Avenues Clinic beats US$520,000 suit over banker’s fatal fall

The Avenues Clinic in Harare

HARARE – A grieving family has hit a legal wall after the High Court threw out a US$520,000 claim against Avenues Clinic over the death of a former banker who fell from his hospital bed, ruling that without expert medical evidence, the case never got off the ground.

Justice Zimba-Dube granted absolution from the instance to Medical Investments (Private) Limited, which operates the private hospital in Harare. She found the family had produced nothing linking the hospital’s alleged failings to the March 2024 death of Francis Nyadundu. His widow, Sheila, and their children, Mutsa and Takunda, were ordered to pay the clinic’s costs.

Nyadundu had been admitted with liver cirrhosis and was reportedly stable, waiting on medication ahead of his expected discharge. In the early hours of March 10, the family says, he fell from his bed, suffered serious head injuries and died.

Takunda told the Harare High Court that his father had been given lorazepam for restlessness, and that nursing notes recorded an attempt to climb out of bed before staff raised the rails. The relatives say they were told only that his condition had worsened. They found the wounds on his head and face when they got to the hospital. A postmortem put the cause of death as subarachnoid haemorrhage, a skull vault fracture and head trauma.

The family accused the clinic of leaving a restless, at-risk patient unattended, failing to get him urgent treatment after the fall and concealing the circumstances of his death. They said the loss had left them emotionally and financially battered: Sheila developed hypertension and depression, while Takunda took over his late father’s farm to support her.

Avenues Clinic denied negligence. It said Nyadundu had several serious underlying conditions and that he received care in line with his treatment plan and his doctor’s instructions. At the close of the family’s case, it applied for absolution, arguing the plaintiffs had offered no expert evidence on the standard of care expected of its staff or how any breach caused the death.

The judge accepted that the hospital owed Nyadundu a duty of care. But the family, she said, had not shown that duty was breached.

“The plaintiffs cannot authoritatively speak to whether the monitoring intervals were reasonable, sufficient or to the acceptable standard as they are not medical experts,” she said.

The nursing notes, she noted, suggested staff had foreseen the risk of a fall. The family, however, had not shown what further precautions were medically necessary, or why the ones taken fell short. Nor was there expert evidence that a quicker medical response after the fall would have saved his life.

“A fall alone in a hospital setting resulting in death of a patient cannot raise inferences of negligence without exploring the circumstances of the fall and evidence from a medical expert,” she ruled.

The postmortem, the judge said, established how Nyadundu died but not that the hospital’s conduct caused the fall or the fatal injuries. She also found that the two children had not properly proved their individual loss-of-support claims, including what their father gave them and what they lost when he died.

With the family having failed to establish a prima facie case of negligence and causation, she granted absolution without assessing the damages sought.

“Having failed to satisfy the fault element, the defendant has nothing to rebut and is entitled to absolution from the instance,” she said.