Court Opinion

ID: 9553901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:37:06.580541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:32.815269
License: Public Domain

VOLLACK, Justice,
specially concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the result reached in Part III of the majority opinion, to the extent that it finds that the three-year statute of repose under section 13-80-105 does not begin running until the final act in the case of a particular ongoing or continuous course of treatment for a particular condition. I write separately, however, to emphasize that the focus of this continuing treatment analysis must be on the particular treatment for the particular condition at issue, and not on the diagnosis of that condition. I dissent from Part II of the majority opinion, which declares that a claim alleging injury caused by a physician’s negligent misdiagnosis is exempt from the repose provision of section 13-80-105. At 848.
. I disagree with the majority’s use of Austin v. Litvak, 682 P.2d 41 (Colo.1984), as authority for the existence of a misdiagnosis exception. Austin was a plurality decision in which three justices held that the statutory scheme of section 13-80-105, which specifically exempted from the three-year statute of repose medical malpractice claims arising from knowing concealment and foreign objects, denied the plaintiffs equal protection guarantees by not also exempting their claims of negligent misdiagnosis. The plurality decision determined that the appropriate remedy for this equal protection violation was to extend the discovery rule provided by the exceptions to the plaintiffs’ claim of negligent misdiagnosis. Id. at 53. However, in Austin, four justices found that section 13-80-105 did not violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection. In her special concurrence, Justice Dubofsky found that section 13-80-105 did not violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection, concurring in the result in the case but relying on article II, section 6, of the Colorado Constitution. Id. at 54 (Dubofsky, J., specially concurring).
A careful reading of Austin reveals that the principles of law relied on by the plurality and the special concurrence of Justice Dubofsky differ substantially and thus the case should not be used as authority for the determination of other cases either in this court or in inferior courts. Hertz v. Woodman, 218 U.S. 205, 213-14, 30 S.Ct. 621, 622-23, 54 L.Ed. 1001 (1910); Berlin v. E.C. Publications, Inc., 329 F.2d 541 (2d Cir.1964). See Moses H. Cone Memorial Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 16-19, 103 S.Ct. 927, 937-939, 74 L.Ed.2d 765 (1983).
I agree with Justice Rovira’s dissent to the plurality opinion’s equal protection analysis in Austin. There are real differences between the statute of repose and the discovery rule of section 13-80-105 and the General Assembly is in the better position to evaluate what unfair risks require the tolling of the statute of repose. Austin, 682 P.2d at 56 (Rovira, J., dissenting). Two justices joined in Justice Rovira’s dissent, which correctly pointed out that the issue in Austin was not whether negligently misdiagnosed plaintiffs should have access to the discovery rule, because every medical malpractice plaintiff has access to the discovery rule as part of the two-year statute of limitations in section 13-80-105. See Owens v. Broehner, 172 Colo. 525, 474 P.2d 603 (1970). Rather, the issue was whether a rational basis existed for the legislature’s decision to toll the three-year statute of repose for only two classes of *852plaintiffs, i.e., plaintiffs alleging a knowing concealment of an act or omission or the leaving of a foreign object in the body of the patient. Austin, 682 P.2d at 55 (Rovi-ra, J., dissenting).
I believe that the plurality opinion in Austin does not serve as authority for Part II of the majority’s opinion, and I cannot endorse the majority’s attempt to bootstrap the Austin plurality opinion onto the case before us. I respectfully dissent to Part II.
I write on Part III to clarify what I believe the continuing treatment analysis adopted by the majority encompasses. In the instant case, the plaintiff asserts in her complaint that she developed cancer in the sites on her legs into which she injected the drug Talwin, pursuant to the defendant’s instructions. This case is most clearly a negligent treatment case. It is the continuing treatment of prescribing Talwin over a fifteen-year period that is the heart of this case, and it is this treatment to which we direct our attention. The three-year statute of repose did not begin to run until the final act constituting the treatment, i.e., the last prescription of the drug Talwin. The period of time affected by the continuing treatment theory is the period from the first treatment, here the first prescription of Talwin, to the last treatment. The plaintiff cannot go back to the beginning of her relationship with the defendant, but is limited to the specific treatment which is allegedly negligent and the cause of the plaintiff’s injury. If the allegedly negligent treatment of a plaintiff ceases and the patient-doctor relationship continues, the statute of repose starts to run when the particular treatment ends, not when the relationship ends. Here, the plaintiff’s claim properly encompasses the period of time from 1967, when Talwin was first prescribed, until 1982, when that treatment ended.
I agree with the majority that the court of appeals erred in so far as it held that the plaintiff was limited in her claim to the last three years of the treatment. The entire period of the plaintiff’s treatment with Tal-win falls within the period of limitation. Accord Tamminen v. Aetna Casualty & Sur. Co., 109 Wis.2d 536, 327 N.W.2d 55 (1982).1
Accordingly, I specially concur in part and dissent in part.
I am authorized to state that ROVIRA, J., joins in this special concurrence and dissent.

. See cases cited by the majority at 849, note 6.