Horizon/CMS Healthcare Corp. v. Auld

• Decision Date: 08 January 1999
• Docket Number: No. 2-98-083-CV,2-98-083-CV
• Citation: 985 S.W.2d 216
• Parties: HORIZON/CMS HEALTHCARE CORPORATION d/b/a Heritage Western Hills Nursing Home, Appellant, v. Lexa AULD, Administratrix of The Estate of Martha Hary, Deceased, Appellee. Lexa Auld, Administratrix of The Estate of Martha Hary, Deceased, Appellant, v. Horizon/CMS Healthcare Corporation d/b/a Heritage Western Hills Nursing Home, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 216

985 S.W.2d 216

HORIZON/CMS HEALTHCARE CORPORATION d/b/a Heritage Western

Hills Nursing Home, Appellant, v. Lexa AULD, Administratrix of The Estate of Martha Hary, Deceased, Appellee.

Lexa Auld, Administratrix of The Estate of Martha Hary, Deceased, Appellant, v. Horizon/CMS Healthcare Corporation d/b/a Heritage Western

Hills Nursing Home, Appellee.

No. 2-98-083-CV

Court of Appeals of Texas Fort Worth.

Jan. 8, 1999.

R. Brent Cooper, Michelle E. Robberson, Diana L. Faust, Cooper & Scully, Dallas, for appellant.

H. Dustin Fillmore, III, Charles W. Fillmore, The Fillmore Law Firm. P.C., H. Dustin Fillmore, III, Fort Worth, for Lexa Auld.

Before DAUPHINOT, RICHARDS, and HOLMAN, JJ.

OPINION

DIXON W. HOLMAN, Justice.

We withdraw our opinion and judgment of January 7, 1999, and substitute the following. The opinion contains no substantive changes affecting the result and is only substituted to correct typographical errors.

This survival action began as a personal injury suit brought for Martha Hary as plaintiff by her next friend, Francis Orr. They sued for damages proximately caused by the negligence and gross negligence of Heritage Western Hills Nursing Home, where Martha was a bedridden patient from August 1994 until August 1995. Martha Hary died while the suit was pending, and Lexa Auld, administratrix of Martha's estate, took the case forward as a survival action that was tried to a jury. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM.CODE ANN. § 71.021 (Vernon 1996). The jury found that Martha's estate should recover actual damages and exemplary damages. The nursing home and Lexa Auld each appeal from the judgment, so each party is an appellant and an appellee. See TEX.R.APP. P. 3.1(a), (c), 38. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.

Background

In August 1994, Martha Hary, age 76, became a resident at the nursing home. The case was tried upon allegations that beginning in December 1994, the nursing home neglected to provide Martha with medical care and treatment within the acceptable standard of care for the conditions of her health, including Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, malnutrition, emphysema, degenerative joint disease, spinal arthritis, arteriosclerosis, and incontinence. At trial, Auld asserted that while a resident at the nursing home between mid-December 1994 and August 1995, and because of substandard nursing care, Martha's body developed pressure sores, some of which deteriorated to a condition described as Stage IV, where the tissue overlying a person's bone rots away and leaves the bone exposed. Auld asserted that Martha suffered contractures in all extremities and that the nursing home did not provide Martha all of the wound care treatments and pressure relieving devices that had been ordered. Auld contended that the care administered for Martha's pressure sores was painful, including surgical excision of foreign matter and all dead and devitalized tissue in the wounds, a procedure known as debridement. On August 6, 1995, Martha was taken from the nursing home to Fort Worth's Osteopathic Hospital where she was treated for 10 days. After her discharge from the hospital, Martha spent the remaining year of her life at a facility that is not a party to this suit. She died August 9, 1996, from an apparent heart attack, with recent gastrointestinal bleeding as a contributing factor.

Jury Verdict

When the cause of action arose, the nursing home was owned and operated by defendant Horizon/CMS Healthcare Corporation, and the court's charge treated Horizon and the nursing home as one. The jury found that the nursing home's negligence proximately caused Martha's injury and found $2,371,000 as actual damages. That sum includes $1,750,000 for physical pain and mental anguish, $150,000 for disfigurement, $250,000 for impairment, and $221,000 for medical care. The jury did not find that Martha's injuries resulted from malice, but found the nursing home grossly negligent. The issue of damages for gross negligence was bifurcated. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM.CODE ANN. § 41.009 (Vernon 1995). The jury found $90,000,000 as exemplary damages.

