Supreme Court of Texas

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No. 22-0435

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Dorothy Hampton,

Petitioner,

v.

Leonard Thome, 

Respondent

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On Petition for Review from the

Court of Appeals for the Ninth District of Texas

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Argued September 14, 2023

JUSTICE BLACKLOCK delivered the opinion of the Court, in which 

Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Devine, Justice Busby, 

Justice Bland, Justice Huddle, and Justice Young joined.

JUSTICE BOYD filed a dissenting opinion.

The Legislature requires “[a]ny person . . . asserting a health care 

liability claim” to “give written notice of such claim” to certain 

defendants “at least 60 days before the filing of a suit.” TEX. CIV. PRAC.

& REM. CODE § 74.051(a). The notice “must be accompanied by a medical 

authorization in the form specified by” section 74.052. Id. § 74.052(a). 
2

This medical authorization form enables the defendant to obtain the 

plaintiff’s medical records from other health care providers. 

The notice required by section 74.051(a) can affect the statute of 

limitations as follows: “Notice given as provided in this chapter shall toll 

the applicable statute of limitations to and including a period of 75 days 

following the giving of the notice.” Id. § 74.051(c). This Court held in 

Jose Carreras, M.D., P.A. v. Marroquin that when a plaintiff gives the 

notice without a medical authorization form, the 75-day tolling period is 

unavailable. 339 S.W.3d 68, 74 (Tex. 2011). 

In today’s case, the notice was accompanied by a medical 

authorization form closely resembling the one required by the 

Legislature. Relying on the tolling provision, the plaintiff filed suit 

outside the usual statute of limitations but within the 75-day tolling 

period offered by section 74.051(c). After discovery, the defendant 

contended that the plaintiff’s medical authorization form omitted some 

of the required health care providers and omitted a provision 

authorizing disclosure of information by the plaintiff’s future health care 

providers. The defendant argued that these deficiencies in the form 

meant that the 75-day tolling period never applied, which meant that 

sixteen months of litigation had all been for nothing because the suit 

was filed outside the limitations period. The trial court rejected this 

argument, but the court of appeals reversed, holding that the 75-day 

tolling period had all along been unavailable due to deficiencies in the 

medical authorization form the plaintiff served at the beginning of the 

case. ___ S.W.3d ___, 2022 WL 802562, at *6 (Tex. App.—Beaumont 

Mar. 17, 2022). 
3

We hold that an imperfect medical authorization form is 

nevertheless a medical authorization form, which is sufficient to toll the 

statute of limitations for 75 days under section 74.051(c). The plaintiff 

in a health care liability claim has a statutory obligation to proactively 

notify the defendant of the health care providers required to be disclosed 

in the authorization form. A mistake or omission in this regard is not 

without consequence, and courts should certainly never countenance 

deliberate defiance of a statute’s clear commands. When it comes to 

calculating the deadline for filing suit, however, Texas law favors 

bright-line rules that enable parties and courts to know with certainty—

as early in the litigation as possible—whether the suit is time-barred.

Whatever imperfections or omissions existed in the plaintiff’s medical 

authorization form in this case, it was genuinely a medical authorization 

form resembling the one required by the Legislature, and the plaintiff 

served it with the notice of claim. This was sufficient, as we understand 

this statutory scheme, to trigger the 75-day tolling period, which means 

the suit was timely. 

Any defects or omissions in the medical authorization form that 

came to light during the litigation could have been adequately addressed 

by the statutory remedy of abatement, by additional discovery, or even—

where departure from the statutory requirements is deliberate or in bad 

faith—by sanctions up to and including dismissal. The limitations 

period, however, is a threshold matter that should, whenever possible, 

be established with clarity at the outset. We do not understand Chapter 

74 to require courts to entertain satellite litigation over whether the 
4

statute of limitations was actually never tolled because defects were 

later discovered in the plaintiff’s medical authorization form.

The judgment of the court of appeals is reversed, and the case is 

remanded to the court of appeals to consider the defendant’s remaining 

arguments for reversal of the district court’s judgment. 

I.

On March 25, 2014, Dorothy Hampton went to the Medical Center 

of Southeast Texas with abdominal pain in her left side. She was 

diagnosed with an abdominal hernia, and she underwent surgery the 

next day. Two days later, Dr. Leonard Thome decided to release her 

from the hospital. That night, Hampton fell at home and was found on 

the floor the next day, confused and disoriented. She was quickly 

readmitted to the hospital, and when asked about the fall, Hampton 

claimed she could not remember the past 24 hours. Hampton was 

released to a nursing facility after several more days in the hospital. 

