Tex. Health Harris Methodist Hosp. Fort Worth v. Featherly

• Court: Texas Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: DABNEY BASSEL, JUSTICE
• Docket Number: 02-24-00572-CV
• Decision Date: 23 December 2025
• Citation: Tex. Health Harris Methodist Hosp. Fort Worth v. Featherly, 02-24-00572-CV (Tex. App. Dec 23, 2025)
• Parties: Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, Appellant v. Stephen Featherly, Appellee

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Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, Appellant v. Stephen Featherly, Appellee

No. 02-24-00572-CV

Court of Appeals of Texas, Second District, Fort Worth

December 23, 2025

On Appeal from County Court at Law No. 3 Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 2016-003319-3

Before Sudderth, C.J.; Birdwell and Bassel, JJ.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

DABNEY BASSEL, JUSTICE

I. Introduction

Appellant Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth (the Hospital) appeals following a trial on remand in which a jury found that the reasonable and regular rate for the services that the Hospital had provided to Appellee Stephen Featherly on March 13, 2014^[1] was $18,559.25.^[2] The trial court declared that the Hospital's lien of $24,682 exceeded the reasonable and regular rate determined by the jury and awarded Featherly $196,166 in attorney's fees, plus various post-trial attorney's fees.

In two points, the Hospital argues that the trial court abused its discretion by awarding Featherly $196,166 in attorney's fees on his claim under the Uniform Declaratory Judgment Act (UDJA) and by failing to award the Hospital attorney's fees for defending against Featherly's declaratory-judgment claim. The Hospital primarily hinges its attack on a proposition that on the surface is concerning the amount of fees awarded to Featherly is so grossly disproportionate to the amount by which he reduced the Hospital's claim that the fee award must be unreasonable. But the trial court's fee award was an exercise of its discretion. Balanced against the disproportion of the fee award is the trial court's careful consideration of what produced the imbalance. As discussed in more detail below, the trial court considered uncontroverted and unobjected-to testimony that the Hospital had budgeted and had then spent an amount to fight Featherly's claim that matched the amount that Featherly eventually spent. This, in combination with other evidence, supported the view that the Hospital was litigating this particular lien to establish a broader precedent that would aid it in future cases involving a challenge to its charges, rather than the view that this was simply a one-time dispute over a medical bill. Indeed, the record of the trial court's questioning shows that it was unpersuaded by the Hospital's tactic of criticizing Featherly for the fees that he had incurred to respond to the Hospital's all-hands-on-deck litigation strategy-a strategy that the Hospital wanted the trial court to disregard when it bore ill consequences. But the trial court in its discretion decided to consider how the strategy impacted the dynamics of the attorney's fees; in this unique circumstance, the trial court's fee decision was neither principle-less nor irrational.

Thus because the trial court is given discretion to award attorney's fees in a declaratory-judgment suit, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by deciding to award Featherly his fees but not award the Hospital its fees. But because there is legally insufficient evidence to support the legal-assistant fees that were included in one attorney's billing statements and because the amount claimed in that attorney's affidavit does not match the total of the billing statements, we modify the judgment to delete $9,056-the total of the presumed legal-assistant fees of $6,101.50 and the $2,954.50 difference between the amount claimed in the attorney's affidavit and the total fees shown in the billing invoices-from the fees awarded to one attorney. As modified, we affirm the judgment.

II. Background

A. The Accident, the Lien, and the First Trial^[3]

On March 13, 2014, Featherly was injured in a motor-vehicle accident. He was transported to the Hospital for treatment. After signing an admission acknowledgment and consent form confirming his agreement to pay for any treatment to be provided, Featherly was treated in the emergency room for roughly three and a half hours before he asked to be discharged.

Shortly thereafter, the Hospital's billing department sent Featherly a patient-account statement, dated March 20, 2014, seeking payment in the amount of $13,575.10 for the medical care rendered in its emergency room. The statement identified Featherly as a "self-pay" patient and credited him with an uninsured discount/adjustment of $11,106.90 against the total charges of $24,682.00, resulting in the $13,575.10 account balance. The statement indicated that the deadline for payment was April 7, 2014.

