Opinion ID: 1103270
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: whether williams suffered a latent injury which would toll the statute of limitations.

Text: ś 25. Williams argues that she did not know the extent of her injury or that it would require surgery until March 2000, thereby extending the statute of limitations to March 2001. Thus, Williams's second notice of claim filed on February 2, 2001, was timely. This Court has held that the discovery rule applies to Tort Claims Act actions involving latent injuries. Barnes v. Singing River Hosp. Sys., 733 So.2d 199, 204 (Miss.1999). ś 26. We defined the date of accrual of a personal injury action relative to the type of injury sustained in a case applying the Federal Employers' Liability Act's three-year statute of limitations: In cases involving traumatic injury, when the symptoms are immediately manifested so that the employee is aware of the event causing the injury, the cause of action accrues upon the occurrence of the injury, regardless of whether the full extent of the disability is known at the time. By the same token, with industrial diseases, where the symptoms are not immediately manifested, the cause of action does not accrue until the employee is aware or should be aware of his condition. III. Cent. Gulf R.R. v. Boardman, 431 So.2d 1126, 1128 (Miss.1983) (quoting Fletcher v. Union Pac. R.R., 621 F.2d 902 (8th Cir.1980)). We applied this very same definition in Robinson v. Singing River Hosp. Sys., 732 So.2d 204, 208 (Miss. 1999), a case arising under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act wherein the plaintiff sustained burns to his calves from hot packs, because the plaintiff knew he was injured when the hot packs were applied. Here, Williams knew she was injured when she fell down the stairs. She may not have known the full extent of the disability when she fell, but she did know she was injured. Her injuries were not comparable to a delayed onset industrial disease. The cause of action accrued on November 1, 1999, the date of the fall.