On November 9, 2015, Hampton’s lawyer sent a letter to Dr. 

Thome notifying him of Hampton’s intent to bring a health care liability 

claim alleging that Hampton was released prematurely from the 

hospital. The letter claimed that Hampton developed pain in her right 

shoulder after her fall and began treatment at Beaumont Bone and Joint 

Institute. Attached to the letter was a medical authorization form 

permitting Dr. Thome to obtain Hampton’s health information from the 

listed providers. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 74.052(c). The 

authorization form listed two providers—the Medical Center of 

Southeast Texas and Beaumont Bone and Joint Institute. 
5

Hampton sued on May 31, 2016, alleging that Dr. Thome’s 

negligent decision to release Hampton from the hospital caused 

Hampton’s fall and led to permanent mental and physical injury. 

Because the events in question occurred in March 2014, the usual 

two-year time clock had run out by the time Hampton sued. Hampton’s 

petition, however, contended that her timely notice of the claim tolled 

the statute of limitations for 75 days under section 74.051(c) of the Civil 

Practice and Remedies Code. 

After over a year of discovery, Dr. Thome moved in August 2017 

for summary judgment on limitations grounds. He contended that the 

limitations period expired on March 28, 2016, and that Hampton’s notice 

had not tolled the statute of limitations because it was accompanied by 

a deficient medical authorization form. Dr. Thome alleged that the 

medical authorization form failed to meet three statutory requirements: 

(1) it omitted a required provision authorizing Dr. Thome to obtain 

records from providers who would treat Hampton after the date of the 

authorization form; (2) it did not list several providers who treated 

Hampton in connection with her alleged injuries; and (3) it did not list 

several providers who had treated Hampton in the five years preceding 

the incident. 

The district court denied Dr. Thome’s motion for summary 

judgment. A jury trial proceeded on May 6, 2019. The jury found that 

Dr. Thome’s negligence proximately caused Hampton’s injuries and 

returned a $555,678 verdict. The court rendered a final judgment of 

$255,678, plus interest and costs, in keeping with the statutory limit on 

noneconomic damages for health care liability claims. See id. § 74.301. 
6

Dr. Thome filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, in 

which he reiterated his argument that the claims were barred by 

limitations because of deficiencies in the medical authorization form. 

The court denied the motion, reasoning that Dr. Thome had not shown 

prejudice caused by the deficiencies in the form.

The court of appeals reversed. It held that the form Hampton 

provided to Dr. Thome was insufficient to trigger the 75-day tolling 

period because it fell “well short of authorizing Dr. Thome to obtain the 

scope of information he was entitled to obtain.” 2022 WL 802562, at *5. 

The court of appeals found that the form listed “only two of Hampton’s 

thirteen health care providers” that treated Hampton for her injuries or 

had seen her in the five-year period preceding the incident. Id. at *6. It 

further found that the form failed to include “language that extends [the 

release authorization] to health care providers that treated Hampton 

after the date Hampton signed the release” as directed by the statute. 

Id. The court of appeals held that tolling was unavailable because the 

defects in Hampton’s form were at least as severe as the defects 

identified in several other appellate decisions in which tolling was 

denied. Id. The court of appeals rendered judgment against Hampton 

because, with the tolling provision unavailable, the two-year statute of 

limitations barred her suit. 

II.

We begin by noting that Hampton’s lawyer could have insulated 

his client’s claims from any question of timeliness by filing suit within 

the usual two-year limitations period rather than relying on the 

statute’s 75-day tolling provision. Neither the record on appeal nor 
7

counsel’s statements at oral argument reveal any reason the extra 75 

days were needed. By relying on the tolling provision, Hampton’s 

counsel added to the defendant’s arsenal of arguments in exchange for 

little apparent benefit to Hampton. Regardless of how this appeal is 

resolved, the decision to pin Hampton’s entire case on the availability of 

the 75-day tolling period has generated extensive additional litigation 

that remains pending seven years after the suit was filed and that could, 

it appears, have easily been avoided altogether by a slightly earlier 

filing. Statutes of limitation are harsh, and the practice of waiting until 

the last conceivable moment to file a lawsuit is fraught with peril, 

particularly when the plaintiff relies on a tolling theory about which 

there is even the slightest doubt. 

Be that as it may, the history of this litigation cannot be undone, 

and we must confront the question of what effect, if any, the deficiencies 

in Hampton’s medical authorization form have on the application of 

section 74.051(c)’s 75-day tolling period. 

As with any question of statutory interpretation, we begin with 

the statute’s text. Abutahoun v. Dow Chem. Co., 463 S.W.3d 42, 45 (Tex. 

