Court Opinion

ID: 9706053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:30:22.078385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:18.648032
License: Public Domain

VERNIERO, J.,
dissenting.
The Court essentially holds that, in a multi-defendant medical malpractice case, a cause of action does not accrue in respect of a particular defendant until the plaintiff has in hand an expert opinion informing him or her of the supposed negligence of that defendant. That never has been and should not be our law. Moreover, despite the majority’s attempt to limit its holding, there is nothing to prevent future litigants from importing the Court’s rationale to single-defendant eases. And, I predict, lower courts will have little choice but to submit to that rationale, the result being that receipt of an expert report soon will develop as the triggering mechanism in all medical malpractice actions. I believe that the Legislature, not this Court, should be the body to effect such a dramatic revision to the statute of hmitations. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
My analysis begins, as it must, with the text of N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2. The statute states: “Every action at law for an injury to the person caused by the wrongful act, neglect or default of any person within this state shall be commenced within 2 years next after the cause of any such action shall have accrued.” Ibid. The discovery rule is a tool of equity that helps determine an action’s accrual date. The rule provides that “in an appropriate case a cause of action will be held not to accrue until the injured party discovers, or by an exercise of reasonable diligence and intelligence should have discovered that he may have a basis for an actionable claim.” Lopez v. Swyer, 62 N.J. 267, 272, 300 A.2d 563 (1973).
*57New Jersey’s adoption of the discovery rule traces to Fernandi v. Strully, 35 N.J. 434, 173 A.2d 277 (1961). In that case, the plaintiff had undergone surgery in 1955, but did not discover until 1958 that her surgeon negligently had left a wing nut in her abdomen. The wing nut had caused the plaintiff great discomfort, prompting her to commence a medical malpractice action more than two years after the date of her surgery. In permitting the suit to go forward, this Court explained that the plaintiffs injury belonged to a “special grouping” of cases in which “the period of limitations may and should fairly and justly be said to begin to run when the plaintiff knows or has any reason to know about the foreign object and the existence of the cause of action based upon its presence!)]” Id. at 450,173 A.2d 277.
The discovery rule has been extended beyond the special grouping of cases involving medical instruments negligently left in the body. Since the late 1960s, the rule has been applied to surveyor liability claims, New Market Poultry Farms, Inc. v. Fellows, 51 N.J. 419, 241 A.2d 633 (1968), replevin actions, O’Keeffe v. Snyder, 83 N.J. 478, 416 A.2d 862 (1980), and legal malpractice claims, Grunwald v. Bronkesh, 131 N.J. 483, 621 A.2d 459 (1993), among others. Throughout the development of our jurisprudence, however, the Court has adhered faithfully to the concept that “[b]ecause the discovery rule, at its root, is a rule of equity, we must consider elements of fairness pertaining to all parties, not just to those asserting the benefits of the rule.” Lapka v. Porter Hayden Co., 162 N.J. 545, 558, 745 A.2d 525 (2000).
In other words,
[e]nforcement of statutes of limitations is the general rule, and discovery doctrine, as a tool of equity, is designed as an exception to that general rule. The essential purpose of the discovery rule “is to avoid harsh results that otherwise would flow from mechanical application of a statute of limitations.” Vispisiano v. Ashland Chem. Co., 107 N.J. 416, 426, 527 A.2d 66 (1987). When a statute of limitations operates as it should to cut off a cause of action, that does not necessarily constitute a “harsh result.” That is the very nature of a limitation of actions!.]
[Caravaggio v. D'Agostini, 166 N.J. 237, 253-54, 765 A.2d 182 (2001) (LaVecchia, J., dissenting).]
