OKLAHOMA CITY – Two southwest Oklahoma women who claim they were switched at birth sued Duncan Regional Hospital, alleging they were deprived of “any relationship, parental consortium, love, affection, services, support, and nurturing from their biological parents and families.”
Tina Ennis and Jill Lopez, along with Kathryn Jones, who reared Ennis as her child but purportedly is the biological mother of Lopez, lost at trial and on appeal but applied for a rehearing. The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals directed the hospital to respond to the application by 22 August.
Ennis, 58, lives in Hobart; Lopez, 58, lives in Lawton; and Jones is a resident of Duncan, according to a court document.
The three women filed suit in Stephens County District Court in July 2020, alleging Lopez and Ennis were “switched at birth” and “as a direct result of the actions of hospital staff” they were “not raised by their biological parents.”
Lopez was born on 18 May 1964 at Duncan Physicians and Surgeons Hospital. Her birth certificate identified her as Jill Charlene Brister, daughter of Joyce and John Brister, both of whom are deceased.
Ennis was born on the same date at the same hospital. On her birth certificate she was identified as Tina Dawn Wilson, daughter of Kathryn Wilson (now Jones) and Gary Wilson (now deceased).
Ennis claimed that in 2019 she discovered she was not the biological daughter of Jones “when she reviewed the results of a DNA test submitted to Ancestry.com.”
Tina Ennis and her daughter “conducted additional research, including social media searches on Facebook” and discovered that Jill Lopez instead “might rather be the biological daughter” of Kathryn Jones.
Later that summer Ennis’ daughter contacted Lopez “to inform her” of what she and her mother had discovered.
Subsequently Lopez ordered an Ancestry.com DNA genetics test, and those results confirmed in August 2019 that “she was the biological daughter” of Jones and not of the Bristers “who had raised her as if she [were] their biological daughter.”
Next, Kathryn Jones submitted to an Ancestry.com DNA test and discovered that she was not the biological mother of Tina Ennis “as she had believed” for more than 54 years, but was actually the biological mother of Jill Lopez, “whom she had never met.”
“This is a case of medical and general negligence, gross negligence, reckless disregard, corporate negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress … and presumed negligence,” the plaintiffs alleged.
The courts sidestepped that issue in ruling against the three women. Instead, the courts decreed that Duncan Regional Hospital is not the same entity as Duncan Physicians and Surgeons Hospital, where Ennis and Lopez were born.
Southwest Ledger was unsuccessful in its efforts to contact any of the three plaintiffs and ask them what thoughts and emotions they experienced upon learning that Ms. Ennis and Ms. Lopez were raised by persons other than their biological parents. Do any/all of them feel cheated? Were Ms. Ellis and Ms. Lopez reared in loving families or in adverse circumstances? Has this discovery had any effect on the dynamics of the families in which they were raised?
Duncan Regional Hospital
Acquires Assets of Three
Privately Owned Hospitals
Three privately owned hospitals operated in Duncan during the 1970s: Duncan Physicians and Surgeons Hospital, Medical Center Hospital Inc., and Lindley Hospital Inc.
In 1975 the Stephens County Medical Association formed a task force “to determine the feasibility of founding a community hospital in Duncan” to replace the three privately owned facilities.
“[C]ommunity leaders saw the need for a nonprofit community hospital which could provide more comprehensive facilities, engage in hospital-based research and charitable activities, and serve a wider geographical area than the three smaller private hospitals were capable of serving,” attorney John Ray Green informed the trial court.
Duncan Regional Hospital was established as a nonprofit corporation on 29 October 1976 and agreed to acquire virtually all of the assets of the three Duncan hospitals. None of the owners, officers or directors of DPSH was a director of DRH or exercised any control over DRH, the courts noted.
Green, who was Duncan Regional Hospital’s legal adviser at the time of its creation in 1976, submitted an affidavit in which he swore that “the accepted Proposal and Closing Agreement constituted an asset purchase agreement only.” No liabilities of DPSH were transferred to DRH, he wrote. He also insisted, “There was no merger or consolidation of DPSH and DRH.”
The general rule in Oklahoma, “is that there is no successor liability unless an exception exists,” the hospital’s attorneys wrote. “The exceptions to the general rule as established and upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court include: 1, an agreement to assume liabilities; 2, the corporations were consolidated or merged; 3, the transactions were fraudulent; or, 4, there was a mere continuation of the predecessor corporation.”
The plaintiffs argued that DRH was the product of a de facto merger, consolidation “and/or continuation of business” for DPSH.
However, after considering oral and written arguments and weighing the evidence, Associate District Judge G. Brent Russell ruled on April 1, 2022, and the Court of Civil Appeals concurred on July 8, that “DRH is not a mere continuation, consolidation, or merger of DPSH.”
Owners of the two hospitals “were completely independent of each other” and the two had different directors, the appellate judges wrote. Additionally, “Once DPSH sold its assets to DRH, it ceased to exist.”
In their application for a rehearing, the plaintiffs’ legal team, Smith Barkett Law Group of Tulsa, argued that neither the trial or appellate court “addressed the manifest injustice and obliteration of a patient’s rights to seek relief for medical negligence committed at a hospital via … statutes of limitations for minors until one year after reaching majority, and/or victims protected by the ‘discovery rule’ which does not permit the statute of limitations to run until the medical negligence is ‘discovered’,” which was what happened in the current case “with the advent of DNA testing technology.”