2015). “Health care liability claims” are subject to Chapter 74 of the 

Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Section 74.051(a) imposes a pre-suit 

notice requirement: 

Any person or his authorized agent asserting a health care 

liability claim shall give written notice of such claim by 

certified mail, return receipt requested, to each physician 

or health care provider against whom such claim is being 

made at least 60 days before the filing of a suit in any court 

of this state based upon a health care liability claim. The 

notice must be accompanied by the authorization form for 
8

release of protected health information as required under 

Section 74.052.

TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 74.051(a). The statute of limitations for 

health care liability claims is two years. Id. § 74.251(a). Perhaps 

because the 60-day pre-suit notice requirement may have the practical 

effect of truncating the time available to a plaintiff to investigate and 

prepare his suit, the Legislature provided a brief tolling period:

Notice given as provided in this chapter shall toll the 

applicable statute of limitations to and including a period 

of 75 days following the giving of the notice, and this tolling 

shall apply to all parties and potential parties.

Id. § 74.051(c). 

Section 74.052(a) reiterates section 74.051(a)’s requirement that 

a medical authorization form must accompany the pre-suit notice: 

“Notice of a health care claim under Section 74.051 must be 

accompanied by a medical authorization in the form specified by this 

section.” It then provides an abatement remedy for the defendant when 

the plaintiff does not provide the required medical authorization: 

Failure to provide this authorization along with the notice 

of health care claim shall abate all further proceedings 

against the physician or health care provider receiving the 

notice until 60 days following receipt by the physician or 

health care provider of the required authorization.

Id. § 74.052(a). Section 74.052 goes on to lay out, in great detail, the 

precise contents of the medical authorization form that must accompany 

the pre-suit notice. Id. § 74.052(c). 

III.

Several years ago, this Court in Jose Carreras, M.D., P.A. v. 

Marroquin held that mere service of pre-suit notice without the required 
9

authorization form is insufficient to trigger the statute’s 75-day tolling 

provision. 339 S.W.3d at 74. In that case, the plaintiffs failed to send 

any medical authorization form before the statute of limitations expired. 

Id. at 70. We held that a plaintiff must provide both the notice of claim 

and the medical authorization form to obtain tolling. Id. at 74. We did 

not, however, address whether notice accompanied by a medical 

authorization form that turns out to be incomplete or erroneous is 

sufficient to trigger tolling. Today’s case asks that question. 

Decisions of the courts of appeals on the question have varied. 

Some essentially hold that most errors or omissions in the authorization 

form render the 75-day tolling period unavailable. See, e.g., Borowski v. 

Ayers, 524 S.W.3d 292, 304–06 (Tex. App.—Waco 2016, pet. denied);

Tanhui v. Rhodes-Madison, No. 12-20-00240-CV, 2021 WL 1916819, at 

*3 (Tex. App.—Tyler May 12, 2021, no pet.); Salinas v. Methodist 

Healthcare Sys., No. 07-19-00026-CV, 2019 WL 3807871, at *2–3 (Tex. 

App.—Amarillo Aug. 13, 2019, no pet.). 

Other courts have looked to whether the deficiencies in the 

authorization form frustrate the defendant’s ability to conduct the 

pre-suit investigation envisioned by the statute. See, e.g., Davenport v. 

Adu-Lartey, 526 S.W.3d 544, 554 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2017, 

pet. denied); Colia v. Ewing, No. 02-19-00109-CV, 2020 WL 241978, at 

*3 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Jan. 16, 2020, pet. denied). Yet another court 

has asked whether any errors or omissions in the medical authorization 

form ultimately prejudiced the defendant. Maypole v. Acadian 

Ambulance Serv., Inc., 647 S.W.3d 533, 550 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2022, 
10

pet. dism’d by agr.).1 One court of appeals found an authorization form 

sufficient for tolling purposes even though “the authorization forms 

excluded the doctors’ records who had treated her within five years of 

the treatment listed as forming the basis of the claim.” Rabatin v. Kidd, 

281 S.W.3d 558, 562 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2008, no pet.). 

While none of these decisions is an unreasonable application of 

Chapter 74 and this Court’s precedent, most of the approaches adopted 

by the courts of appeals share the same two drawbacks. First, they 

facilitate protracted litigation and appeals that embroil the litigants and 

the courts in lengthy and costly debates about the contents of a pre-suit 

discovery form rather than debates about the merits of the claims.2 

Where possible, courts should seek to discourage non-merits satellite 

litigation of this nature unless a statute or the Constitution requires it. 

