Court Opinion

ID: 9547820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:52:49.013082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:08.013794
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the court’s holding that no genuine issue of material fact has been raised that would preclude summary judgment. More particularly, I disagree with the majority’s holding that on this record “... the Sharrows had or should have had sufficient knowledge of the events in question as of December 1977 to realize they had a potential cause of action for negligence and fraud. Any reliance upon statements of Dr. Archer after that time was unreasonable.”
Civil Rule 56(c) provides in part that summary judgment “... shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that any party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Case law establishes that in a ruling upon motions for summary judgment inferences of fact from the materials presented are drawn in favor of the party opposing the motion for summary judgment and against the movant. Clabaugh v. Bottcher, 545 P.2d 172, 175 n. 5 (Alaska 1976); Alaska Rent-A-Car, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 526 P.2d 1136, 1139 (Alaska 1974); Nizinski v. G.V.E.A., 509 P.2d 280, 283 (Alaska 1973).
The court holds that concealment or nondisclosure of medical negligence tolls the statute of limitations “until the injured party has actual notice of the negligence or, in the exercise of ordinary care, should have known of the negligence.”1
Drawing inferences from the facts in this record in favor of the Sharrows and against Dr. Archer, I think that the question of the reasonableness of the Sharrows’ reliance after December 1977 on the statements of Dr. Archer, as well as the hospital records, is one that should be submitted to a jury for resolution. In my view, all of the critical facts relied upon in the court’s opinion are subject to differing interpretations. For instance, Margaret Sharrow averred, in part, “[tjhat it was not until the recent trial in the case of Gary Archer v. Steward Eidelson, et al., 77-6264, that I became aware of sworn testimony and documentary evidence which established the facts set out in plaintiff’s complaint.” Additionally, Margaret Sharrow stated in her affidavit:
That after the events previously described in this affidavit, I was convinced that there was no “proof” that I had received an overdose. In addition, my treating physician during the period of the alleged overdose, Dr. Archer, had continuously led me to believe my “heart attack” had been the result of a pre-exist-*1336mg condition and never disclosed the true facts of the overdose and cover-up.2
It is clear from this record that Mrs. Shar-row was unaware that her medical records had been tampered with, and that she placed considerable reliance upon these falsified records in determining whether or not she had grounds to institute suit against Dr. Archer. The record does show that Mrs. Sharrow undertook an extensive examination of her own hospital file and also took these same falsified records to California in December of 1977 to be reviewed by her niece, a registered nurse in a critical care unit.
In short, I cannot join in the majority’s conclusion that once Mrs. Sharrow “knew that the overdose was the cause of her cardiac arrest, Mrs. Sharrow should have realized that the only way to reconcile the conflicting accounts of her treatment and its relationship to the cardiac arrest was that Dr. Archer and the hospital had concealed the true facts.” Given that this issue arose in the context of a motion for summary judgment, it is my view that the record demonstrates the existence of genuine issues of material fact which should have been submitted to a jury for determination. Thus, I would reverse and remand for further proceedings, including the determination of when Mrs. Sharrow had either actual knowledge, or should have known that she had a claim for relief against Dr. Archer.

. In Greater Area, Inc. v. Bookman, Alaska, 657 P.2d 828, 829 (1982), a case involving alleged attorney malpractice, this court adopted the “discovery rule” for determining when the applicable statute of limitations commences. We specifically stated that:
According to the best formulation of that rule, the statute of limitations for legal malpractice does not begin to run until the client discovers, or reasonably should discover, the existence of all the elements of his cause of action, [footnote omitted]

. The court also states that in November 1977 Mrs. Sharrow “informed” Dr. Rhyneer that she had received an overdose of lidocaine, and that her cardiac arrest had resulted from the overdose. The record is ambiguous with respect to what conclusions he reached based upon information he had received before Mrs. Sharrow’s visit, from other sources. At one point, the doctor stated that, when Mrs. Sharrow told him she’d had a cardiac arrest, “I recognized a story that I’d heard.” Dr. Rhyneer went on to explain that he was “advised to the circumstances of her cardiac arrest.” He never stated that Mrs. Sharrow herself told him about these circumstances. In fact, his recollection was hazy concerning Mrs. Sharrow’s command of the history of her overdose:
I don’t recall that she told me exactly how much Lidocaine that she received, but my understanding was that she thought she had received an excessive amount of it.
Additionally, the court states that Mrs. Shar-row “read various newspaper articles” appearing in November and December of 1977 concerning Dr. Archer’s misconduct in the “ ‘Shar-row case’ ”. There is no specific support in the record for the fact that she actually read these articles, or which she did read and which she did not. Further, of the two articles in the record before the court, only one mentions the “Sharrow case” by name, and provides no information at all concerning what that case involved. The other article does indicate that a patient went into cardiac arrest due to a “medication error” of some sort, but does not identify the patient or the nature of the error. A jury might reasonably find, even if it concluded that Mrs. Sharrow had seen the articles in question, that they did not advance her attempt to reconstruct the circumstances of her cardiac arrest.