Damages Capped by Trial Court

In the final judgment, the trial court reduced the actual and exemplary damages. Persuaded that the nursing home is a "health care provider" and that the suit is a "health care liability claim," as defined in article 4590i, ¹ the court applied the statute's $500,000 cap to the amount of actual damages found by the jury and reduced that to $1,541,203.13 after using the consumer price index to adjust the actual damages. See TEX.REV.CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 4590i, §§ 11.02(a), 11.04 (Vernon Supp.1999). Prejudgment interest on the capped actual damages of $1,541,203.13 at the rate of 10% per annum was granted for the period from July 31, 1996, to the date of judgment (December 29, 1997). That totaled $211,968.21.

The court also determined that although the exemplary damages were not subject to article 4590i's cap, they were subject to the 1994 version of a statutory cap for personal injury suits, which provided that "exemplary damages awarded against a defendant may not exceed four times the amount of actual damages or $200,000, whichever is greater." Former TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM.CODE ANN. § 1.007. ² For the final judgment, the court applied the section 41.007 cap to reduce the $90,000,000 exemplary damages to $9,483,766.92. To compute the reduction, the court multiplied by four the jury's uncapped actual damages award of $2,370,941.71. ³

The Nursing Home's Issues

The nursing home appeals only these issues: (1) whether in a survival suit pled as a "health care liability claim" against a "health care provider," terms defined in article 4590i, the statute's $500,000 limitation on "civil liability for damages" restricts only the amount of compensatory damages the claimant may recover, or whether the cap also limits the prejudgment interest and the exemplary damages the claimant may recover; (2) whether written reports by the state about its investigations and reviews of the nursing home were erroneously admitted as evidence over the nursing home's objections that the reports were inadmissible either because of Texas Human Resources Code section 32.021, or, alternatively, because the reports were irrelevant, prejudicial, or hearsay; and (3) whether the evidence was legally sufficient and factually sufficient to support the jury's findings that the nursing home's negligence and gross negligence caused Martha's personal injuries or to support the jury's findings of damages for physical pain and mental anguish, disfigurement, and impairment; and even if it is assumed that the nursing home's conduct was the proximate cause of those injuries, the damages awarded are excessive. The nursing home does not complain that either the jury finding of $90,000,000 in punitive damages or the court's reduction of that sum to $9,483,766.92 is excessive.

The nursing home presents alternatives for its relief on appeal. The first alternative is that if our review determines that with admissible evidence Auld established the nursing home's liability for proximately causing Martha's injuries and if our review determines that the nursing home is not entitled upon lawful grounds to a new trial, then the home asks that we reverse the trial court's judgment and render judgment that the provisions of article 4590i, sections 11.02 and 11.04, cap the nursing home's total liability at $1,541,203.13. The nursing home's second alternative asks that we reverse the trial court judgment and render judgment that the nursing home is liable for no prejudgment interest and only $1,541,203.13 in actual damages plus four times that amount in exemplary damages.

Article 4590i's Cap

We begin our consideration of the nursing home's first issue with the language that creates the cap in article 4590i, section 11.02:

(a) In an action on a health care liability claim where final judgment is rendered against a physician or health care provider, the limit of civil liability for damages of the physician or health care provider shall be limited to an amount not to exceed $500,000.

(b) Subsection (a) of this section does not apply to the amount of damages awarded on a health care liability claim for the expenses of necessary medical, hospital, and custodial care received before judgment or required in the future for treatment of the injury.

TEX.REV.CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 4590i, § 11.02 (Vernon Supp.1999) (emphasis added).

Relying on those two subsections, the nursing home insists that although a health care claimant is entitled to recover the actual amount of his or her necessary medical, hospital, and custodial care expenses, the recovery of any other types of damages (other actuals, prejudgment interest, exemplary damages) is limited to an aggregate sum of $500,000. The nursing home argues that because the category of medical, hospital, and custodial care expenses is the single category of compensatory damages that the statute's cap expressly excludes, then a reasonable conclusion is that the statute's cap inherently includes every other category of damages, and thus limits the estate's recovery of both prejudgment interest and exemplary damages. Auld responds that article 4590i's cap is not applicable to prejudgment interest or exemplary damages.

Our goal and standard of review when construing a statute is to give effect to the legislature's intent expressed in the statute. See TEX. GOV'T CODE ANN. § 312.005 (Vernon 1998); Sorokolit v. Rhodes, 889 S.W.2d 239, 241 (Tex.1994). And, when construing statutory language that is unambiguous, we must look to the plain and common meaning of those words for the legislature's intent. See Sorokolit, 889 S.W.2d at 241. When a word is not connected with and used with reference to a particular trade or subject matter, or is not used as a word of art, then we should not attribute such characteristics to it. See TEX. GOV'T CODE ANN. § 312.002 (Vernon 1998). Here, the...