*58Applying the discovery rule to toll the statute in this case is to detach the rule from its original moorings. On October 2, 1992, Dr. DeLisi examined plaintiff and ordered a catheterization. The next day the doctor diagnosed an abscess at the catheter site and ordered surgery. In answers to interrogatories, plaintiff has acknowledged that sometime in October 1992 after the surgery, another physician, Dr. Rubinfeld, told plaintiff, “I wish[ ] they had called me, when you were admitted [to the hospital].” When plaintiff asked the doctor why he should have been called, he responded, “because I would have known what went wrong and what steps to take. Things would have been done a lot faster.”
In August 1994, nearly two years after her conversation with Dr. Rubinfeld, plaintiff consulted with an expert who concluded that her healthcare providers had been negligent during the insertion of the catheter. The expert did not give an opinion in respect of Dr. DeLisi’s purported negligence. In September 1994, plaintiff filed suit against named and fictitious defendants, but not against Dr. DeLisi. During the remainder of 1994 through July 1995, plaintiff consulted with three additional experts, the last of whom expressed the view that Dr. DeLisi’s alleged delay in diagnosis may have contributed to plaintiff’s injury. In March 1996, plaintiff amended her complaint to add the doctor as defendant. That amendment was filed about three and one-half years from both the date of Dr. DeLisi’s diagnosis and plaintiffs conversation with Dr. Rubinfeld.
I am satisfied that plaintiff’s cause of action in respect of Dr. DeLisi accrued sometime in October 1992 on the basis of Dr. Rubinfeld’s statement that he “would have known what went wrong and what steps to take” had plaintiff consulted him earlier. That statement provided plaintiff with an “awareness of facts that would alert a reasonable person exercising ordinary diligence that a third party’s conduct [ie., Dr. DeLisi] may have caused or contributed to the cause of the injury and that [the] conduct itself might possibly have been unreasonable or lacking in due care.” *59Savage v. Old Bridge-Sayreville Medical Group, 134 N.J. 241, 248, 633 A.2d 514 (1993).
Inexplicably, plaintiff waited nearly two years from Dr. Rubinfeld’s statement before even beginning the process of consulting experts for the purpose of filing suit. The Court acknowledges that “Dr. Rubinfeld’s statement imposed on plaintiff a ‘duty to act[.]’ ” Ante at 54, 826 A.2d at 706. It concludes, however, that she satisfied that duty. I cannot join the majority’s conclusion that such delay is consistent with the type of diligent inquiry required in these circumstances. By my reading of the record, plaintiff “had an obligation to investigate all potentially responsible parties in a timely manner but did not do so.” Matynska v. Fried, 175 N.J. 51, 53, 811 A.2d 456 (2002).
The majority relies heavily on Mancuso v. Neckles, 163 N.J. 26, 747 A.2d 255 (2000), and Gallagher v. Burdette-Tomlin Mem’l Hosp., 163 N.J. 38, 747 A.2d 262 (2000). In Mancuso, supra, the plaintiff was unaware that the spread of her cancer might have resulted from an erroneous reading, years earlier, of a mammogram by a physician, Dr. Beinart. “In fact, two sets of medical professionals had confirmed that Dr. Beinart’s initial diagnosis of a benign cyst in [the plaintiff’s] right breast was correct.” 163 N.J. at 35, 747 A.2d 255. Relying on those experts, the plaintiff initially filed a timely complaint without naming Dr. Beinart as a defendant. Later, when an expert retained by one of the existing defendants suggested fault on Dr. Beinart’s part, the plaintiff sought to include that doctor in the suit. We permitted the suit against that doctor to proceed, explaining that the plaintiff “did not suspect, much less have reason to believe, that she may have been injured by the conduct of Dr. Beinart.” Ibid.
In Gallagher, supra, the plaintiff suffered “a post-operative infection that developed into an abdominal abscess due to the lack of timely antibiotic therapy.” 163 N.J. at 40, 747 A.2d 262. The plaintiffs after-care physicians were not those who had performed the actual surgery. The plaintiff did not amend her complaint to include the after-care physicians until two years after she had filed *60it against the surgical team. We permitted that amendment under the discovery rule, finding that the patient “had no reasonable basis to suspect that her crippling condition was caused by anything other than the original surgery.” Id. at 43, 747 A.2d 262.
