Last 2 Nashville Meningitis Suits Settled

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Lawyers for victims of the two remaining lawsuits against a Nashville clinic stemming from a fungal meningitis outbreak are reporting that the cases have been have been finally settled, according to a motion filed today in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass.
In the motion filed by lawyers for the clinic and the victims, the parties agreed that all 106 suits against the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Center have been resolved reportedly for payments totaling more than $20 million.
Records show 104 of the suits were settled and dismissed late last year. In the latest filing, attorneys for both sides reported that a suit brought by survivors of Reba Temple, who died in the 2012 outbreak, and a suit by Patricia and Harold Sellers, had been resolved and the parties had received payments from a settlement fund.
Temple, a Centerville, Tenn. resident died Oct. 6, 2012.
In addition to the Saint Thomas clinic, the defendants in the cases included the Howell Allen Clinic and staffers of the Saint Thomas clinic. All would be dismissed as defendants under the proposed order. Howell Allen was a half owner of the Saint Thomas clinic where victims were injected with methylprednisolone acetate.
The filing also disclosed that settlements have been reached in 10 of 15 suits filed against the Specialty Surgery Center in Crossville, Tenn.
Both the Nashville and Crossville clinics purchased steroids from the now defunct New England Compounding Center. Those drugs turned out to be contaminated with deadly fungi. Nationwide nearly 800 patients were sickened by steroids from the Framingham, Mass. drug compounder. At least 76 of those patients, including Temple, died.
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