Menninger Clinic Lawsuit: Filing Barriers and the Kansas Case

Suing the Menninger Clinic in Houston over a patient’s death or injury has proven nearly impossible under current Texas law, and a Menninger Clinic lawsuit brought by a patient’s family in Texas faces two barriers before it even reaches the merits: the state’s cap on medical malpractice damages, among the lowest in the country, and a 2008 Texas Supreme Court ruling read to shield hospitals from liability when patients die by suicide. Families who considered suing after patient deaths at the Houston facility have repeatedly been unable to find attorneys willing to take their cases.¹

Why Malpractice Suits Against Menninger Rarely Get Filed

Two features of Texas law work together against families. The damages cap on noneconomic losses in medical malpractice cases makes complex psychiatric claims financially unattractive for plaintiffs’ lawyers to pursue. Then there is the 2008 Texas Supreme Court decision that has been broadly read to mean hospitals cannot be held responsible when a patient dies by suicide, on the theory that the patient’s own act breaks the chain of causation.¹

A third barrier is informational. A 1999 Texas statute requires the Department of State Health Services to keep its hospital investigation findings confidential and to share them only with the facility under investigation. Families who lost relatives at Menninger have been unable to obtain the state’s detailed conclusions about what went wrong, even in cases where investigators identified failures in care.²

Federal oversight does not fill the gap. Menninger is a private nonprofit that does not accept Medicare or Medicaid, so it falls outside the inspection and enforcement authority of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. External oversight comes primarily from the Joint Commission, which accredits the facility and focuses on institutional improvement rather than post-death penalties.¹

Families Who Tried After a Patient Death

The most publicly documented case involved Alan Gottesman, a 25-year-old who had traveled from Vermont for treatment. On November 20, 2015, staff took him on a supervised group outing to a restaurant on Westheimer Road and allowed him to use the restroom alone, despite a notation in his file requiring that he be accompanied at all times. He left through a back door and jumped from a parking deck in the Galleria area.¹

A state investigator concluded staff should not have let him go off alone and should have taken further steps to protect him. In June 2016 the Texas Department of State Health Services issued $75,000 in fines for three violations of state psychiatric hospital statutes. Menninger contested the sanctions, and after an administrative hearing in Austin agreed to pay a reduced $56,250. The final order, signed in February 2017 by then-president Dr. Edward Coffey, said the clinic denied wrongdoing but had implemented unspecified “corrective actions.”² The Gottesman family looked for a Texas lawyer to bring a wrongful death claim and could not find one.¹

Other incidents have followed a similar pattern. The Texas Department of State Health Services has investigated Menninger 41 times since it moved to Houston in 2003, with only three investigations producing formal sanctions.¹

In 2005, Laura Kliebenstein, a 22-year-old from Minnesota enrolled in an eight-week young-adult program, hanged herself in a clinic conference room after being left alone. She had a history of suicide attempts. An independent expert hired by her mother, Dr. Joel Hochman, reviewed the records and found a “breach in the standard of care.” The state investigation found “no evidence of violations,” and her mother never sued.¹
In 2011, a patient who had recently checked himself out attempted suicide after allegedly being sexually involved with a counselor.¹
In 2012, the clinic was cited and fined $40,000 for three violations, then settled on appeal for $8,000 and a corrective action plan.¹
In 2013, a 66-year-old businessman hanged himself with a belt in a clinic bathroom. The state found “deficiencies” but took no action. Two months later, another patient was found hanging from a belt in a bathroom and survived; that incident brought a $25,000 fine.¹

None of these families succeeded in bringing a civil claim. Each ran into the same combination of the damages cap and the 2008 ruling.¹

The Kansas Case That Did Go to Court

Before the clinic relocated to Texas, a wrongful death case against Menninger did reach federal court. In Kernke v. Menninger Clinic, Inc., the family of Kenneth Kernke sued the clinic and three physicians after Kernke, a voluntary inpatient diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, ran from a staff escort near the dining hall on October 12, 1998 and vanished. He had been on the “Hope Unit” and was enrolled in a clinical drug study for an investigational medication called M100907. His body was found on January 16, 1999 in a wooded area about a mile from the clinic. The coroner concluded he likely died of exposure.³

The family brought claims for medical malpractice, wrongful death, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, fraudulent misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty against the clinic and Drs. Edward Eaton, Joyce Davidson, and Patricia Solbach. In November 2001, a federal judge in the District of Kansas granted partial summary judgment in part and denied it in part, letting certain claims proceed.³ That posture, in a different state under different law, is roughly the outcome families in Texas have been unable to reach.

Insurance Denials Are a Separate Fight

Legal disputes involving Menninger have not been limited to malpractice. Coverage denials for treatment at the clinic have produced their own contests, with more success for patients than the malpractice track.

In a case documented by ProPublica and The Lund Report, a North Carolina man identified as “L” was admitted to Menninger after two suicide attempts and failures at other facilities. His insurer, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, denied coverage as “not medically necessary.” His wife, Teressa Sutton-Schulman, worked through multiple internal appeals and then obtained an independent external review. The reviewer, Dr. Neal Goldenberg, overruled Highmark, finding the insurer had failed to understand the patient’s “complex psychiatric and medical situation” and that the treatment had been “denied unfairly.” Treatment cost more than $220,000; the couple paid over $95,000 out of pocket before Highmark eventually reimbursed more than $70,000.⁴⁵

Sutton-Schulman also filed two complaints with the Pennsylvania Insurance Department in 2024 over Highmark’s denial and appeal processes. The matter did not become a formal lawsuit.⁵ Coverage disputes of this kind proceed against the insurer, not the clinic, and run through regulatory complaints and external review rather than the malpractice courts where Menninger has been largely shielded.

1
Houston Chronicle. Family Looks for Answers After Son’s Suicide
2
Houston Chronicle. Menninger Clinic Agrees to Pay $56,250 Following Patient Suicide
3
vLex. Kernke v. Menninger Clinic, 172 F.Supp.2d 1347
4
The Lund Report. Just Let Me Die
5
ProPublica. Mental Health Suicide Highmark BCBS Insurance Denials