A Houston lawyer's widower is suing his late wife's former colleague over his decision to voluntarily dismiss a medical malpractice suit.

After Houston lawyer Tammy Henderson Peden died in 2017, her husband hired one of her former colleagues, Reginald McKamie Sr., to pursue the medical malpractice suit she had filed on her own behalf a month earlier. Tammy Peden formerly worked at The Law Office of Reginald E. McKamie.

But just a few months after Tammy Peden's death, McKamie voluntarily dismissed the suit, which cannot be refiled due to the Texas statute of repose, Terry Gregory Peden alleged in a petition he filed against McKamie last Friday.

Terry Peden, on behalf of his late wife's estate, is suing McKamie for breach of contract, negligence and gross negligence, seeking $350,000 in damages due to the loss of her health care liability claim, punitive damages and attorney fees and expenses.

Terry Peden has alleged that McKamie, now a solo practitioner in Houston, misrepresented to the plaintiffs his skill, experience and legal knowledge to handle the medical malpractice suit, and acted “recklessly” in dismissing the suit without determining whether state law would allow him to refile it.

McKamie declined to comment on the allegations because he had not read the petition in Peden v. McKamie. However, he said that Tammy Peden was a “very nice lady.”

The circumstances of the underlying suit date back to 2007, when Tammy Peden underwent gastric band surgery to lose weight, the petition alleged.

For seven to eight years, Tammy Peden complained of significant abdominal pain, and in an effort to stop the pain, had three more surgeries, including a hysterectomy and removal of the gastric band, according to the petition.

She did not discover the cause of the pain until 2017, when a pelvic CT scan revealed a plastic catheter and tubing left inside her body, allegedly by the doctor who performed the gastric band procedure in 2007, the petition said. Tammy Peden had surgery in February 2017 to remove the catheter and tubing “which, by then, had become embedded and encased in hardened scar tissue,” according to the petition.

Tammy Peden sued the doctor in March 2017, within the 10-year statute of repose under Texas law, the petition said.

After Tammy Peden died April 18, 2017, Terry Peden retained McKamie to bring the medical malpractice suit, but he “voluntarily dismissed or non-suited the case on July 6, 2017, after it was too late for the claim to be refiled,” he said in the legal malpractice suit.

Terry Peden alleged McKamie dismissed the suit because he either was unaware of the statute of repose, or erroneously believed the underlying suit could be refiled after the 10-year deadline.

“Defendant, by his own admission, did not know that the 'discovery rule' would not allow the filing of any malpractice claim in Texas after 10 years following the negligent act,” the petition said.

Plaintiffs attorney Sarnie Randle Jr. of S.A. Randle & Associates of Houston, who is representing Terry Peden and his wife's estate, could not be reached immediately for comment.