The Observer follows up its earlier reporting on disastrous doctor Christopher Duntsch and the efforts of Greg Abbott to ensure he is never held accountable for his actions.
Dr. Christopher Duntsch
When I wrote about Duntsch last August, there were quite a few unanswered questions. Chief among them: Why did he do it? Was he a sociopath? A drug addict? And with his record of patients dying or ending up paralyzed, how was he allowed to keep practicing?
Thanks to the new litigation, we have at least a few answers. According to the lawsuits, Duntsch had drug problems that Baylor should have known about. The lawsuits allege a shocking list of behaviors that, if true, should have been huge red flags for Baylor. They contend he was in treatment for drug abuse during his residency at the University of Tennessee. That he was abusing prescription drugs and skipped out on five drug tests that Baylor Plano asked him to take, without any consequences. That he kept a bottle of vodka under his desk; that a bag of white powder showed up in his private bathroom. That he took off for Las Vegas immediately after a surgery, leaving his patient unattended. But despite this, and despite the numerous warnings about Duntsch from doctors and nurses who had worked with him, Baylor continued to allow Duntsch to operate, and even publicized his practice and encouraged doctors like Morguloff’s to refer their patients to him.
According to the lawsuits, the reason for this was simple: The hospital had advanced Duntsch $600,000 to move from Tennessee to Dallas. “Baylor had spent a lot of money on Duntsch,” attorney Jim Girards wrote in Passmore’s complaint, “and they wanted it back.” If he didn’t work, they didn’t get paid.
But in Texas, it is extremely difficult to use the courts to hold a hospital accountable for allowing a dangerous doctor to operate, thanks to a decade-long campaign, aided by the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Legislature. Under current law, Baylor Plano can make money off a high-dollar surgeon like Duntsch without being financially accountable for anything that he does.
The four Duntsch patients want to change that. Their only recourse is to challenge the constitutionality of the laws shielding Baylor Plano. If they win, hospitals could once again be responsible for the actions of the doctors they allow to practice. But they’re confronting powerful opponents, not just a lucrative hospital. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who’s made limiting lawsuits a feature of his political career, is facing off against them in court. Barring an upset in court, it’s likely that the hospitals who allowed Duntsch to kill and maim patients will never pay a cent in damages.
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Where does this leave Dr. Duntsch’s victims? With little choice but to challenge the constitutionality of the malice law upon which the hospital immunity rests. The legal challenge in the Baylor case is the first constitutional challenge since tort reform to the credentialing laws, the first attempt to open hospitals back up to liability for the doctors they allow to practice. But Barry Morguloff and the three other plaintiffs are facing a powerful adversary: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is the Republican nominee for governor.
Tort reform has been a major feature of Abbott’s political career. In 2002, when Abbott was running for attorney general against Kirk Watson, he made tort reform a central plank of his campaign. In his campaign literature, he referred to Watson as a “plaintiff personal injury trial lawyer,” which is to say, the kind of lawyer people love to hate.
Abbott was well-supported in that campaign, and in all subsequent ones, by groups pushing lawsuit reform. According to Texans for Public Justice, between 1997 and 2014 Abbott took in $2.3 million in contributions from doctors, hospitals and the two PACs set up to push tort reform. About $400,000 came directly from hospitals.
Abbott was well-supported in that campaign, and in all subsequent ones, by groups pushing lawsuit reform. According to Texans for Public Justice, between 1997 and 2014 Abbott took in $2.3 million in contributions from doctors, hospitals and the two PACs set up to push tort reform. About $400,000 came directly from hospitals.
If anything, those numbers understate how much he’s brought in from tort reform interests. In his gubernatorial race, Abbott has brought in $2.8 million from what Texans for Public Justice calls “tort tycoons,” the 34 super-rich Texans who also gave heavily to pro-tort reform groups like Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC. Since his race for Attorney General in 2001, they’ve given Abbott $10 million. All told, about one out of every five dollars he’s raised in his time in office has come from people and political groups staunchly imposed to strengthening the tort laws.
See here and here for some background, and be sure to read the whole story. It’s not an exaggeration to say that if Abbott wins again on this, there will be basically no way to hold incompetent doctors and the hospitals that employ them accountable for any damage they cause.