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Texas

Alexandra Katada
McKinney, TX

During the birth of Sandra Katada's daughter Alexandra, the doctor contorted and stretched Alexandra's spine, destroying her nerves and leaving her partially paralyzed. The doctor applied so much force that, in addition to the spinal injury (which would prove fatal), the baby's elbow was broken and pulled from its socket. Some of the damaged spinal nerves were responsible for stimulating the growth of her rib cage. But because the nerves were damaged, her ribs did not expand, and when the rest of her body grew over the next several months she suffocated inside her small rib cage.

Alexandra died on Valentine's Day, 1994. She was eight months old.

Ricardo Romero
Humble, TX

In July 1998, 42-year-old Ricardo Romero of Humble, Texas, went into Columbia Kingwood Medical Center for routine back surgery for a herniated disk. A longtime shipdock foreman, Ricardo injured his back at work by moving a large hose. On the day of his surgery, his wife Dolores kissed him goodbye and waited for word from the doctors. When word finally came, it was devastating. Ricardo had nearly bled to death on the operating table, causing his heart to stop and causing him severe and irreversible brain damage.

Today, Ricardo can barely walk and take care of himself. His long-term memory seems to be fine, but he has lost much of his short-term memory. Though he endured three years of hospitalization and therapy, Ricardo still relies on his wife to help him meet his most basic needs, such as going to the bathroom, bathing and eating. Dolores was forced to quit her job as a bank teller to stay home and care for her husband. "I pretty much feel like a single mom now, with an extra person to take care of," says Dolores. "Our relationship as husband and wife is gone. He knows that. And the only thing that gets him through is medication."

It was alleged that Ricardo's doctor was addicted to painkillers and that the hospital was aware the doctor may have posed a risk to patients, but continued to allow him to perform surgery anyway. Evidence showed that there were 12 separate malpractice allegations against the doctor in the 10 years prior to Ricardo's surgery. Prior cases included the performance of unnecessary surgery resulting in amputation, surgery on the wrong hip, amputation of the wrong leg, and leaving a surgical sponge inside a patient.

Moreover, the doctor had been suspended from operating privileges at another nearby hospital two months prior to Ricardo's surgery, but the doctor had obtained a restraining order preventing the staff at the suspended hospital from telling anyone of his punishment. By the end of 1998, Columbia Kingwood reported that the doctor was no longer employed there but, according to the Texas Board of Medical Examiners, he is still practicing medicine in the state.

The Houston Chronicle reported on this case and regulators' limited policing ability to in August 2003. Little has changed since then.

Audrey Smith
Austin, TX

"Jackie Smith has a hard time with the idea that suing over her mother’s rape in a nursing home is 'frivolous.' Smith herself had never had reason to sue anyone, until 2:30 am on November 7, 2003, when a male nurse noticed that a patient’s door at the Heritage Duval Gardens Nursing Home in Austin was closed when it should have been open. He heard crying, and when he snapped on the light, he saw a man leap from the bed of an elderly woman. The man, according to police, was Kevin Arceneaux, a 6-foot, 190-pound nurse’s aide. Still sobbing softly in her bed was Smith’s mother, an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. Two months later, police arrested Arceneaux and he confessed.

Despite Arceneaux’s checkered past, Heritage hired him on September 22, 2003, and put him on the lightly supervised night shift. Within six weeks, an Alzheimer’s patient was sexually assaulted a few doors down from Smith’s mother and then Smith’s mother was raped, though police didn’t learn of the first attack until much later.

Smith wanted the nursing home punished, but says she doesn’t care about the money. "I want to make them accountable so that it doesn’t happen again," she says.

It fell to Frank Ivy, an Austin lawyer, to explain that tort reform in Texas had made her suit almost impossible financially no matter how negligent Heritage had been. Since the assault took place in the course of delivering medical care, it was considered malpractice—but that wouldn’t help Smith. A nursing-home patient can’t sue for loss of future income, a type of award that had been separately capped. When all the math was done, the best Smith could hope for would be to win perhaps $50,000 from a nursing home that apparently hired a sexual predator to care for her mother.

Before entering Heritage her mother had lived with Smith in her mobile home until Smith came to fear leaving her alone. "My mother became my daughter. It was like having my young daughter assaulted. And it’s been extremely difficult."

Audrey Smith passed away on January 19, 2005."

Source: Look Who's Behind 'Tort Reform' by Dan Zegart in The Nation (October 24, 2004)

Updated April 2005