Court Opinion

ID: 9701240
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:12:31.011389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:21.349266
License: Public Domain

LaVECCHIA, J.,
dissenting.
Unlike the majority, I do not see this as a difficult case in which a court must grapple with the application of the discovery rule. On the uncontested facts here, it seems clear to me that the equity principles of the discovery rule are ultimately of no assistance to plaintiff. Her cause of action was not timely brought and therefore was properly dismissed. For that reason, I respectfully dissent.
Enforcement 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 *254“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, and a statute bars whether the suit is instituted one day, fifty-two days, or several years after the time period expires. I believe some straightforward discovery-rule principles dictate an outcome different from the Court’s disposition.
Not that long ago, we reiterated that “[w]e 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 v. Porter Hayden Co., 162 N.J. 545, 555-56, 745 A.2d 525 (2000). The critical elements in determining whether the discovery rule applies is a plaintiffs knowledge of injury and knowledge that another is at fault. Martinez v. Cooper Hosp.-Univ. Med. Ctr., 163 N.J. 45, 52, 747 A.2d 266 (2000). With regard to the “fault” prong, we again have framed our understanding in terms of possibilities, not certainties:
“Fault” in the context of the discovery rule is simply that it is possible — not provable or even probable-that a third person’s conduct that caused the injury was itself unreasonable or lacking in due care. In other words, knowledge of fault does not mean knowledge of a basis for legal liability or a provable cause of action; knowledge of fault denotes only facts suggesting the possibility of wrongdoing. Thus, knowledge of fault for purposes of the discovery rule has a circumscribed meaning: it requires only the awareness of facts that would alert a reasonable person exercising ordinary diligence that a third party’s conduct may have caused or contributed to the cause of the injury and that conduct itself might possibly have been unreasonable or lacking in due care.
[Savage v. Old Bridge-Sayreville Med. Group, P.A, 134 N.J. 241, 248, 633 A.2d 514 (1993).]
No dispute exists that “[t]he linchpin of the discovery rule is the unfairness of barring claims of unknowing parties.” Mancuso v. Neckles, 163 N.J. 26, 29, 747 A.2d 255 (2000). We articulated that “linchpin,” however, in the context of our statement that “[s]tatutes of limitations are primarily statutes of repose. They are designed to stimulate litigants to pursue their actions diligently.” *255Ibid. We have built that design for diligent pursuit of actions into our discovery doctrine, so that the underlying question “is whether the facts presented would alert a reasonable person exercising ordinary diligence that he or she was injured due to the fault of another.” Martinez, supra, 163 N.J. at 52, 747 A.2d 266.
My answer to that basic question in this case is that a reasonable person exercising ordinary diligence should have discovered that she was injured due to the fault of another on August 4, 1993. On that date, plaintiffs leg was x-rayed, and defendant-doctor confirmed that the rod had broken through the screw holes. In confirming the rod breakage, defendant affirmatively suggested that someone was to blame because the rod should not have broken. On August 4, 1993, therefore, plaintiff had an indication that she had an injury, that the injury was due to the fault of another, and that a limited universe of potential suspects caused the injury. Understood in Savage terms, plaintiff had or should have had knowledge of “facts suggesting the possibility of wrongdoing,” and had or should have had an awareness of facts suggesting that another’s conduct “may have caused or contributed to the cause of the injury and that conduct itself might possibly have been unreasonable or lacking in due care.” Plaintiff had actual or constructive knowledge of those facts because the defendant himself so informed her. A discovery event for accrual purposes is evident when a doctor tells a patient pointblank that an injury has indeed occurred and that it should not have happened. If fault was not implicit or self-evident in the injury itself, fault became obvious when the doctor effectively said “someone is at fault.”
The Court attaches significance to the notion that defendant inferentially absolved himself of fault when he told plaintiff that the physical therapist was not to blame and thus that the rod must have been impaired by a structural defect. Ante at 250, 765 A.2d at 189. This is not a case, however, in which a doctor’s various representations reasonably induced a plaintiff not to sue within a limitations period. In Abboud v. Viscomi, 111 N.J. 56, 59, 543 A.2d 29 (1988), for example, the plaintiffs physician erroneously *256explained to her that her continuing discomfort after a tooth extraction was a normal part of the healing process and that her condition was impermanent. The Court remanded the matter to the trial court to determine whether the plaintiffs failure to sue within the limitations period was due to the doctor’s erroneous representations. Id. at 65, 543 A.2d 29.
