Court Opinion

ID: 9764048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:08:41.115663+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:52.830419
License: Public Domain

TAMILIA, Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I disagree with the majority in that it reaches the right result but introduces an inappropriate reason. As the ma*152jority quotes Pastierik v. Duquesne Light Co., 514 Pa. 517, 526 A.2d 323 (1987), “Where the statute requires that an action must be filed within a specific period of time after a “definitely established event,” the discovery rule cannot be read into the statute because the statute “leaves no room for contraction.” Id., 514 Pa. at 521, 526 A.2d at 325 (Majority Opinion, p. 144). Distinguishing this case from Pastierik, the majority goes on to say:
Unlike the wrongful death statute, and akin to that applicable to negligence actions, the battery statute of limitations quoted above does not fix a definite event as the beginning of the limitations period. It merely provides that an action for battery must be brought within two years of when a cause of action for battery accrues. 42 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. §§ 5524(1) and 5502(a).
Beck, J., p. 1087. Where the majority errs is determining that a “battery”, like other forms of negligence, can have a variable time of occurrence of an injury or the accrual of a cause of action as determined by the time a person became aware of the injury. The trial court correctly determined that battery as a tort occurs at the time the patient is touched, leaving no room for statutory construction as to when the injury occurred. It is immaterial that the statute of limitations as to battery does not delineate the point of touching when, by definition, “battery” allows for no other interpretation. Thus the definition of battery and the statute of limitations as read together proscribe the application of the discovery rule to extend the statute of limitations. The majority acknowledges this Court cannot redefine battery so as to make it akin to negligence in this context but because the statute of limitations does not fix the time of a battery, as death is fixed as an established event, it would hold the discovery rule can apply.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines such a battery as a “technical battery”. A technical battery occurs when a physician or dentist, in the course of treatment, exceeds the consent given by a patient. Although no wrongful intent is present, and in fact there may be a sincere purpose to aid *153the patient, recovery is permitted unless there is an emergency. Prosser, as quoted by the majority, quotes Holmes as saying the absence of lawful consent is part of the definition of assault. Prosser and Keeton on Torts, p. 111, (5th ed.1984). Unquestionably, consent does not apply where the doctor in a surgical proceeding exceeded the consent given, as in the case cited in the majority, footnote 4, Corbett v. Wiesband, 380 Pa.Super. 292, 551 A.2d 1059 (1988), where consent was not given for performance of an arthrodesis or knee fusion procedure on the plaintiffs left knee, and which she did not discover until two years later. To carry the doctrine of informed consent beyond the battery, to include lesser negligence and acts or results from the initial battery goes beyond what was intended by the discovery rule. In analysis of informed consent in surgical procedures. Prosser states:
Where there is active misrepresentation, this has been held to invalidate the consent, so that there is battery; and the same has been held where there has been mere nondisclosure of consequences which the surgeon knew to be certain to follow. Beyond this, there have been few decisions finding battery where there was failure to disclose only a known risk of treatment.
The greater number of decisions now regard the failure to disclose the mere risk of treatment as involving a collateral matter, and negligence rather than intent, and so have treated the question as one of negligent malpractice only, which brings into question professional standards of conduct. The matter is, therefore, more fully considered in connection with negligence [rather than battery or informed consent].
Prosser, supra at 120-121 (footnotes omitted).
The fact that capsulization occurs in some cases of breast augmentation surgery, but not all, and that there are routine procedures such as massage and “closed capsulotomy” to deal with build up of scar tissue as a normal incident of the surgery, places this case in the category of a known *154risk of treatment rather, than one certain to follow. This problem is so widely discussed and detailed on talk shows and in women’s magazines that it is inconceivable that it is not part of the general knowledge in the female community. The treatment of this issue by the majority, even though it does not change the result, by applying the discovery rule to the battery at the point where she learned from other medical sources of the possibility of other surgery, which the majority places at May 1981, would open the door to expansion of the discovery rule to battery cases involving lack of informed consent as to collateral matters. This, I believe, is inappropriate as it lies properly within the area of negligence and standards of professional conduct governed by the principles of a typical malpractice case. The application of the discovery rule is totally unnecessary to the resolution of this case and should not be a consideration in the ultimate result.