Court Opinion

ID: 9699730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:49:35.9405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:56.440656
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS and ROBERTS, Justices,
concurring.
We concur in the result reached by the Court. We respectfully disagree, however, with the route chosen by the Court to reach that result. In Myrick v. James, 444 A.2d 987 (Me.1982), we decided that the discovery rule would be applied to a case involving foreign-object surgical malpractice and to similar cases arising after that decision. We there expressed concern for uniformity and certainty in the application of legal doctrine. We would better meet the concern expressed in Myrick by addressing in the case before us the question of extending the discovery rule to negligently performed sterilization procedures. We need not leave that question open for later adjudication. The issue is squarely before us, fully briefed and argued. We can, and we should, decide it. Unfortunately, the Court here chooses to leave uncertain the scope of Myrick until presented with conduct occurring after Myrick.
We join in the result in this case because we accept as the considered judgment of the Court in Myrick that the application of the discovery rule would be prospective. In weighing the retroactivity vel non of its decision to overrule Tantish v. Szendey, 158 Me. 228, 182 A.2d 660 (1962), the Myrick Court confronted complex principles of the judicial process. The Court tempered the *1184impact of its overruling decision by one of several possible methods. That we accept the result does not mean that we endorse the method. We should continue in the future to consider other means of dealing with the temporal application of the rule of a case.