Houston County Jury Awards $4 Million After Dothan Long-Term Care Hospital Left Fall-Risk Patient Unrestrained
After trial: The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the judgment without opinion on October 27, 2017, and dismissed the cross-appeal as moot, with two justices dissenting. Whether the judgment has been paid is not public.
Won by Marsh, Rickard & Bryan.
Thomas Doster, 77, was found on the floor of his room at Noland Hospital Dothan in 2007 and died less than 12 hours later. He had been assessed as a high fall risk and was supposed to be in restraints. In March 2016 a Houston County jury found the hospital breached the standard of care and awarded his daughter and executrix, Karren Hughes, $4 million. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed in October 2017.
What happened
In 2007, Thomas Doster, 77, was a patient at Noland Hospital Dothan, a long-term care hospital in Houston County, Alabama. He was found on the floor of his room after falling from his bed. Less than 12 hours later, he was dead.
His medical records and a state investigation showed that Doster had been identified as a high fall risk and that he was supposed to be in restraints when he fell. The restraints were not on. A patient flagged as a high fall risk is placed in restraints so that exactly this kind of fall does not happen, and the records showed the hospital had made that call and then did not carry it out. His daughter, Karren Hughes of Troy, was appointed executrix of his estate and sued Noland Hospital Dothan II, LLC, the company that operated the facility.
The case reached trial in March 2016, more than eight years after his death. The hospital's position at trial was that the records were not accurate, that Doster had never fallen, or that the timing of his death was a coincidence. The plaintiff's side tied the fall directly to the missing restraints and to the death that followed within hours. Jurors therefore had three questions to answer: whether Doster fell, whether the hospital met the standard of care in his supervision, and whether any failure caused his death.
The trial was held in Houston County Circuit Court in Dothan and lasted about a week. Rip Andrews led the trial team for the estate, assisted by Ben Ford of Marsh, Rickard & Bryan and by Dothan attorney Todd Derrick. Richard Riley of the firm joined them on the appeal.
In late March 2016 the jury found that Noland Hospital Dothan breached the standard of care by leaving the restraints off Doster and that the breach caused his death. It awarded $4 million in punitive damages to the estate. Alabama's wrongful death statute allows punitive damages only, which is why the award took that form.
Noland Hospital Dothan appealed, and Hughes cross-appealed. On October 27, 2017, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the judgment without an opinion and dismissed the cross-appeal as moot. Two justices dissented from the affirmance.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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