In re: Regency HIS of Longview, LLC d/b/a Longview Hill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center (No. 12-25-00082-CV; July 31, 2025) arose from a Chapter 74 health care liability claim in which Plaintiff alleged that she sustained numerous injuries from allegedly negligent care she received at a Longview nursing and rehabilitation facility. Specifically, she allegedly developed severe malnutrition, urinary tract infections, a pressure sore on her right heel, sepsis, and encephalopathy. These conditions required multiple hospitalizations and wound treatments, and the pressure sore ultimately required amputation. She filed suit against the facility for negligence and gross negligence.
Plaintiff served the facility with numerous requests for production (RFPs). Regency challenged several of these, including requests for: (1) all policies and procedures; (2) personnel files for nurses that provided care to Plaintiff; (3) Medicare/Medicaid/HHSC surveys regarding Plaintiff; (4) all resident surveys completed by Plaintiff or on her behalf; (5) resident surveys completed by any resident on the same floor as Plaintiff; (6) all incident reports regarding any resident of the facility; (7) all accident/incident reports involving any resident other than Plaintiff; and (8) all accident/incident reports involving Plaintiff. With regard to information other than that pertaining specifically to Plaintiff, these requests covered the period beginning 18 months before Plaintiff departed from the facility.
Regency complained that the RPFs were overly broad, burdensome, not limited in time or scope, and sought information that was irrelevant, immaterial, and not calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. It further complained that certain RFPs sought information protected by the privacy rights of its employees, as well as the nursing peer review privilege. Plaintiff filed a motion to compel. Regency responded and provided an affidavit signed by a representative, who averred that Regency’s personnel files contained personal and private information and their disclosure would violate its employees’ expectation of privacy. She further asserted that the files were created outside of the regular course of business for evaluative purposes and that their integrity must be retained. Finally, she added that the discovery process outlined above would necessitate days of work and thousands of dollars, generating massive hardship for Regency to the detriment of the facility’s capacity to provide care. The trial court signed an order partially granting Plaintiff’s motion to compel, reducing the 18-month period to the five months during which Plaintiff resided at the facility. Regency sought mandamus relief.
In an opinion by Justice Hoyle, the court of appeals denied relief. First, as to Plaintiff’s request for Regency’s policies and procedures during Plaintiff’s stay (which the trial court limited in time), Regency failed to produce any evidence that the request was overly broad, unduly burdensome, vague, ambiguous, or sought irrelevant information. Additionally, since Plaintiff’s petition alleged that Regency hired and retained unqualified and improperly trained nursing staff, chronically understaffed the facility, and undercapitalized the facility to maximize profits, the trial court didn’t abuse its discretion by concluding that the policies were relevant, the request was reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, and the request was not overbroad as a matter of law because it was reasonably tailored as to time, place, and subject matter (citations omitted).
Turning to the incident and accident reports, the court determined that since Regency produced no evidence that they were protected by peer review privilege (merely that it would be burdensome to produce them), the trial court did not abuse its discretion on that score. Regency argued further that the request was overly broad because it requested all reports, not just those pertaining to injuries similar to Plaintiff’s. But Regency’s affiant failed to explain in any detail why and how producing the reports would be overly burdensome. Her affidavit, the court ruled, “lack[ed] supporting underlying facts and contain[ed] bare, baseless opinions, and it is therefore conclusory” (citations omitted). Additionally, when the trial court limited the time period, Regency couldn’t argue that the request was not reasonably tailored as to time, place, and subject matter.
Next up were the Medicare, Medicaid, and Resident Surveys. Again, Regency complained that the request was overly broad because it sought surveys concerning residents other than Plaintiff or involving health conditions different than those suffered by Plaintiff. Regency further argued that the surveys were publicly available, so the RFP was unduly burdensome. Once again, the court observed that Regency’s affiant failed to address the public availability of the requested documents and presented merely conclusory statements that producing them would be particularly burdensome. And once again, the court determined that the requests were reasonably tailored and calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. As to the personnel files, Regency’s affiant failed to address alleged burdensomeness but only alluded to privacy concerns and nursing and peer review privilege. The problem was, she also failed to address whether Regency even had a nursing peer review committee or, if it did, that nurses comprised the statutorily required three-fourths membership of the committee. Regency thus failed to establish the application of the privilege. Turning to the privacy concerns, the court noted that Plaintiff had agreed to the redaction of personal information. It also determined that Regency’s affiant had failed to state the basis of Regency’s contention that the files “are within a constitutionally protected zone of privacy.” No abuse of discretion here.
This opinion strikes us as sound and instructive on what not to do if a defendant seeks mandamus relief to limit discovery requests. First, the trial court responded to defendant’s complaints by limiting the scope of the requests to the relevant time period. That’s a meaningful win to begin with. But as Justice Hoyle patiently explained, defendant’s evidence in support of further limitations on the requests was woefully inadequate and made no real attempt to provide any details showing how the requests violated the applicable standards. It also appeared to us that plaintiff’s counsel was willing to be perfectly reasonable when it came to personally identifying information. In short, this case is a far cry from other discovery disputes on which we have reported in the past.
TCJL Intern Satchel Williams researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
