Court Opinion

ID: 9683218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:24:54.389542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:46.421322
License: Public Domain

John F. Stroud, Justice, dissenting. I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion due to its finding that the complaint of appellants set forth sufficient facts of fraudulent concealment of the alleged malpractice to toll the statute of limitations. Accepting as true all of the facts alleged in appellants’ complaint and amended complaint and giving them all reasonable inferences in favor of appellants, I still am unable to find sufficient facts alleged to find concealment, much less fraudulent concealment. Appellants allege that the treatment of Merlyn Jones by appellees ended on September 7, 1976, and that he came by the offices of appellees in July of 1978 to show Dr. D. R. Harris what the radiation had done to him. Merlyn Jones had just been discharged from the Veterans Administration Hospital at Fort Roots where he received therapy and where it was confirmed that he had radiation myelitis. There is no allegation that Mr. Jones saw appellees between September 7, 1976, and July of 1978, or that appellees even knew that he was suffering from radiation myelitis until Mr. Jones so advised Dr. Harris. How could appellees conceal the nature, extent and cause of the injury to Merlyn Jones from the very person who told them? I also find no merit to appellants’ second point of error on appeal that they were denied due process of law by the failure of the trial court to find that the statute of limitations did not begin to run until it was possible to diagnose the injury of Mr. Jones. Appellants attached an affidavit of a certified practicing radiologist as an exhibit to their amended complaint that stated that the symptomology of radiation myelopathy did not appear in Mr. Jones until 11 months after his treatments had ended. This court has previously held Ark. Stat. Ann. § 37-205 (Repl. 1962), the two year malpractice statute, to be constitutional in Owen v. Wilson, 260 Ark. 21, 537 S.W. 2d 543 (1976) where we said: The statutory time within which an action must be brought cannot be judicially pronounced unreasonable unless it is so short as under the circumstances to amount to a practical denial of the right itself. [Citation omitted.] We are in no position to say that the legislative determination that two years ... is such an unreasonably short period of time for those situated like appellants to discover and assert their cause of action, absent fraudulent concealment, to deprive them of due process of law or to deprive them of any remedy. Here appellants had 13 months from the time they allege the symptoms appeared and two months from the confirmation of the diagnosis to file a malpractice action. I cannot say these time periods denied them due process of law. I would affirm the order of the trial court granting appellees’ Motion to Dismiss. Fogleman, C.J., and Holt, J., join in this dissent.