On April 1, 2014, the Hospital's legal department received a letter from attorney James Jinks, who stated that he and his law firm represented Featherly for injuries sustained. The letter enclosed a HIPAA-compliant medical authorization executed by Featherly and requested "a copy of an itemized billing statement for services" rendered as a result of the accident on March 13, 2014.

The Hospital's billing department thereafter sent Featherly a second statement, dated April 14, 2014, seeking past-due payment of the original adjusted account balance of $13,575.10. Neither this statement nor the original statement that was sent to Featherly personally itemized the individual charges for the services rendered.

Subsequently, the Hospital forwarded to Jinks two sworn affidavits of billing records, dated May 8, 2014, and June 5, 2014, respectively. Each affidavit attested to an account balance for services rendered in the "full amount" of $24,682.00, and each attached a "Patient Account Summary" and either an itemized statement or computer printout of the charges and codes for the individual services rendered. The affidavits further attested that "[t]he service(s) provided were necessary and the amount charged for the service(s) was reasonable at the time and place that the service(s) were provided." In this manner, the affidavits met the admissibility requirements of Section 18.001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which provides for civil actions asserting claims for personal injuries:

Unless a controverting affidavit is served as provided by this section, an affidavit that the amount a person charged for a service was reasonable at the time and place that the service was provided and that the service was necessary is sufficient evidence to support a finding of fact by judge or jury that the amount charged was reasonable or that the service was necessary.

Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 18.001(b) (setting forth admissibility requirements).

With the Hospital newly aware of the possibility that Featherly could obtain a judgment or settlement for damages arising out of the underlying accident, on May 9, 2014, the Hospital filed a statutory hospital lien with the county clerk of Tarrant County. See Tex. Prop. Code Ann. § 55.002(a) ("A hospital has a lien on a cause of action or claim of an individual who receives hospital services for injuries caused by an accident that is attributed to the negligence of another person."). The lien did not specify an amount due. See id. § 55.005(b) (providing that the notice filed need only contain the injured individual's name and address, the date of the accident, the name and location of the hospital claiming the lien, and the name of the person alleged to be liable for damages arising from the injury, if known). Once it filed the executed lien, the Hospital faxed a copy of it to Jinks.

After filing its lien, the Hospital sent three additional statements to Featherly dated May 15, June 15, and July 25, 2015. The amount due reflected on each of these statements was $24,682.00; they no longer reflected an uninsured discount/adjustment. The Hospital explained that this was due to the possibility of Featherly's recovery of damages against a negligent third party, thereby rendering him "insured" for purposes of payment.

On August 20, 2015, Jinks filed a personal-injury lawsuit on Featherly's behalf against the driver of the other vehicle involved in the accident, Jennifer Rose Applebaum. In addition to alleging a negligence cause of action, the original petition sought damages including "reasonable expenses for necessary health care, including rehabilitative services and devices, resulting from the injuries he sustained in the occurrence in question." More specifically, the petition alleged that Featherly had "incurred $149,481.75 in past medical expenses."

On October 19, 2015, Featherly responded to an interrogatory propounded by Applebaum seeking the specific amounts "of any and all hospital, doctor, medical[,] or pharmaceutical expenses" that he claimed to have incurred because of the underlying accident. His sworn response identified fifteen health care providers, including the Hospital, and enumerated the charges for all fifteen, including $24,682.00 for the Hospital, with the cumulative amount incurred of $159,367.33. On January 27, 2016, Jinks responded to a request for disclosure of the amount and method of calculating Featherly's economic damages by identifying the same providers and enumerating the same individual and cumulative amounts charged. See Tex. R. Civ. P. 194.2(d).

On March 2, 2016, Featherly executed a "Confidential Settlement Agreement and Release" with Applebaum whereby he agreed to accept a certain amount in full and final settlement of his cause of action against her and, upon payment of this amount, to fully release and discharge her from any further liability arising from the underlying accident.

To effectuate the settlement, on March 4, 2016, the claims adjuster for Applebaum's liability insurer sent her defense attorney a check payable to "STEPHEN FEATHERLY & JAMES JINKS AND COURT CLERK FOR THE BE[NEFIT] OF HARRIS METHODIST FORT[ ] WORTH" in the amount of $24,682.00 the same amount the Hospital had claimed since...