Expert: Hospital uses 'absurd' medical malpractice defense in deadly ER crash lawsuit

Austin (KXAN) – The St. David Center in North Austin uses a legal defense. A four -person family was injured when a car drove to the loungeAccording to a lawyer who has more than 40 years of experience who reviewed the records of the public case.

Next month, it coincides with one year since the Bernard family filed the lawsuit, accusing health care of Sant David of serious negligence for not being in safety at that time. Experts say that the security advantage could prevent the accident that killed the driver, who had the level of alcohol in the blood between three and four times the legal limit of driving at that time, the results of toxicology showed.

Fighting for accountability

In addition to the broken bones, surgical and rehabilitation operations are the scars that are difficult to recover.

“I wasn’t in our house for about a month after the accident,” Nadia recalls. She talks to her to heal last year.

On February 13, 2024, Nadia, her husband Levy and their young children were operated by a car while looking at the fish tank inside the hospital lounge. The smallest of them went through the windshield sedan.

He used to say, “Boom, Oi. Boom, Oi, “Nadia said her child will shout after the accident when he saw other cars.” This is crazy. It is not even two. “

Medical invoices and continuous emotional losses are the Family Costume Center for Health Care Sant David. In the court files, the hospital system did not mention the reason for the lack of safety outside ER. However, he argues that as Nadia was sick on that day, one day of CT scans, her injuries should be treated as “health care responsibility claims” – despite her presence in the hallway at that time, not in the examination room, and after doctors already saw.

Saint David said health care that she did not comment on the suspended litigation.

Defense of “Responsibility of Health Care”

Lawyer of the medical misfortune in Dallas Kay vo Wei I worked with KXan investigations before. In 2022, Van Wei, who represented the victims of the famous nerve surgeon in Texas. “Doctor of Death,” Help pushing the law change to reform the Texas Medical Council and make discipline records the doctor more transparent. It was a direct response to our investigations Doctors coming to Texas to escape from their problematic past. The law is completely implemented this year.

Van Wey has no connection to Bernard’s cases, but he agreed to review the records of the General Court for us.

“They are doing what the lawyers are doing,” she told KXan during a recent visit to the Capitol to meet the legislators. “They are trying to do the gap. They represent their customers.”

Van Wei was the treatment of Nadia’s pain and suffering calls for medical misconduct, because she was sick on that day, a “complete distortion” of the law. She believes it is an “extreme example of the amount of strength and concession” in Texas and “how the system can be unfair for patients.

“I think the average person can look at a situation like this and says: What is the car that collides with the door of ER with any relationship with bad medical behavior?” Van Wei said.

The legal strategy dates back to 2003.

More than 20 years ago, the state lawmakers acknowledged Medical responsibility law in Texas To curb the so -called Texas to repair the lawsuit “suddenly similar to the lottery for a few plaintiffs or their lawyers.”

The law culminated in pain and suffering in medical responsibility issues of $ 250,000.

“I think the hospital seizes the opportunity to reduce its responsibility,” Van Wei said, referring to the current defense strategy.

Under the law, which is cited by St. David’s lawyers in defense, the demands for medical responsibility relate to treatment or lack of treatment that the patient received, or anything that contradicts “acceptable care standards, health care, or safety … directly related to health care.”

The last component of the law – in reference to “safety” – is what St. David’s lawyers believe should cover the claim that has failed in its duty to protect Nadia, its patient, with impurities.

“So, as the contents of Mrs. Bernard, NAMC has a strengthening duty to protect patients at her headquarters by virtue of the fact that it has not been a failure of health care, the alleged failure to protect the safety of her patients can only be asking for a health care responsibility.”

Lawyers of Saint David Healthcare

Van Wei said this is an extension, because Pooliars is not associated with health care.

“There are healthcare safety issues [like the] Van Wei said, “The maintenance of the MRI is disrupted, or something like that, but the safety issue should be linked to health care,” said Van Wei.

“In this case, one must seem long and find that he finds evidence that the car passes through ER doors has any relationship to providing health care.”

St. David’s lawyers assign their request to treat Nadia’s claims because medical responsibility will only apply to it.

The rest of her family’s allegations will be dealt with as a personal injury and not undergoing basins with non -economic damage.

If the judge agrees that this would limit the amount of money that the hospital system may have to pay the price and suffering of Nadia’s pain compared to her husband and two children.

Van Wei said that the idea that hospital patients can have less rights than visitors, in terms of submitting a claim, should be concerned with all Texas.

“Any reasonable person will back down from this and say: This is a legal absurdity,” she said. “The law was not for this purpose.”

Austin’s lawyer for the Bernard family, Sean BrainHe takes deposits from hospital officials in an attempt to find out why Saint David is in some of its positions in the Central Texas but not others, such as NAMC.

Bollars was installed after the truth, but the hospital system will not say whether it is classified as its classification to stop another incident.

Couscous Continuous investigation The new Austin Decree, which requires security funds made of collision in new hospitals, urgent care clinics, and independent Ers along with those that are expanding.

It also led directly to the Senate 660 bill, which aims to expand the safety step at the state level.