Opinion ID: 853167
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dorothy's Derivative Claims

Text: The Medical Malpractice Act allows a patient or the representative of a patient to bring a malpractice claim for bodily injury or death. Ind.Code § 34-18-8-1 (1998). A patient is an individual who receives or should have received health care ... and includes a person having a claim of any kind, whether derivative or otherwise, as a result of alleged malpractice. I.C. § 34-18-2-22. Derivative claims include the claim of a parent or parents, guardian, trustee, child, relative, attorney, or any other representative of the patient, and include claims for loss of services, loss of consortium, expenses, and other similar claims. Id. Accordingly, under the terms of the Medical Malpractice Act, before Dorothy died she was a patient with derivative claims insofar as she asserted claims for lost financial support, love, affection, kindness, attention, companionship, and reasonable funeral and burial expenses. [1] As the wife of Lawrence, she clearly was a relative. She therefore met the statutory requirement to bring these claims as a patient and was entitled to assert derivative claims for these items under the Medical Malpractice Act. The Survival Statute provides that if an individual with a cause of action dies, most causes of action survive and may be brought by the representative of the deceased. I.C. § 34-9-3-1(a). When Dorothy died she became the deceased under the Survival Statute, and when Goleski was appointed the personal representative of Dorothy's estate, Goleski became the representative under this statute. [2] The Survival Statute does not preserve causes of action for libel, slander, malicious prosecution, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, or personal injuries to the deceased. I.C. § 34-9-3-1(a). Only if Goleski's claims are for personal injuries to the deceased would they fail to survive Dorothy's death. They are not within that term. To the extent Goleski asserts claims for personal injuries to Lawrence, they survive Dorothy's death because Dorothy, not Lawrence, is the deceased. Other claims are for loss of consortium and Lawrence's funeral expenses. Even if these are claims for personal injury to Dorothy, [3] the Survival Statute allows Dorothy's representative to sue for personal injuries to the deceased (Dorothy) if Dorothy subsequently dies from causes other than those personal injuries. I.C. § 34-9-3-4(a). Dorothy plainly died from causes other than her loss of consortium and her incurring Lawrence's funeral expenses. As a result, to the extent the claims are for personal injuries, they remain alive because Dorothy did not die as a result of those injuries. Finally, to the extent any of the claims are not claims for personal injuries they are preserved by the Survival Statute, which states that all claims other than those listed in it survive.