Court Opinion

ID: 9486176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:40:14.104655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:34.005490
License: Public Domain

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Because Mrs. Buford knew almost immediately after surgery that she had an injury, i.e., that the surgery had not addressed her physical complaints in the slightest, and because she should have known that her injury was actionable, i.e., that her medical problem had been misdiagnosed rendering her surgery unnecessary, I would affirm the district court’s entry of judgment as a matter of law in favor of Dr. Howe. Furthermore, I would affirm the judgment because it is pellucid that Mrs. Buford failed to exercise reasonable diligence to discover the nature and cause of her injury — indeed, she exercised no *1190diligence at all. I therefore respectfully dissent.
As the majority correctly articulates, the two-year statute of limitations does not begin to run until the patient discovers, or should have discovered, that she has a cause of action. Womble v. Singing River Hospital, 618 So.2d 1252, 1266 (Miss.1993); Smith v. Sanders, 485 So.2d 1051, 1052 (Miss.1986). “The focus is on the time that the patient discovers or should have discovered by the exercise of reasonable diligence, that he probably has an actionable injury.” Womble v. Singing River Hospital, 618 So.2d at 1266. The time is not tolled theory by theory for a known actionable injury.
In this case, Mrs. Buford argues that she had no way of knowing she had an actionable injury until she had an opportunity to review her medical records. This is clearly not the case. Mrs. Buford underwent surgery in an effort to alleviate pains at the top of her stomach and in her tailbone. After she recovered from the immediate post-operative effects of her surgery, she continued to suffer from precisely the same pains that the surgery was intended to allay. In spite of the fact that her pain continued and the surgery utterly failed to accomplish its intended purpose, Mrs. Buford — without offering any explanation for her failure to do so— never inquired as to the source of these identical pains nor as to why she continued to suffer these pains after a plainly unsuccessful operation. In short, almost immediately after her operation, she knew that her malady had been misdiagnosed, i.e., that a hysterectomy was an inappropriate and unnecessary treatment for her symptoms. To say that she had no basis for knowing that the surgery was unnecessary until she saw her records is a serious misperception: her records only confirmed that the surgery was unnecessary.
It was not until nearly seven years after surgery that Mrs. Buford began to question the propriety of this surgery. A reasonable person acting with due diligence, when faced with this continued identical pain, would have made some inquiry — an inquiry that would have led her to the same conclusion reached many years later, that she had a basis for a lawsuit against Dr. Howe. See Wilder v. St. Joseph Hospital, 225 Miss. 42, 82 So.2d 651, 653 (1955) (“In view of the allegation of continuous pain, etc., from the date of the operation, it is obvious that the plaintiff in the exercise of ordinary care, should have discovered her alleged condition within [the statute of limitations]”). Mrs. Buford exercised absolutely no diligence in determining whether she had an actionable injury, and she should be barred as a matter of law from asserting this action.
Because the majority, by offering no explanation or justification for Mrs. Buford’s seven years of inaction, seems to deliberately close its eyes to the facts in this case, facts that objectively demonstrate both full knowledge of an actionable injury and the complete absence of diligence, I respectfully dissent.