Courts, open.

Denny successfully sued Chang for medical malpractice, based on a cotton ball left inside her head after brain surgery. The key appellate issue was a jury question about Denny’s “degree of diligence” in bringing suit – a finding needed to support her open courts counter-defense to the two-year statute of limitations on her claim. The majority opinion first found waiver about an objection to the form of the question, and then found that sufficient evidence supported the jury’s finding, noting testimony about her difficulty in finding a treating physician who did not “fear[] they were going to be dragged into litigation,” and that her health problems precluded her from meeting with counsel for substantial periods of time. Chang v. Denny, No. 05-17-01457-CV (Aug. 23, 2019) (mem. op.).

A dissent criticized the treatment of this issue as one of fact, warning of it “disappearing into the amorphous slurry of jury deliberations,” and that “the misunderstandings and inaction of her legal counsel” were to blame for the delay. Underlying the dissent was concern as to “why the Legislature has remained silent for the past 18 years” since the Texas Supreme Court first connected Texas’s open-courts guarantee to an inherently undiscoverable medical injury in Shah v. Moss, 67 S.W.3d 836 (Tex. 2001).