Opinion ID: 1983480
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The dismissal of Russell Taylor's claim for loss of consortium.

Text: In February, 1979, Carol and Russell Taylor filed the complaint in the instant action. Before filing the complaint, Mrs. Taylor had served a notice of claim on Dr. Hill pursuant to 24 M.R.S.A. § 2903 (Supp. 1982). [3] It did not appear from Mrs. Taylor's notice of claim that her husband was claiming damages for loss of consortium. [4] Russell Taylor has never served a separate notice of that claim. In answering the complaint, Dr. Hill raised the affirmative defense that plaintiffs failed to perform all conditions precedent required by law to entitle them to commence a medical malpractice action. [5] In July, 1980, defendant moved to dismiss Russell Taylor's claim for loss of consortium. The motion was not decided at that time. In July, 1982, defendant moved again to dismiss the husband's claim, and the trial justice granted the motion. By its own terms, section 2903 does not purport to apply to an action for all types of injury but to an action for injuries to the person. Loss of consortium would be a form of injury but would not be, at least in a technical sense, an injury to the person. Mr. Taylor's claim, though derived from an alleged injury to the person of his wife, constitutes a distinct and separate cause of action. See Johnson v. United States, 496 F.Supp. 597, 601-02 (D.C.Mont. 1980); Bly v. Skaggs Drug Centers, Inc., 562 S.W.2d 723, 728 (Mo.App.1978); Gutter v. Seamandel, 103 Wis.2d 1, 308 N.W.2d 403, 408 (1981). Technically speaking, his own action is not brought for an injury either to his own person or to that of his wife. If the words of the statute are given a technical meaning, he was not required by section 2903 to give the ninety-day notice because his action was not one  for injuries to the person. Yet the language in question may not have been used in a strict technical sense. In common legal parlance, for instance, the term personal injury claim is often used in a sense that excludes damage to property but does not exclude loss of consortium for the injured person's spouse. The context of the words for injuries to the person in section 2903 must therefore be examined in order to ascertain whether a technical reading of the words is consistent with the purposes of the statute. The dual purpose behind section 2903 is helping weed out doubtful claims and encouraging the settlement of meritorious ones. Givertz v. Maine Medical Center, 459 A.2d 548, 550 (Me.1983). The ninety-day notice provision is intended to afford the parties a period of time during which they may negotiate arrangements for settlement or for submission of the matter to arbitrators under subchapter III of the Maine Health Security Act or to a professional malpractice advisory panel under subchapter IV of the act. Upon being served with notice of claim by the patient, the doctor is made aware of the nature and circumstances of the injuries that will be alleged to have resulted from his treatment. Since the spouse's action for loss of consortium normally stands or falls with the patient's own action, we recognize that notice of a claim for loss of consortium would not add much to what the doctor needs to know in order to respond appropriately to either notice of claim. Nevertheless, the filing in court of an action for loss of consortium without the precedent ninety-day notice could have some disruptive effect on the negotiations envisioned by section 2903 by injecting into those negotiations new elements, especially elements relating to the amount of damages. To that extent, the purpose of the ninety-day waiting period is furthered by requiring that a defendant physician be given notice of a spouse's claim for loss of consortium before suit on that claim is brought. It is not apparent why section 2903 in terms limits the type of injury for which notice of claim must be given before suit. [6] In the setting of medical malpractice litigation, the intent can hardly have been to exclude actions for property damage. Property damage claims arising out of medical malpractice are virtually non-existent. Although claims for loss of consortium are common enough, yet no reason suggests itself for excluding them from the operation of section 2903. Taking into account the purposes of the Maine Health Security Act, we conclude that the expression an action for injuries to the person should not be read as excluding an action for loss of consortium. Although such an action is not, strictly speaking, one for injuries to the person, it derives directly from such an action (namely, the treated spouse's action for injuries to her person), and to treat it as coming within the notice requirement tends to further the purposes of the statute. We therefore hold that for purposes of applying section 2903, the term action for injuries to the person should be deemed to include an action for loss of consortium. We reach that conclusion without defining the precise import of the ostensibly limiting language in section 2903. The trial court did not err in dismissing the husband's claim for lack of the notice required by section 2903.