Second, the approach adopted by some courts of appeals subjects the 

statute of limitations to retroactive adjustment based on fact-intensive 

determinations made later in the litigation. But particularly “in the 

area of limitations, bright-line rules generally represent the better 

approach.” Erikson v. Renda, 590 S.W.3d 557, 566 (Tex. 2019). Ideally, 

1 We granted the petition for review in Maypole and set the case for oral 

argument in conjunction with Hampton’s case. The parties in Maypole, 

however, settled their differences before oral argument, and we dismissed the 

appeal at their request. See TEX. R. APP. P. 42.1(a)(2).

2 This case vividly demonstrates the problem: Sixteen months after the 

medical authorization form was served, after many months of discovery, the 

defendant first raised the argument that the suit must be dismissed on 

limitations grounds because the form was incomplete. We do not criticize the 

defense, which relied on several appellate decisions supporting its tactic. Yet 

here we are, over six years later, and the parties are still debating the 

sufficiency of the initial form rather than the merits of Hampton’s claims. 
11

the deadline to sue should always be calculable with certainty at the 

outset of the case and should never vary retroactively depending on the 

outcome of later litigation. Perfect certainty at the outset may not 

always be possible, particularly when applying tolling provisions, but we 

should prefer clarity in this area whenever it can be had.

Carreras provides a bright-line rule, which can be applied with 

certainty at the outset of the litigation: If no medical authorization form 

accompanies the notice, the 75-day tolling provision is not triggered. Yet 

what happens when there is a medical authorization form, but it turns 

out to be incomplete or erroneous? The existence of such deficiencies 

will often not be known until later in the litigation, sometimes much 

later. If Chapter 74’s text required courts to determine the limitations 

period by answering questions like whether the authorization form 

turns out to have omitted required providers or whether any such 

omissions prejudiced the defendant, then courts would be obligated to 

do so even if we think that such an approach increases wasteful 

litigation and blurs lines that are better left bright. By our reading, 

however, Chapter 74 contains no such requirement. Instead, it offers 

temporary abatement as a remedy for the plaintiff’s failure to disclose 

providers as required. And it requires only that a medical authorization 

form accompany the pre-suit notice, not that a perfect medical 

authorization form do so. 

Begin with the tolling provision itself, section 74.051(c). The rule 

is simple: “Notice given as provided in this chapter shall toll the 

applicable statute of limitations [for 75 days].” It is thus the notice, not 

the medical authorization form, that triggers tolling. The authorization 
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form is not irrelevant to the tolling question, however. Section 74.051(a) 

provides that the notice must “be accompanied by the authorization 

form . . . as required under Section 74.052.” Section 74.052(a) likewise 

dictates that the notice “must be accompanied by a medical 

authorization in the form specified by this section.” Relying on these 

provisions, we held in Carreras that a notice without the required 

authorization form is not “[n]otice given as provided in this chapter” and 

therefore does not trigger tolling. 339 S.W.3d at 72–73. 

The statute does not say how an incomplete or erroneous 

authorization form affects the tolling question.3 It does, however, 

contemplate that an authorization form may need to be “modified” after 

it has first been served. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 74.052(b). 

Of course, only a form that turns out to have been erroneous or 

incomplete in some respect would need to be modified. And when 

3 The dissent says the Court is relying on “policy” or “purpose-based” 

arguments to achieve “a judicial rewriting of the statute.” Post at 10 (Boyd, J., 

dissenting). Obviously not. We have rejected any such approach to statutory 

interpretation on many occasions, and we do so again today. Our disagreement 

with the dissent is not over statutory-interpretation methodology. Instead, the 

disagreement is over which questions this statute answers. The dissent 

believes, wrongly we think, that the statutory text tells us how an erroneous 

authorization form affects the tolling question. We conclude that the text does 

not answer that question, although as we explain below, the text does provide 

some indication that retroactive revocation of tolling for erroneous 

authorization forms is not its envisioned result. Trying to squeeze blood from 

an orange by forcing the text to definitively answer a question it does not 

answer is just as much “a judicial rewriting of the statute” as anything else. 

Answering a question the statutory text does not answer naturally may involve 

consideration of matters outside the text, such as the prudential notion that 

early and definitive identification of the limitations deadline is preferable, 

when possible, to protracted non-merits satellite litigation about the content of 

a discovery form. 
13

modification is necessary, the statute states the consequence—a 60-day 

abatement, at the request of the defendant: 

If the authorization required by this section is modified or 

revoked, the physician or health care provider to whom the 

authorization has been given shall have the option to abate 

all further proceedings until 60 days following receipt of a 

replacement authorization that must comply with the form 

specified by this section.