Another example is found in Lynch v. Rubacky, 85 N.J. 65, 424 A.2d 1169 (1981). There, the defendant-doctor performed surgery to repair the plaintiffs broken ankle. Id. at 67, 424 A.2d 1169. When the plaintiff continued to experience a great deal of pain after that surgery, the doctor consistently assured her that her condition was a natural part of the healing process and would eventually go away. Id. at 68, 424 A.2d 1169. The Court concluded that “a doctor’s repeated assurances of progress may reinforce the reluctance of an average patient to find medical fault.” Id. at 75, 424 A.2d 1169; see also, e.g., Alfone v. Sarno, 139 N.J.Super. 518, 524-25, 354 A.2d 654 (App.Div.) (concluding that evidence did “not support a finding that under the circumstances there should have existed in her mind a disbelief in her physician or a suspicion that he himself was at fault. Quite the contrary he was giving her assurance”), certif. denied, 71 N.J. 498, 366 A.2d 654 (1976). In Martinez, supra, 163 N.J. at 57, 747 A.2d 266, doctors assured the plaintiff that “they did all they could” for decedent.
Unlike the doctors in Abboud, Lynch, and Martinez, defendant in this case did anything but assure plaintiff that the “snap” she had heard in her leg was a natural part of the healing process. Defendant here offered no rosy prognoses, immediately informing plaintiff that something had gone terribly wrong, that recovery would be prolonged, and that rod replacement might be necessary to heal her original injury. To be sure, defendant did not then say, “My medical malpractice caused the injury.” However, defendant need not have issued such a mea culpa to impute knowledge of injury and fault to plaintiff. Also, although defendant may have informed plaintiff before surgery that rod breakage was a possible complication of surgery performed properly, defendant’s *257later expression of shock at the actual breakage belies a suggestion that the breakage was a mere complication.
Nor is this a case involving complex medical causation and masked injury, again distinguishing cases relied upon by the Court. For example, in the companion cases of Mancuso v. Neckles, supra, 163 N.J. at 34, 747 A.2d 255, and Gallagher v. Burdette-Tomlin Mem’l Hosp., 163 N.J. 38, 43, 747 A.2d 262 (2000), we explained that, for discovery rule purposes, the justification for a delayed claim depends on the type of case. A case involving complex causation and masked injury requires special focus on the “nature of the information” the claimant possessed, Mancuso, supra, 163 N.J. at 34, 747 A.2d 255, and special attention to the difficulties the plaintiff faced in determining fault, Gallagher, supra, 163 N.J. at 43, 747 A.2d 262. We emphasized in both cases that complex medical-causation cases implicate intrinsic hardship because “[n]ot only is the nature of the injury generally unclear, its very existence is frequently masked.” Ibid.; Mancuso, supra, 163 N.J. at 34, 747 A.2d 255 (quoting Vispisiano, supra, 107 N.J. at 434, 527 A.2d 66). In Gallaghersupra, 163 N.J. at 43, 747 A.2d 262, we determined that the plaintiff-patient “had no
reason to suspect that her crippling condition” of an abscess that developed following urologic surgery “was caused by anything other than the original surgery.” In Mancuso, supra, 163 N.J. at 35, 747 A.2d 255, we concluded that plaintiff had no reason to believe that the spread of her cancer was attributable to belated diagnosis, rather than the unfortunate ravages of the disease. The facts of this case do not fit within that framework. A snapped support rod in a person’s leg is hardly a masked injury, and the likely causal factors suggest themselves.
The Court relates Gallagher and Mancuso to two other cases, Martinez, supra, and Savage, supra. “Knowledge-of-fault” cases have a subcategory in which “a plaintiff knows she has been injured and knows the injury was the fault of another, but does not know that an additional party was also responsible for her plight.” Martinez, supra, 163 N.J. at 54, 747 A.2d 266 (citing *258Savage, supra, 134 N.J. at 243, 633 A.2d 514). According to the Court, Martinez, Savage, Gallagher, and Mancuso “stand for the proposition that where a plaintiff knows of an injury, and knows that it is the fault of another, but is reasonably unaware that a third party may also be responsible, the accrual clock does not begin ticking against the third party until plaintiff has evidence that reveals his or her possible complicity.” Ante at 250, 765 A.2d at 189. Even accepting for the sake of argument that those cases stand for such a proposition, I am not convinced that the proposition carries decisive force in this case for two reasons.
