Professional Negligence Law Reporter

A Texas appellate court held that a plaintiff expert’s report was adequate in a case brought by parents whose child died after receiving allegedly inadequate treatment for a respiratory infection.

Luz Del Carmen Rodriguez and Victor Velazquez took their infant son to the office of pediatrician Satbir Chhina. A nurse practitioner diagnosed the child as having respiratory syncytial virus and prescribed Tylenol and nebulizer treatments. Chhina later signed off on the treatment plan. The next day, the child became unresponsive. He was transferred to a hospital, where he died of cardiopulmonary arrest. An autopsy revealed his death resulted from sepsis originating from a bacterial infection.

Rodriguez and Velazquez sued Chhina and the nurse practitioner, alleging medical negligence. The plaintiff proffered the expert report of Armando Correa, a board-certified pediatrician who specialized in pediatric infectious disease. Correa opined that the defendants had breached the standard of care by diagnosing the child’s condition as viral, among other things, and that his death resulted from the defendants’ substandard treatment. The defense moved to dismiss, but the trial court denied the motion.

Affirming, the appellate court found that the Texas Medical Liability Act requires plaintiffs to file a timely and sufficient medical report that summarizes the expert’s opinions regarding the applicable standard of care, the manner in which the care was rendered, the breach of the standard of care, and the causal relationship between this breach and the alleged injuries. Here, the court said, Correa’s report was sufficient under the act in that it stated what treatment the defendants should have provided—hospitalization and inpatient care—and what injury the child suffered as a result of their failure to do so—a worsening bacterial infection leading to cardio-pulmonary arrest and death. Thus, the court concluded, Correa’s report constitutes an objective, good faith effort to comply with the act, and the plaintiffs’ claims may proceed to a determination on the merits.

Citation: Chhina v. Rodriguez, 2018 WL 6793681 (Tex. App. Dec. 27, 2018).

Plaintiff counsel: Elizabeth Martinez, Laredo, Texas; and Dan Pozza and Thomas Jones, both of San Antonio, Texas.