The judge in a prominent detransitioner lawsuit in Texas has dismissed part of the case with prejudice and ordered the plaintiff, Soren Aldaco, to pay the attorney fees for some of her former providers, as first reported on Twitter by Assigned Media contributor Julie Rei Goldstein.
In an order dated April 11, 2024, Judge Donald Crosby granted a motion by Defendants Del Scott Perry and Texas Health Physicians Group, who had at one point provided Aldaco with hormone therapy, dismissing the lawsuit against them and imposing statuary sanctions amounting to $40,000 against Aldaco. This follows an earlier dismissal of the suit against Aldaco’s psychiatric providers. The final portion of the suit, concerning Aldaco’s chest surgery, remains active.
Orders to pay the opposing side’s attorney fees are typically used to discourage the filing of frivolous lawsuits as well as to limit the financial damage to people who are forced to defend against meritless lawsuits.
As with other similar suits, the argument of Aldaco’s lawsuit wasn’t that her providers had engaged in malpractice by diverging from ethical standards for gender-affirming treatment, but instead mounted a broad-based attack against gender-affirming care as a discipline. The argument that gender-affirming care is unethical in all forms was further complicated by Aldacos own public statements. Aldaco has written that her affirming treatments once eased her distress, and says she now manages her ongoing dysphoria through mindfulness.
While Aldaco’s lawsuit was covered widely when it was filed, particularly in right-wing media outlets, Assigned Media is the first news outlet to have covered this dismissal.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media and an incoming member of the 2024-2025 Knight Science Journalism fellowship class at MIT.
As far as I know, the case wasn’t dismissed due to lack of merit but because the judge wanted guidance from appeals. He hadn’t even read the plaintiff’s briefs at the time of his ruling — and the plaintiff has already filed MFR. Besides, statuary sanctions are an unavoidable part of Chapter 74. Pretty much every tort case that’s been dismissed has them, regardless of the cause for dismissal.
I respect your journalism, Evan, but this was low-hanging fruit. Misinterpretations make us look bad. Given the stakes, we ought to report more honestly.
Not sure what to make of this. The suits against two of the other defendants (the psychiatric providers) were dismissed months ago, and the suits against the surgery providers still haven’t been. No statuary sanctions in the first dismissal, as I understand it (though please feel free to correct me).
If this was some rote thing, why were there months between sets of defendants and why only statuary sanctions for this set? I’m open to having misinterpreted this, but you’ll have to explain further.
https://x.com/sorenaldaco/status/1788705938540536203
Seems Alice is right. Take it or leave it — this is only Aldaco’s word — but everything checks out legally.
In my opinion, we need not celebrate too soon. Julie confused the two SOL issues in Aldaco’s case (Wood and Nekkalapu) on Twitter just this morning. SOL with Nekkalapu was pretty cut-and-dry… with Wood, not so much. I believe the current debate is over Wood’s date of accrual — so February, when the letter was authored vs. May, when the professional relationship ended vs. June, when the surgery the letter ok’d took place. IIRC, May and June are within SOL. Wood obviously wants to go with Feb.
Honestly, I suspect that this case is going to be complex and difficult to analyze until its over. Perhaps it’s best to hold off on these reports until then.
Good on you for being open to feedback, BTW.
No input on the article, but I wanted to say that it’s so great that though the prices here had differences in views on this topic, it was handled with grace and dignity on both sides. Well done, the world needs more people to behave like this.