EL PASO, Tx., October 27, 2025: Last week a judge ruled that a civil lawsuit filed against two doctors and the El Paso Children’s Hospital over the 2019 death of a three-year-old at the children’s hospital can proceed to trial. The civil lawsuit alleging the children’s hospital and doctors Roberto Canales and Rodolfo Fierro-Stevens were “grossly negligent” in the treatment of the three-year-old resulting in her death.
The malpractice lawsuit was filed by David and Mariana Saucedo on August 10, 2020, after their daughter died on August 31, 2019. When the lawsuit was filed, it contained an affidavit by Dr. Thomas C. Mayes attached to it.
In the affidavit Mayes explained that he declined to approve Canales to practice pediatric intensive care at the El Paso Children’s Hospital because he determined that Canales did not have the qualifications to provide intensive care to patients there. Nonetheless, Mayes wrote in his affidavit that El Paso Children’s Hospital officials, including CEO Cindy Stout, attempted to “brow beat” him into giving Canales a waiver.
Mayes ended his affidavit with “Canales presents a real danger to his patients and should be removed from the practice of medicine.”
On January 19, 2022, El Paso Children’s Hospital attorneys’ successfully convinced Judge Selena Solis to remove the Mayes affidavit from the public record citing a medical “privilege rule.” Because the affidavit was attached to the initial petition, the judge had to devise a way to make changes to the petition to keep it under seal. In her ruling, Solis wrote that the information removed from the public record contained “issues that do not belong in the public view.” Solis was forced to recuse herself from the case on August 26, 2024, after a TikTok video posted by Sammy Carrejo showed that she had attended an El Paso Children’s Hospital Foundation the previous weekend.
Judge Annabell Perez took over the case and on December 19, 2024, she dropped the El Paso Children’s Hospital from the Saucedo lawsuit. The children’s hospital argued that they were immune from the lawsuit because they were a contractor for the University Medical Center of El Paso (UMC).
It should be noted that the judge’s ruling in essence made the El Paso Children’s Hospital – a nonprofit – into a government entity when it comes to being sued for negligence. But for the Texas Public Information Act, the hospital asserts that it is not a governmental body, and thus not subject to open records requests.
Canales and Fierro-Stevens remained on the case.
On October 21, the judge denied the request by Canales and Fierro-Stevens to also be dropped from the case. She also denied the request to remove the “expert reports” by Mayes and Dr. Bradley Peterson.
Our sister publication, the El Paso News, has been covering the lawsuit extensively since it was filed in 2020, including reporting the various court trials in the suit. El Paso News maintains a comprehensive archive of the case.
As the case continues in court, the El Paso Herald Post will update with new information as it becomes available.
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