In September 2024, a Harris County jury found that HCA Healthcare had broken a 57-year limited-partnership contract by opening 10 competing hospitals while invoking the same noncompete clauses to keep its physician partner from doing the same. Jurors in the 80th District Court returned a $25.9 million breach-of-contract verdict for the physician group, Fondren Orthopedic Ltd.
The verdict, surveyed a year later by TopVerdict.com, ranked as the largest 2024 Harris County jury verdict in three categories: commercial litigation, breach of contract, and economic loss. AZA Law tried the case for Fondren. Lead counsel was AZA co-founder Joe Ahmad, alongside partners Kyle Poelker, Paul Turkevich, and Kelsi Stayart White, associate Karina Sanchez-Peralta, and of counsel Hilary Greene.
The 57-Year Hospital Contract
Fondren and Columbia Hospital Corporation entered a limited partnership to own and operate Texas Orthopedic Hospital, a Houston specialty facility for orthopedic surgery services. HCA Healthcare took over the Columbia side of the partnership through corporate succession. The contract that bound the partners ran 57 years. About halfway through that term, the partnership relationship started to crack.
“HCA had the size, the scale and the power and felt they could do what they wanted. The hospital contract with Fondren was for 57 years, and about halfway through, they just decided they would no longer honor the contract,” Joe Ahmad said. “HCA owned 60% of the hospital with Fondren, but owned 100 percent of their improperly opened competing hospitals and sent business to their fully owned places.”
The structural arrangement is the heart of the case. A 60-40 limited partnership entitled HCA to its majority share of Texas Orthopedic Hospital’s revenues. The noncompete provisions in the partnership agreement were designed to keep both sides from undercutting the joint venture, and that’s where the relationship broke down. Over the years, HCA opened 10 separate competing hospitals across the Houston area, capturing referral volumes that would otherwise have flowed through Texas Orthopedic. The hospitals were wholly owned by HCA. The physicians at Fondren shared in none of the revenue.
The Asymmetry the Jury Saw
The strongest fact for the defense, in AZA Law’s framing, was the asymmetry HCA invoked when its physician partner tried to do the same.
When Fondren physicians sought to participate in or open their own competing facilities, HCA pointed to the partnership’s noncompete clauses to stop them. That was the same set of clauses HCA had repeatedly breached on its own side. The contractual restraint operated in one direction.
AZA Law’s case theory put that asymmetry in front of the jury directly. Cross-examination of HCA witnesses focused on what the company knew about its own 10 competing facilities, what the company had told its Fondren partner about those facilities, and why the same noncompete restraint applied to the physicians but not to HCA’s wholly owned hospitals.
On September 3, 2024, the jury returned its verdict for Fondren. The breach-of-contract damages totaled $25.6 million, later adjusted upward to $25.9 million in the TopVerdict.com survey count. Judge Jeralynn Manor reserved a separate bench trial for attorneys’ fees.
What the Verdict Documents About Noncompete Enforcement
Texas law on noncompetes is governed by Section 15.50 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code, which permits enforcement only when the restraint is reasonable in scope, geography, and duration, and only when it doesn’t impose a greater limitation than necessary to protect the goodwill or business interests of the party seeking enforcement. The Texas Supreme Court has read those requirements strictly, particularly when a dominant partner uses noncompete restraints to suppress a smaller counterparty’s competitive options.
Fondren v. HCA tested that doctrine in a complicated factual setting: a limited partnership rather than a typical employer-employee scenario, with the noncompete embedded in a long-term joint-venture agreement, and with one side enforcing the restraint while openly violating it. The jury’s verdict for Fondren signals that Texas juries are willing to penalize asymmetric noncompete enforcement, even when the parties are sophisticated commercial actors who negotiated the terms decades earlier.
That outcome has implications beyond the immediate case. Healthcare joint ventures between physician groups and hospital systems are common in Texas, and many of those joint ventures contain noncompete clauses similar to the ones at issue in Fondren. The verdict puts hospital systems on notice that opening competing facilities, while citing the noncompete to block the physician partner from doing the same, is a litigation risk priced at eight figures.
The AZA Law Team and Practice
AZA’s healthcare litigation practice handles complex disputes involving hospitals, physician groups, medical device companies, and managed care organizations. The firm’s commercial litigation roster overlaps significantly with its healthcare work; the same trial lawyers who handle energy and IP cases also try healthcare matters when the dispute structure fits their commercial-contract experience.
Joe Ahmad, the lead lawyer in Fondren, co-founded AZA in 1993 alongside John Zavitsanos. Ahmad’s trial record covers commercial disputes across multiple industries, including healthcare, energy, and intellectual property.
The Largest 2024 Harris County Commercial Verdict
TopVerdict.com tracks the highest jury verdicts and bench awards across U.S. state and federal courts, organized by jurisdiction and case type. The Fondren verdict topped TopVerdict.com’s 2024 Harris County rankings in commercial litigation, in breach of contract, and in economic loss. No other commercial verdict in Harris County that year exceeded the $25.9 million amount.
For AZA Law, the recognition adds to a record of high-value commercial wins. Texas Lawyer has named the firm Litigation Department of the Year three times. Best Lawyers’ Best Law Firms has listed AZA among the country’s leading commercial litigation firms for 13 consecutive years. Chambers USA has ranked AZA Law in commercial litigation and intellectual property in the Houston market for 12 consecutive years.
The Fondren v. HCA verdict sits in a roster that includes AZA Law’s $41.8 million SilverBow oil-and-gas trespass verdict, its $78.5 million Samsung patent verdict, its $28 million Port of Houston Authority verdict, its successful defense of Marathon Oil against a $123.7 million Winter Storm Uri claim, and Antero’s $205 million pipeline agreement suit. The healthcare verdict is the largest 2024 Harris County entry in three commercial categories, and it documents the firm’s reach beyond the energy and IP work that has historically anchored its caseload.
The Case’s Place in AZA’s Practice Mix
The Fondren litigation also illustrates a working dynamic inside AZA Law: the same trial team that built the contract-interpretation theory in a healthcare case can carry that approach into energy, IP, and executive employment matters. Joe Ahmad’s lead role in Fondren came in a year when the firm tried 18 cases across multiple practice areas. Kyle Poelker’s role on the team preceded his current responsibility leading commercial litigation in AZA Law’s Dallas office, which opened in January 2026.
The firm’s case docket in 2025 included 16 trials. By May 2026, AZA Law had already tried eight cases, with more on the schedule. That trial-volume context matters because it places Fondren v. HCA inside a broader pattern: AZA Law’s commercial litigation practice generates a steady stream of contested matters that reach a jury, rather than resolving through settlement or summary judgment.
For Texas Orthopedic Hospital’s physician partners, the verdict resolved a 57-year contract dispute that had run halfway through its term. For Texas hospital systems generally, it documented what the cost looks like when noncompete restraints are enforced in one direction inside a long-term joint venture. For AZA Law, it added the largest 2024 Harris County commercial verdict to a trial record that already covered most of the practice areas where high-value commercial litigation gets fought.