--- title: Ebola: Thomas Eric Duncan Family and Dallas Hospital Reach Settlement description: The hospital has reached a settlement with the family of Thomas Eric Duncan and will help create a foundation in his name canonical: https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/ author: Sam Frizell article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-12T18:06:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:22.726Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Victim's Family and Dallas Hospital Reach Settlement og:description: The hospital will also help create a foundation in Thomas Eric Duncan's name og:url: https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc00e440a1ad827a7/6987686d0b72e337fc6dbe12/texas-ebola-hospital.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4764 og:image:height: 2680 og:image:alt: Ebola Monitoring og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Victim's Family and Dallas Hospital Reach Settlement twitter:description: The hospital will also help create a foundation in Thomas Eric Duncan's name twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc00e440a1ad827a7/6987686d0b72e337fc6dbe12/texas-ebola-hospital.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ebola Victim's Family and Dallas Hospital Reach Settlement > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EJ3m56cA.m3u8) (1:49)  _Published 2014-10-02. Health officials in the US are using a method known as contact tracing, to see who is at risk from Ebola._ by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Nov 12, 2014 6:06 PM UTC  Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas where Thomas Eric Duncan the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. received care on Sept. 30, 2014. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas where Thomas Eric Duncan the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. received care on Sept. 30, 2014. LM Otero—AP by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Nov 12, 2014 6:06 PM UTC The family of the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States announced Wednesday that a settlement had been reached with the Dallas hospital that treated him before his death. The deal with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was “as good or better than we would have done in court,” Les Weisbrod, a lawyer for the family of Thomas Eric Duncan, said at a news conference. Medical malpractice suits in Texas have an upper liability limit of $250,000 for a claimant. If the Duncan family had taken the hospital to court, it would have had to reach a very high legal bar, proving the hospital knew its staff was causing harm when they treated Duncan. Staffers at Texas Health Presbyterian had originally sent Duncan home after he went to the emergency room, even though he had a fever and was recently in Liberia, among the three hardest-hit nations in an outbreak that has killed more than 5,000 people. He died Oct. 8; two nurses who were a part of Duncan’s medical team would later contract Ebola but, after treatment elsewhere, be declared virus-free. The hospital has also agreed to create a foundation in Duncan’s name to fund the construction of a facility to combat Ebola in Liberia. The fund will be administered by one of the existing foundations of Texas Health Resources, and the family said it is seeking contributions. “I can never replace Thomas Eric Duncan, but we can make sure that we make this better for everyone else,” said Josephus Weeks, Duncan’s nephew. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/"},"headline":"Ebola Victim's Family and Dallas Hospital Reach Settlement","datePublished":"2014-11-12T18:06:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:22.726Z","description":"The hospital will also help create a foundation in Thomas Eric Duncan's name","url":"https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/","keywords":["ebola","health","Infectious Disease"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc00e440a1ad827a7/6987686d0b72e337fc6dbe12/texas-ebola-hospital.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam Frizell","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc00e440a1ad827a7/6987686d0b72e337fc6dbe12/texas-ebola-hospital.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Ebola Monitoring","caption":"Ebola Monitoring","creditText":"LM Otero—AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/ebola/","name":"ebola"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/","name":"Ebola Victim's Family and Dallas Hospital Reach Settlement"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola","description":"Health officials in the US are using a method known as contact tracing, to see who is at risk from Ebola.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/EJ3m56cA/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-10-02T18:25:06.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EJ3m56cA.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/","duration":"PT1M49S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3581185/ebola-thomas-eric-duncan-hospital-settlement/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```