AUSTIN - On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court rendered a take-nothing judgment in favor of Memorial Hermann Health System, wiping a $6.3 million judgment against the medical provider.
According to the high court’s opinion, Dr. Miguel Gomez, III, a pioneering cardiovascular surgeon, sued Memorial Hermann for allegedly engaging in a retaliatory “whisper campaign” against him after he left hospital for a new rival.
Gomez alleged that the hospital used faulty data on his patients’ mortality rates to suppress competition, injure his reputation, and impair his practice, the opinion states.
At trial, a jury rejected his anticompetition claims but found that the hospital had defamed him and disparaged his professional association. The trial court’s final judgment awarded Gomez more than $6.3 million in damages. The judgment was affirmed on appeal.
“The hospital’s argument that no evidence supports the jury’s defamation and disparagement findings turns on how a reasonable juror would interpret the charge that was given,” the opinion states. “We hold that the plain text of the charge must be given its commonsense meaning in the context of the case.”
The high court found that by rejecting “broadly framed” antitrust claims, the jury “drastically limited the scope of this long-running dispute to two quoted statements.”
“One statement was not published. The other did not cause any damages,” the opinion states. “The jury charge asked about these statements—not an amorphous ‘whisper campaign’ that the statements supposedly ‘represented.’ Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and render a take-nothing judgment for Memorial Hermann.”
Case No. 19-0872