Id.4 The statute states its own remedy for an incomplete or erroneous 

medical authorization form—abatement—and in the absence of a 

textual indication otherwise, we will not impose the additional remedy 

of deeming an incomplete or erroneous form to be no form at all for 

tolling purposes. Beyond the statutory remedy of abatement for 

additional discovery, sanctions may also be an appropriate response to 

deliberate evasion of the statutory requirements. But we see nothing in 

the statute indicating that an incomplete or erroneous medical 

authorization form should be considered no form at all for tolling 

purposes. 

The distinction between an incomplete or erroneous form, as is 

the case here, and an altogether absent form, as was the case in 

Carreras, resembles a distinction on which we previously relied in 

Ogletree v. Matthews, another Chapter 74 case. 262 S.W.3d 316 (Tex. 

2007). Section 74.351 requires a health care liability claimant to serve 

an expert report by a certain time. If the report is timely but deficient, 

4 Similarly, the complete failure to provide an authorization form will 

“abate all further proceedings . . . until 60 days following receipt by the 

physician or health care provider of the required authorization.” TEX. CIV.

PRAC. & REM. CODE § 74.052(a). 
14

the court can grant a 30-day extension to cure that deficiency. TEX. CIV.

PRAC. & REM. CODE § 74.351(c). In Ogletree, the defendant argued that 

the plaintiff should not get the 30-day extension because the expert 

report was of the wrong kind altogether; it contained testimony from 

nurses rather than from a physician. 262 S.W.3d at 318–19. Because 

no real “report” was served in the first place, the argument went, the 

court could not grant the 30-day extension. Id. We disagreed, because 

“a deficient report differs from an absent report.” Id. at 320. 

Similar reasoning applies here. A partially inaccurate or 

incomplete medical authorization form is nevertheless a medical 

authorization form. And the medical authorization form proffered by 

Hampton, which resembles the statutorily required form, is “in the form

specified by” section 74.052, even if its substance contains errors or 

omissions. TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 74.052(a) (emphasis added). 

We cannot say that the existence of errors or omissions in a medical 

authorization form means that no notice at all has been “given as 

provided in this chapter.” Id. § 74.051(c). When no authorization form 

is offered at all, there has obviously been no attempt to give notice “as 

provided in this chapter.” But when a medical authorization form has 

been served, and when this has generally been done “in the form

specified by” section 74.052, then notice has been “given as provided in

this chapter”—even if the substance of the form contains deficiencies. 

In the absence of more explicit guidance from the Legislature, we 

will not infer from this statutory scheme either (1) a rule that only fully 

accurate authorization forms trigger tolling, or (2) a rule that bars 

tolling if inaccuracies in the authorization form prejudice the defendant. 
15

The best indication provided by the statutory text is to the contrary. 

When the authorization form requires modification—as incomplete or 

erroneous forms naturally would—the statutory consequence is 

abatement to allow additional discovery, not revocation of tolling. See 

id. § 74.052(b); supra pp. 12–13.

Although we hold that an incomplete or erroneous medical 

authorization form is still an authorization form for tolling purposes, we 

also acknowledge the possibility that a document proffered as a medical 

authorization form may be so grossly deficient on its face that it could 

never genuinely be called “a medical authorization in the form specified 

by this section.” Id. § 74.052(a); cf. Ogletree, 262 S.W.3d at 323 (Willett, 

J., concurring) (explaining that an expert report can be so grossly 

deficient as to be no report at all). No such gross deficiency is alleged 

here. 

Nor do we foreclose the possibility that an erroneous or 

incomplete authorization form proffered in a bad-faith attempt to 

mislead the defendant or the court should count as no authorization 

form at all under the old rule that “fraud vitiates whatever it touches.”

See Stonecipher’s Est. v. Butts’ Est., 591 S.W.2d 806, 809 (Tex. 1979) 

(quoting Morris v. House, 32 Tex. 492, 495 (1870)). Such egregious 

abuses will be rare, we trust, and trial courts are equipped to deal with 

them—whether by sanctions or by refusing tolling because no genuine 

authorization form has been served. 

For the vast majority of cases, the bright-line rule adopted herein 

should apply. If the pre-suit notice required by section 74.051 is 

accompanied by a medical authorization form that resembles the 
16

statutorily required form but that turns out to be erroneous or 

incomplete, the 75-day tolling period provided by section 74.051(c) 

remains available. 

IV.

The judgment of the court of appeals is reversed, and the case is 

remanded to the court of appeals for further proceedings consistent with 

this opinion.

James D. Blacklock

Justice

OPINION DELIVERED: March 8, 2024