Hospital Not Liable for Removing Man’s Testicle

(CN) - A hospital is not liable for removing a patient's non-cancerous testicle, a Texas appeals court ruled.

Safwat Kamel complained of an enlarged testicle in 2005, and Drs. Run Wang and Tiffany Sotelo performed surgery to remove the fluid around the testicle.

During surgery, Wang diagnosed the testicle as cancerous, given Kamel's history of colon cancer. Wang removed the testicle, and later tests proved it was not cancerous.

Kamel sued the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSCH) after dismissing a previous complaint against the doctors.

The trial court accepted the hospital's plea to the jurisdiction, and the Houston-based First District Court of Appeals affirmed the decision.

"It is undisputed that UTHSCH is a governmental entity. The Texas Tort Claims Act provides a limited waiver of governmental liability from suit," Justice Evelyn Keyes wrote.

"Kamel's claims of negligent supervision, failure to perform the necessary medical treatment, and failure to use acceptable practices to limit infection are claims for error in medical judgment or general medical negligence and do not involve the use of tangible property," she added. "Therefore, those claims do not fall within the waiver."

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