Court Opinion

ID: 9696729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:56:28.981192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:26.056236
License: Public Domain

CADY, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority believes it is compelled to reach its result in this case because of the legislative amendment to the governing statute following our decision in Baines, 223 N.W.2d 199, and our post-amendment decision in Schultze, 463 N.W.2d 47. However, the legislative amendment and Schultze simply clarified that the statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims begins to run on the date the injury or death is discovered, not the date the wrongful act that caused the injury or death is discovered. See Schultze, 463 N.W.2d at 48-50. This legislative approach is based on the idea that knowledge of injury or death in the course of medical treatment should be enough to alert a person of the need to investigate the possibility of a cause of action based on negligence. This is a sound principle. Yet, this approach does not absolutely preclude the use of the date on which the plaintiff in this case discovered that his surgery was unnecessary as the date the statute of limitations began to run. While the statute establishes knowledge of injury, not knowledge of the wrongful act causing the injury, as the date the limitations period begins to run, it does not preclude using knowledge of the wrongful act as the basis for discovery of the injury in those cases where understanding the wrongfulness of the act is a necessary component to acquiring knowledge of the underlying injury.
There is a clear difference between using the discovery of the wrongful act as the date to commence the statute of limitations as precluded by the amendment and Schultze and using the wrongful act to discover the injury. Our failure to recognize this difference will only lead to unjust results, as it does in this case. By precluding a patient from using the discovery of the wrongful act as evidence of discovery of the injury, the majority has essentially written the concept of knowledge out of the discovery statute. Moreover, this opinion means every patient must now obtain a second — or third — opinion when surgery or another medical procedure is performed to protect against the statute of limitations running on some unknown injury. This, I submit, is an unnecessary judicial alteration to the statute and an unsound approach. We should not interpret statutes to provide absurd results, and construing this statute in a way that fosters overprotection of potential causes of action creates an absurd result. See State v. Booth, 670 N.W.2d 209, 211 (Iowa 2003).
In Schultze, the death that occurred from the medical treatment performed in the case was unintended, as any death from corrective medical treatment would be. See Schultze, 463 N.W.2d at 48. This unintended result, although not understood as resulting from negligence at the time, nevertheless commenced the statute of limitations because knowledge of death, unlike injury, is necessarily acquired by death itself. See id. at 50. Nothing more is needed. An injury, on the other hand, may or may not be known at the time it occurs. Of course, when the injury, as with death, is an unintended result of medical treatment, knowledge is acquired. Thus, although not necessarily understood *197as involving negligence at the time, an unintended result from a surgery still constitutes an injury and commences the running of the statute of limitations. The unintended nature of the result, as with death, puts the patient on notice to at least investigate the possibility of an actionable claim. This case is clearly distinguishable.
In this case, the medical condition at issue was an intended result of the surgery. The removal of the voice box, as the intended result, cannot, by itself, be viewed by the patient to be an injury. More needs to be known. The plaintiff cannot be charged with knowledge that the condition is an injury without the later-acquired, additional information that the surgery was unnecessary. If the physical condition at issue — here, the removal of the voice box — was an injury at the time the medical procedure was performed, it was only because the procedure was unnecessary. Yet, the patient does not know he has been injured until such time as the patient discovers the procedure may have been unnecessary. The fact that this information also provides knowledge of a wrongful act does not take away its value as evidence of knowledge of injury.
A case such as this one is confusing because the plaintiffs discovery of the injurious nature of the surgery coincides with his discovery of his doctor’s wrongful act. However, using the discovery of a wrongful act as the means of discovering an injury is consistent with our prior cases and the concept behind the discovery rule, and conforms to the intent and language of section 614.1(9). I would affirm the district court and remand for further proceedings.
STREIT, J., joins this dissent.