$25 Million Settlement for Families of 45 Patients Who Died at Memorial Medical Center After Hurricane Katrina
Won by Bruno & Bruno.
Joseph Bruno led a class-action lawsuit against Tenet Healthcare after 45 patients died at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina, securing a $25 million settlement in 2011.
What happened
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in late August 2005, Memorial Medical Center had approximately 187 patients and some 800 staff and visitors trapped inside. The hospital's backup generators failed shortly after the storm hit, eliminating power to ventilators and other critical equipment. Evacuation helicopters did not arrive for two days. By the time rescuers reached the building, 45 patients were dead.
The survivors and families of those who died filed suit against Tenet Healthcare Corporation, the corporate parent of Memorial. The lawsuit alleged that Tenet had failed to develop a valid evacuation plan and was unprepared to care for seriously ill patients as conditions in the city collapsed. Generators were installed in flood-vulnerable locations, and no adequate arrangements had been made for the kind of prolonged power outage and transportation breakdown that Katrina produced.
Joseph Bruno of Bruno and Bruno served as lead counsel for the plaintiff class. The case proceeded in Orleans Parish Civil District Court before Judge Rosemary Ledet. Jury selection had already begun in March 2011 when Tenet agreed to settle. The company, which reported revenues exceeding $9 billion for 2010, denied all liability, attributing the deaths to the failed federal levees, inadequate government response, and the hurricane itself rather than any failure on its part.
The parties announced the settlement on March 23, 2011. Judge Ledet granted preliminary approval and later found the $25 million agreement 'fair, reasonable and adequate.' Some families opted out of the class to pursue separate claims. One plaintiff, Mark LeBlanc, had previously reached a separate settlement against LifeCare, a long-term care facility operating inside Memorial at the time of the storm. The class settlement was given final approval following a hearing in October 2011, releasing Tenet from further liability for class members' claims.
Apart from the civil litigation, certain Memorial physicians had acknowledged administering drug injections that hastened patient deaths during the crisis. No criminal charges were ever filed in connection with those acts.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.ProPublica: Lawsuit Against New Orleans Hospital Settles Shortly After Trial Begins, naming Joseph M. Bruno as lead counsel (March 2011)·Archived copy
- 2.ProPublica: Class-Action Suit Filed After Katrina Hospital Deaths Settled for $25 Million (July 2011)·Archived copy
- 3.Insurance Journal: Settlement Reached in New Orleans Hospital Katrina Class Action Lawsuit (March 2011)·Archived copy
- 4.Facing South: Class-Action Suit Filed After Katrina Hospital Deaths Settled for $25 Million (July 2011)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Bruno & Bruno
All Bruno & Bruno proven verdicts →Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.
A New Orleans jury ordered four major tobacco companies to fund a $591 million statewide smoking cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers, the first verdict of its kind in U.S. history.
Joseph Bruno served on the eight-member Plaintiffs' Legal Committee in a federal class action covering more than 17,000 people harmed when a corrosion failure triggered a catastrophic pre-dawn explosion at Shell's Norco, Louisiana refinery in May 1988, ultimately settling for nearly $172 million.
Joseph Bruno served as class counsel in a long-running class action on behalf of children who suffered lead poisoning from hazardous paint in Housing Authority of New Orleans units, securing a settlement fund of roughly $65.5 million.
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A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
A Clark County jury ordered Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay $524 million after finding the UnitedHealth Group subsidiaries negligently credentialed a gastroenterologist whose unsafe injection practices at his Las Vegas endoscopy clinics caused the largest medically caused hepatitis C outbreak in American history.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.