting Defendants’ motion to dismiss as to the direct liability claims but not the newly pleaded vicarious or derivative claims. The trial court also denied the motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ patient abandonment/euthanasia/§ 1983 claims as outside Chapter 74. The trial court’s dismissal order did not apply to newly sued Defendants Methodist Health Care Ministries of South Texas and HCA Health Services.
In an opinion by Chief Justice Martinez, the court of appeals reversed and rendered in part and remanded. Defendants first argued that the trial court abused its discretion by not dismissing Plaintiffs’ newly pleaded claims of derivative and vicarous liability. Plaintiffs argued that the 120-day expert report deadline reset for all defendants when they brought in Methodist Health Care Ministries and HCA and sought citation of service. By their logic, the 120-deadline as applied to the new defendants reset the clock for all of the defendants. The court disagreed, holding that the plain meaning of the statute “does not support [Plaintiffs’] re-starting argument.” The statute keys the deadline “specifically for a defendant based on that particular defendant’s anwer date,” and “the requirement applies only for a defendant that is a physician or health care provider.” Additionally, just because Plaintiffs added vicarious and derivative claims after the deadline expired as to the defendants who answered didn’t entitle them to a new 120 day to serve the report. The trial court thus abused its discretion by denying the motion to dismiss the newly pleaded claims.
Defendants next argued that the trial court abused its discretion by allowing a new intervening party (as personal representative of decedent’s estate) to reset the 120-day deadline. The court agreed, following SCOTX authority that the intervenor’s capacity to sue related back to the original claim. As to the patient abandonment, euthanasia, and § 1983 claims, the court observed that the statute creates a rebuttable presumption that a claim against a physician or health care provider is a health care liability claim. Here Plaintiffs failed to offer a rebuttal. Additionally, sister courts of appeals have ruled that patient abandonment is a health care liability claim. Plaintiffs further attempted to save those claims by asserting entitlement to an equitable extension of the 120-day deadline, but the court rejected it based on SCOTUS’s denial of cert in a similar case raising the same issue.
The court reversed and rendered, remanding the case to the trial court for consideration of Defendants’ reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.
