The Observer advances the ball.
Dr. Christopher Duntsch
How immune are hospitals? Under the current law, for Baylor to be liable for Duntsch’s mistakes, the plaintiffs have to prove that hospital administrators let him operate because they specifically intended to harm patients.
Soon after the three plaintiffs sued, Abbott’s office announced that it would be jumping in to defend the statute that shielded Baylor. In statements at the time, the attorney general’s office was clear: Abbott wasn’t defending Baylor or Duntsch. He was simply defending state law.
Earlier this week, Wayne Slater at the Dallas Morning News suggested that Abbott may have had other incentives to intervene. In June 2013 and January 2014 Abbott received two large donations to his gubernatorial campaign—$100,000 and $250,000 respectively—from one Drayton McLane, a Temple transportation exec and Republican who is also the chairman of the the board of trustees for Baylor Scott & White, the company that owns the Baylor hospital system.
The timing is a little suspicious. The $100,000 donation came the day after the Texas Medical Board suspended Duntsch’s license, ending an 18-month surgical career that had left two dead and many more paralyzed or in chronic pain. The $250,000 donation came the week after the second of the three lawsuits.
McLane has given Abbott money before, but it’s generally been much less; the most he had given in the past, according to the campaign filings the Morning News references, was $25,000.
See here for prior posts on Dr. Duntsch, and here for the DMN story on which the Observer piece is based. By the way, I can only presume that Observer author Saul Eblein is not a baseball fan or else he might have recognized Drayton McLane as the former owner of the Houston Astros. McLane, who gave more to Abbott in that one fell swoop than he had to Rick Perry in a dozen years, insists there was nothing fishy about the donation, its size, its timing, or Abbott’s subsequent defense of Duntsch. And we should believe him because that’s how people like Drayton McLane got to be where they are in the world today, by tossing their money around indiscriminately without even a passing thought to the possible return on investment. I’m sure Greg Abbott won’t treat him or the things he values any differently than he’d treat any other rich Republican donor. They’re all equals in his eyes.