Court Opinion

ID: 9666231
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:08:15.629011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:25.079288
License: Public Domain

ALMA L. LÓPEZ, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the granting of the motion for rehearing because a fact issue exists about whether a premises condition served as an actual instrumentality that caused Hendrix harm. Under the supreme court’s decision in Bossley, Hendrix must allege an injury arising from the condition or use of tangible property. See Dallas County Mental Health & Mental Retardation v. Bossley, 968 S.W.2d 339, 341-43 (Tex.), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1017, 119 S.Ct. 541, 142 L.Ed.2d 450 (1998). Although this court has construed Bossley to require a direct connection between the condition of the property and the resulting *664injury, see San Antonio State Hospital v. Koehler, 981 S.W.2d 32, 36 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 1998, pet. denied), I believe Hendrix pled a sufficient causal connection between the use or misuse of government property and her injury to raise a question of fact about this issue. Unlike this court’s decision in San Antonio State Hospital v. Koehler where the plaintiffs injury occurred several miles from the defectively fenced hospital grounds and over a period of three days after the victim’s escape from the hospital grounds, see Koehler, 981 S.W.2d at 36, Hendrix’s injury occurred inside a hospital examining room. The employee, dressed in his lab coat and on duty, used the hospital’s public address system to call Hendrix’s name and lure her to an examining room where he used an examining table and hospital gown to carry out an assault. These facts were pled in Hendrix’s petition and, in my mind, sufficiently allege proximate cause in terms of time and place to meet the Bossley test.
Although the majority’s opinion recognizes the egregious conduct that occurred here, it overlooks the indicia of reliability inherent in the property that enabled the employee to complete his assault. A patient undergoing a breast exam expects to be directed to disrobe and submit to an intimate examination by a medical professional who is generally wearing a lab coat. Bermudez was a government employee who was on-duty and wearing an identification badge and uniform that enabled him to create the guise of a breast examination. Thus, the government property was used in the assault itself at the time of the assault. Had Bermudez not been given access to such property by virtue of his employment by BCHD, it is unlikely that he could have perpetrated the assault in the manner in which he did. Under these circumstances, a fact issue exists about whether the property used here became an actual instrumentality that caused Hendrix harm. I would reverse the summary judgment order in favor of BCHD and remand the cause for trial.