Unlike the majority, I do not consider the facts in this case to be analogous to those found in Mancuso and Gallagher. Here, plaintiff did not rely on numerous expert opinions exonerating Dr. DeLisi, but rather continued to believe that he bore some responsibility for her tragic condition. As the Appellate Division stated, “[ijndeed, it was this belief that led her to shop for a physician to support her claim of malpractice and to consult four experts regarding his potential liability.” Had she acted on that belief sooner, rather than wait two years before consulting her first expert, her complaint could have been filed in a timely fashion consistent with prior case law.
As significant, unlike the situations in Mancuso and Gallagher, neither the identity of Dr. DeLisi nor his purported conduct was “unclear” or “masked.” Gallagher, supra, 163 N.J. at 43, 747 A.2d 262 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Instead, he was 'one of a small universe of practitioners who had treated plaintiff during the short period within which the alleged actionable conduct had occurred. I thus am persuaded that the Appellate Division concluded correctly that “[h]ere, knowledge of the facts and [plaintiffs] belief that [Dr. DeLisi] bore some responsibility are sufficient to bar application of the discovery rule.”
The majority’s contrary conclusion implicates the future of the discovery rule. Not long ago this Court stated firmly: “We impute discovery if the plaintiff is aware of facts that would alert a reasonable person to the possibility of an actionable claim; medical or legal certainty is not required.” Lapka, supra, 162 N.J. at 555-56, 745 A.2d 525 (emphasis added). That statement was based on settled case law, which instructs litigants that “[t]he proofs [necessary to commence the limitations period] need not evoke a finding that plaintiff knew for a certainty that the factual basis [for a claim] was present. It is enough that plaintiff had or *61should have discovered that he ‘may have’ a basis for the claim.” Burd v. New Jersey Tel. Co., 76 N.J. 284, 293, 386 A.2d 1310 (1978) (citation omitted). Such observations lose much of their currency in view of today’s holding.
It now appears that a claimant who waits nearly two years before consulting his or her first expert will be viewed as acting promptly, although the identity of the doctor against whom recovery is sought and his conduct previously were known to the claimant. Moreover, until a claimant secures a definitive expert opinion that one among a number of physicians is at fault, then the cause of action insofar as that one physician is concerned might not accrue. The Court has traveled far from those special grouping of cases in which it intended application of the discovery doctrine to be a narrow exception to the strict enforcement of statutes of limitations.
I hold no brief for doctors who commit malpractice. As indicated, however, “the principal consideration underlying [the] enactment [of statutes of limitations] is one of fairness to the defendant.” Lopez, supra, 62 N.J. at 274, 300 A.2d 563. With that consideration in mind, I observe that Dr. DeLisi now will be forced to defend conduct as a primary defendant that allegedly occurred in 1992. He will continue to list this suit when he applies for hospital privileges, renews his malpractice insurance, and conducts other transactions in which disclosure of litigation is required. When is this defendant entitled to repose? The Court’s answer, it seems, is not yet.
In sum, I cannot join in what I consider to be the majority’s lax enforcement of the statute of limitations and an erroneous application of the discovery rule. If the circumstances of this case argue for changes in New Jersey’s limitations law, those changes should originate from the elected branches, not from this Court. We once considered the discovery doctrine to be a necessary but narrow exception to the statute of limitations. Under the Court’s approach, that exception has swallowed up a large part of the rule, with open-ended litigation likely to follow as the norm. The Court *62should not travel down this path. Instead, it should affirm the judgment of the Appellate Division.
Justices COLEMAN and LaVECCHIA join this opinion.
For reversing and remanding—Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices LONG, ZAZZALI, and ALBIN—4.
For affirming—Justices VERNIERO, COLEMAN and LaVECCHIA—3.