Lubbock Jury Finds Nursing Home 51% at Fault in Pressure Sore Case; Appeal Orders Retrial
After trial: Reversed. On May 18, 2006 the Amarillo court of appeals ordered a new trial because the medical expenses were not separated and a settlement credit was owed, while upholding the pain and suffering award.
Won by Witherite Law Group.
A Lubbock County jury found Bender Terrace nursing home 51 percent responsible for pressure sores that worsened while a quadriplegic resident was in its care in 2000. It awarded $350,000 for pain and suffering and $180,000 in medical expenses, and the judgment was $270,300 after fault was apportioned. The Amarillo court of appeals upheld the pain and suffering award but reversed for unsegregated medical expenses and a missing settlement credit, and remanded for a new trial.
What happened
In June 2000, Ronald Honeycutt, then 50, fell and struck his head against a vehicle, and the injury left him a quadriplegic. He was treated for a broken neck at Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas. In August 2000 he moved to a nursing home operated by IHS Lubbock, and about a month later he was transferred to Bender Terrace, run by B.T. Healthcare, Inc.
Honeycutt had pressure sores from the time of his spinal injury. At Bender Terrace they grew in number and severity, and in early November 2000 he went back to Covenant Medical Center for treatment. He sued both nursing homes on July 1, 2002, and IHS Lubbock settled before trial. That left B.T. Healthcare to defend the case alone in the 99th District Court in Lubbock County.
The jury found Bender Terrace 51 percent responsible for the injuries and found Honeycutt 49 percent responsible. It awarded $350,000 for pain and suffering and $180,000 in medical expenses, and on December 17, 2003, the court signed a judgment of $270,300 after the comparative-fault reduction. Liability was contested in a case where the plaintiff was a quadriplegic already prone to skin breakdown, and the jury still placed the majority of the fault on the facility.
Kevin Glasheen and Robert S. Hogan of Lubbock, together with Brian A. Eberstein and Amy K. Witherite of Eberstein & Witherite, L.L.P., in Dallas, represented the plaintiff on appeal, according to the opinion's counsel block. The appeal is captioned with Thurman Honeycutt, Ronald's brother, as executor and representative of Ronald Honeycutt's estate.
B.T. Healthcare appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh District in Amarillo (No. 07-04-0084-CV), arguing that the trial court failed to apply a credit for the IHS Lubbock settlement, that the jury should have been asked to apportion responsibility to IHS Lubbock, and that the evidence did not support either damage award. On May 18, 2006, the court rejected the jury-charge argument and the challenge to the pain and suffering award. It pointed to hospital records of buttock pain from the sores and testimony that he screamed when family members touched the sore areas.
The court found two problems with the rest. The record showed that some of the $180,000 covered treatment of the bed sores, but it did not separate those charges from other medical care, so the medical expense award could not stand as written. And because the settlement agreement between Honeycutt and IHS Lubbock did not expressly allocate its funds, Bender Terrace was entitled to a settlement credit. The court reversed the judgment and remanded the case for a new trial. We could not find a record of how the retrial ended.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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