In a per curiam opinion (In re Oscar Degaberto Flores and Rivas Trucking Specialty, LLC., No. 20-0602), the Texas Supreme Court has “invited” a Dallas trial court to revisit its orders striking §18.001 counteraffidavits from a physician and chiropractor challenging the plaintiff’s medical expenses arising from a trucking accident. The trial court also struck and excluded their testimony, along with that of an accident reconstructionist. The Dallas Court of Appeals denied mandamus in 2020. In denying the relator’s petition for mandamus, SCOTX instructed the trial court to reconsider its orders in light of In re Allstate Indemnity Co., 622 S.W.3d 870 (Tex. 2021), which ruled that a trial court abused its discretion when it struck the defendant’s counteraffidavit challenging the reasonableness of medical expenses submitted by the plaintiff under §18.001, CPRC, and prohibited the defendant from challenging the reasonableness of the charges at trial. SCOTX thus squarely rejected the increasing use of §18.001 as an exclusionary rule that allows plaintiffs carte blanche to submit chargemaster rates as “reasonable” if the medical provider does not submit its bills to a third-party payer. We will now see if some trial courts and intermediate courts of appeals got the message.