First, defendant-doctor here is not a “third party” who might “also” be responsible for plaintiffs injury. In the matter before us, we have an injury attributable to the fault of a limited universe of suspects: the rod manufacturer, the physical therapist, and the doctor. The issue of causation here relates not to whether an “additional” or “third party” defendant remained reasonably obscured to plaintiff in making a complex causal connection between masked injury and its source. Instead, the issue of causation relates to which of the possible culprits was the “first” party who caused the known injury. A plaintiffs duty to exercise ordinary diligence incorporates the responsibility to act when, as here, facts suggesting injury, fault, and a small pool of possible suspects are evident. In this case, the causal arrows were pointing in only a few possible directions, and diligence would have identified the correct target or targets. In Gallagher and Mancuso, we took note that the plaintiffs had already commenced their lawsuits concerning their medical conditions within the statutory limitations periods and only needed to amend their complaints to bring in additional parties. Gallagher, supra, 163 N.J. at 40-42, 747 A.2d 262; Mancuso, supra, 163 N.J. at 30-32, 747 A.2d 255. Those additional claims were asserted soon after the plaintiffs became aware that new facts suggested wrongdoing on the part of another party not yet named in the existing action.
Second, even if defendant-doctor qualifies as a third party, plaintiff had evidence that revealed the doctor’s “possible complici*259ty.” The standard is not whether complicity is certain, provable, or even probable, but whether fault is possible. Savage, supra, 134 N.J. at 248, 633 A.2d 514. Once the nature of information available to a plaintiff crosses that threshold, we impute knowledge of fault to a plaintiff. The threshold was crossed in this case.
It is not disputed that plaintiff underwent further surgery at the hands of defendant, that her husband continued in his care, and that both of them referred friends and family to defendant. As the Court finds, those facts suggest that for some time plaintiff did not believe defendant had committed malpractice. Ante at 250-51, 765 A.2d at 189. The inquiry does not end with that finding, however. Discovery-rule doctrine embraces a normative, policy perspective. We objectively inquire not only about what a reasonable plaintiff knew concerning injury and fault, but also what he or she should have known under the circumstances. Under the circumstances of this case, if plaintiff did not know that her doctor possibly could be responsible for her plight, she should have. In other instances, we have held that when a plaintiff is aware of an injury associated with a medical procedure, that knowledge dictates that the plaintiff take steps to investigate whether he or she has any claim against the doctor or any implicated party. Baird v. American Med. Optics, 155 N.J. 54, 69, 713 A.2d 1019 (1998). We do not view the plaintiffs duty to investigate the doctor’s possible dereliction as “pitting” the patient against her doctor, but as fulfillment of a plaintiffs duty to act with ordinary diligence when she had the requisite knowledge. The normative aspect of discovery doctrine demands that the nondiligent plaintiff forfeit her claim to the equitable intervention of the discovery rule. As we explained in Lapka, supra, 162 N.J. at 558, 745 A.2d 525, “[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.”
In this case, it seems clear to me that as of August 4, 1993, plaintiff unquestionably knew of facts that should have alerted a reasonably diligent claimant that she was injured and that that *260injury was caused by the fault of one of three actors, or a combination of two or all three actors. As of August 4, 1993, she knew the rod broke at the screw holes where it was fastened to her bone. She knew breaks were not expected, although possible. She knew the rod might have to be replaced. She knew that her recovery, in any event, would be retarded because the broken rod would not function to assist healing. She knew that there were only three actors in the situation: the doctor, the rod manufacturer, and the therapist. Plaintiff clearly had a basis to pursue those claims from that date forward. Under our discovery-rule jurisprudence, her durational time limit for bringing the action must be measured from that date. Because that date puts plaintiff beyond the limitation period, the statute of limitations should bar her action. I respectfully dissent.
Justice VERNIERO joins in this opinion.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices STEIN, COLEMAN, LONG, and ZAZZALI — 5.
For affirmance — VERNIERO and LaVECCHIA — -2.