Texas Renewed Dr. Dare Ajibade's Medical License After a Board Order Tied to a Patient Death: What Patients Should Know

On September 2, 2026, ABC13 Houston's 13 Investigates unit reported that the Texas Medical Board had renewed Dr. Dare Ajibade's license to practice medicine in Texas for another two years. The renewal came about two weeks after a board disciplinary order against him became public. Dr. Ajibade is the Houston cosmetic surgeon our article on the Dr. Dare Ajibade lawsuits covers in detail, the same physician named in a Virginia wrongful-death suit our firm filed over the death of Susan Easley.

To many former patients, a fresh two-year license looks like the state signing off. The board itself pushed back on that reading. In a statement to ABC13, it said a physician's license renewal is not linked to disciplinary actions, and that under the Medical Practice Act and board rules it cannot refuse a renewal solely because of recent discipline. In plain terms, the renewal is not a finding that his care is safe. It is the board following a renewal procedure that runs on a separate track from discipline.

That distinction is the whole point of this article. A renewed, active license is exactly the kind of clean-looking record that our guide to checking a surgeon's disciplinary record before surgery warns patients not to stop at. Below is what the underlying board order says, and why it matters more than the renewal that followed it.

According to ABC13's reporting on the agreed order posted to the Texas Medical Board's website, Dr. Ajibade met with board representatives in June 2026 for an Informal Show Compliance Proceeding and Settlement Conference. The resulting order describes two patients. One died from a pulmonary fat embolism after a surgery that lasted about ten hours, a patient the board characterized as a poor candidate given her medical history and overall health. The second patient underwent two lengthy procedures within a 48-hour period and was also described as a poor surgical candidate.

The board found Dr. Ajibade's medical records deficient in both cases and noted that they lacked appropriate consents for the procedures. Under the agreed order, he is required to complete a Medical Recordkeeping Course, complete four hours of continuing education, and pay a $4,000 fine. ABC13 reports the order states he neither admitted nor denied the allegations and appeared contrite and regretful about the patient outcomes.

This is a second board action, not the one covered earlier. As ABC13 reports, the board had already entered a December remedial plan over a different patient. A Texas remedial plan is a non-disciplinary resolution that cannot impose a fine, as our surgeon background-check guide explains. The June agreed order is different: it carries a fine, which makes it a disciplinary action, and it is the discipline the September license renewal followed.

In most states, license renewal is an administrative process. A physician pays a fee, attests to continuing education, and answers a set of questions, and the license renews on a fixed cycle. Discipline is a separate process, triggered by complaints and resolved through orders, and the two do not automatically cancel each other out. A doctor can hold an active, renewed license and be under a disciplinary order at the same time. That is the situation the board described in Dr. Ajibade's case.

So the presence of a current license tells you the physician is authorized to practice. It does not tell you whether a board has recently concluded their care fell short, whether they are being sued, or whether a settlement quietly resolved a serious complaint. Those live in different records. Our guide to checking a surgeon's disciplinary record before surgery walks through where to look: the state board profile in every state where the surgeon is licensed, the Federation of State Medical Boards lookup at docinfo.org, board-certification status at certificationmatters.org, and the county court dockets where lawsuits are actually filed.

The renewal here is a case study in why a five-minute license check is not enough. A patient who saw only the active license would have missed the June disciplinary order, the earlier remedial plan, and the malpractice lawsuits, none of which a routine license lookup surfaces on its own.

Agreed orders in medicine, like consent orders and no-contest resolutions elsewhere, often settle on language in which the physician neither admits nor denies the board's findings. That phrase matters, and it cuts both ways. It means the doctor did not concede the findings are true, so the order is not a confession. It also means the doctor did not contest them in a full hearing, so the board's account stands as the resolved record. Dr. Ajibade agreed to the recordkeeping course, the continuing education, and the fine without admitting the allegations.

Contrast that with what a court verdict does. A jury verdict is a finding of liability after both sides present evidence. An agreed board order is a negotiated resolution, entered without that trial. Neither the June order nor the pending lawsuits is a court judgment that Dr. Ajibade committed malpractice. Through his attorney Kim Daily, he has characterized the renewal as a normal administrative matter that followed the board's procedures, and he denies the negligence allegations in the lawsuits. None of the pending claims have been proven.

The board order does not stand alone. As our Dr. Dare Ajibade lawsuits article details, he faces multiple malpractice suits filed over roughly a year. They include the Virginia wrongful-death case over Susan Easley, who died four days after a 2024 liposuction and fat transfer at an AirSculpt-branded clinic in Vienna; a Harris County suit by Ebony Williams alleging hospitalization and severe scarring; a San Antonio suit by Junis Maldonado alleging seizures, cardiopulmonary arrest, and permanent brain injury during a May liposuction; and a suit by Rosa Caldera alleging a third-degree burn that required a skin graft. ABC13 has also reported the death of Adebola Britt, who went into cardiac arrest after a Houston procedure in November 2025 and died five days later, and whose family has retained counsel. Every one of those is an allegation or a reported event, not a court finding.

The pattern is bigger than one surgeon. Our AirSculpt lawsuits article and our Sono Bello lawsuits article describe how outpatient cosmetic surgery chains have drawn a growing body of litigation over prolonged procedures, anesthesia dosing, and post-operative care handled by phone. The recurring theme in these cases is rarely the incision itself. It is what happened afterward, when a patient reporting concerning symptoms was sent home or told to wait.

If you had a procedure with Dr. Ajibade, or at a facility where he practiced, start by gathering your own records. Request your operative report, anesthesia records, consent forms, pathology, discharge instructions, and any text messages or call logs with the practice about complications. The board found the records in the two cases it reviewed deficient and missing appropriate consents, so what your own file does or does not contain can matter.

Then look at the timeline of your care. As our article on surgical errors explains, the legal question is never whether the outcome was bad. It is whether the care fell below the professional standard and caused the harm. Four questions are worth asking. Were you sent home despite reporting concerning symptoms? Did you need emergency treatment, hospitalization, or corrective surgery afterward? Were you given anesthesia doses whose risks were never explained? Did the facility fail to respond when you called about a post-operative problem? If the answer to any of these is yes, a review is worth your time.

Medical malpractice and wrongful death claims carry strict statutes of limitations. In Texas, health care liability claims generally must be brought within two years, and in Virginia the malpractice window is usually two years as well, with limited exceptions. Our article on the statute of limitations for medical malpractice explains how the clock works and why it often starts on the date of the procedure rather than the day you finally understood what went wrong.

Waiting is the expensive mistake. The most common way a real claim dies is not a weak set of facts; it is a patient who watched a bad result, hoped it would heal, tried to work it out with the clinic, and let the deadline pass. The clock is already running. Asking now costs nothing while the answer can still change what you do; asking too late closes the courthouse doors no matter how strong the case would have been.

National Malpractice Lawyers represents patients and families harmed by negligent surgical care, including cases involving outpatient cosmetic surgery centers, anesthesia injuries, and post-operative complications that were dismissed or mishandled. If you believe you or a loved one was harmed during treatment with Dr. Dare Ajibade, or at a facility where he practiced, contact our office for a confidential case evaluation.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The board order and lawsuits described here are drawn from public records and news reporting. Dr. Ajibade neither admitted nor denied the board's findings, denies the negligence allegations in the lawsuits, and no court has issued a final ruling on the merits of those claims.