Here’s an interesting riddle.  When a plaintiff sues a hospital for an injury, why would the hospital insist the injury was caused by malpractice?  Even more puzzlingly, why would the plaintiff insist she was not the victim of malpractice?

Lezlea Ross sued St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital for an injury that occurred there.  She was visiting a fried there and slipped and fell on a freshly waxed floor.  She sued St. Luke’s, along with the cleaning company responsible for waxing the floors.

St. Luke’s didn’t dispute Lezlea’s injury, but still moved to dismiss.  The trial court granted the dismissal.  On appeal, the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed.

The grounds for the dismissal?  The trail and appeal courts agreed with St. Luke’s that Lezlea’s claim was a “health care liability claim” and she had therefore been required to serve St. Luke’s with an expert report before filing suit.  She hadn’t served a report.

Lezlea denied her claim was a health care liability claim.  It was, she said, a simple premises liability claim.  The Texas Supreme Court sided with Lezlea and reversed.  It reasoned that a safety-based claim wasn’t a health care liability claim absent a “substantive nexus between the safety standards … and the provision of health care.”  The court saw no such nexus in Lezlea’s case.

The case is Ross v. St. Luke’s Episcopal, 2015 BL 126983, Tex. No. 13-0439 (May 1).