Opinion ID: 200653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: United States v. Kubrick

Text: 32 Given the importance of the Supreme Court's reasoning in Kubrick to the application of a discovery rule, we must discuss that decision in some detail. William Kubrick sought treatment in a Veterans Administration hospital in April 1968 for an infection of his leg. His treating physician prescribed large doses of the antibiotic neomycin. Approximately six weeks after the treatment, Kubrick began to suffer from tinnitus and loss of hearing. He saw other doctors about the new condition, and they diagnosed it as bilateral nerve deafness. In January 1969 another physician, upon reviewing Kubrick's previous medical records, informed Kubrick that it was highly possible that the hearing loss resulted from the neomycin treatment. In June 1971 another physician told Kubrick that the neomycin had, in fact, caused the hearing problem and that its administration was medical negligence. 33 In 1972 Kubrick filed his administrative claim. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the plaintiff's claim accrued when he first began (in 1968) to suffer from hearing loss, when he learned (in 1969) that the treatment probably caused his hearing loss, or when he was told (in 1971) that the treatment definitively caused his hearing loss and that the treatment was negligent. The district court had held that Kubrick's claim accrued only when he had reason to suspect that a legal duty to him had been breached, i.e., in 1971, and that his claim (filed in 1972) was timely. The Court of Appeals affirmed, ruling that even though Kubrick knew of his injury and the government's probable responsibility for it as early as 1969, his claim did not accrue until he had adduced facts which would have alerted a reasonable person to the possibility that the treatment was improper. Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 116, 100 S.Ct. 352 (quoting Kubrick v. United States, 581 F.2d 1092, 1097 (3d Cir.1978)). 34 Although the Supreme Court accepted the appropriateness of a discovery rule for medical malpractice cases, it nevertheless reversed, holding that Kubrick's claim did not accrue in 1971 when he learned that his injury was the result of negligence. Instead, the Court held that his claim accrued in 1969 when he first learned of his injury and its probable cause. The Court explained: 35 We thus cannot hold that Congress intended that accrual of a claim must await awareness by the plaintiff that his injury was negligently inflicted. A plaintiff such as Kubrick, armed with the facts about the harm done to him, can protect himself by seeking advice in the medical and legal community. To excuse him from promptly doing so by postponing the accrual of his claim would undermine the purpose of the limitations statute, which is to require the reasonably diligent presentation of tort claims against the Government. 36 Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 123, 100 S.Ct. 352. 37 Kubrick therefore answered one important question that had divided the courts: whether the accrual of a claim depended on a victim's actual knowledge of negligence. See Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 121 n. 8, 100 S.Ct. 352 (overruling cases cited therein). The court answered that question in the negative. However, the Court's recognition in Kubrick of a discovery rule raised new questions, such as: (1) does a discovery rule apply beyond the medical malpractice context, and (2) what knowledge short of actual knowledge of negligence provides a sufficient factual basis to trigger accrual under a discovery rule. As indicated above, the former question has been answered in the affirmative by several circuits, including our own. The latter question, however, has dogged federal courts ever since Kubrick. See Kent Sinclair & Charles A. Szypszak, Limitations of Action Under the FTCA: A Synthesis and Proposal, 28 Harv. J. on Legis. 1, 17-18 (1991) ([T]he Court left unclear ... whether the statute commences only when a plaintiff has actual knowledge of an injury and its cause.... [and] the Court did not address other situations where application of the diligence discovery rule may be difficult due to unique factual considerations.); see also Cutting, 204 F.Supp.2d at 224 (The issue of precisely how much knowledge is needed to trigger accrual bedevils discovery rule analysis.).