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NEW PENNSYLVANIA SUPREME COURT DECISION HOLDS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CASE PRESENTS QUESTION FOR JURY ON STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.Below is a link to the opinion from Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court decided on February 19, 2009, in Wilson v. El-Daief, ____ A.2d ____ (Pa. 2009). Please contact the medical malpractice attorneys at Schmidt Kramer PC, in Harrisburg, PA, for an explanation. A lawyer will explain the application of the decision to your case.
Mary Elizabeth Wilson had an operation on her wrist. After the operation, her hand clinched into a fist, her elbow turned inward, and her shoulder drew upward. For these problems, she continued to see the physician who performed the operation. For more than one year, he told Ms. Wilson, she would be fine. She was referred to an orthopedic surgeon who, for more than a year, was unable to tell what was wrong or how it had happened. Finally, after bouncing back and forth between the two doctors Ms. Wilson said she knew something was wrong and that she had not been treated appropriately by her surgeon. She said this in September 2001.
The question before the court was only whether Ms. Wilson’s claim was barred by time limitations. She had two years from when her claim accrued to file a lawsuit. Ms. Wilson’s Writ of Summons and subsequent Complaint, alleging the doctor who performed her surgery had lacerated the radial nerve in her wrist, were not filed within two years of the surgery, nor within two years of the date she stated she knew something was wrong. Without more, her claim would not have been allowed to proceed. But here, whether the claim was time-barred, hinged on the court’s application of the discovery rule.
The court ruled there was potential for Ms. Wilson to be confused about whether she was injured and its cause, because her surgeon told her she would be fine, and the orthopedic surgeon did not explain all the possible diagnoses he was considering. The court stated that a person with a high school education, cannot be held to a higher standard of knowledge than two medical doctors – if the physicians were unable or unwilling to tell her what was wrong, then she may not have known. Her efforts to find out what was wrong were considered to present a genuine issue of material fact, when she continued to meet with her surgeon and the orthopedic surgeon, as well as seeking out the opinion of a third doctor. A definitive medical diagnosis was not needed to begin the running of the statute of limitations, but a mere loss of confidence in her doctor was not sufficient to begin the running of the time in which she had to file her lawsuit.
The posture of the case was on appeal from a grant of summary judgment to the defendant-doctor based on the claim being time-barred by the statute of limitations. The Pa. Supreme Court reversed, but did not state as a matter of law that the discovery rule allowed the claim to proceed. Against strong protests of the concurring/dissenting justices, the Supreme Court said a jury needed to decide whether Ms. Wilson had used reasonable diligence in discovering her injury and its cause.
http://www.aopc.org/OpPosting/Supreme/out/J-148-2008mo.pdf
Joe Chapman
Attorney at Law
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