Court Opinion

ID: 9758931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:56:24.034908+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:02:40.874625
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, dissenting. Jay Raley was twelve years old on March 16, 1992, the date Dr. Charles Wagner was alleged to have negligently performed Jay’s surgery. Jay suffered from a non-obstetrical disease related to the malfunction of his large bowel. He incurred a later surgery and treatment by other doctors, but it all resulted in an irreparable non-functioning bowel, necessitating a permanent colostomy. Jay was age eighteen years old when he filed a negligence lawsuit against Dr. Wagner in December 1997. The trial court, however, dismissed Jay’s lawsuit as being untimely and barred by the Medical Malpractice Act’s two-year statute of limitations. Under the Medical Malpractice Act, Section 4 of Act 709 of 1979, actions for medical injury must be commenced within two years after the cause accrues, but a minor under the age of eighteen years at the time of the negligent act has until his nineteenth birthday to commence an action.1 Under this law, Jay’s action was commenced in time since he was age twelve when Dr. Wagner performed Jay’s surgery, and Jay was only eighteen when he filed suit. In 1991, the General Assembly, by Act 997, amended § 4 of Act 709 by adding the following relevant language, limiting a minor’s time to bring an action for medical injuries resulting from obstetrical care: (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, all actions for medical injury shall be commenced within (2) years after the cause of action accrues. * * (c) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (d) of this section, if at the time at which the cause of action for medical injuries occurring from obstetrical care shall or with reasonable diligence might have first been known or discovered, the person to whom such claim has accrued shall be nine (9) years of age or younger, then such minor or the person claiming through such minor may, notwithstanding that the period of time limited pursuant to subsection (a) of this section shall have expired, commence action on such claim at any time within two (2) years next after the time at which the minor shall have reached his ninth birthday, or shall have died, whichever shall have first occurred. (d) If at the time at which the cause of action for medical injuries occurring from obstetrical care shall or with reasonable diligence might have been first known or discovered, the person to whom such claim has accrued shall be a minor without a parent or legal guardian, then such minor or the person claiming through such minor may, notwithstanding that the period of time limited pursuant to subsection (a) of this section shall have expired, commence action on such claim at any time within two (2) years next after the time at which the minor shall have a parent or legal guardian or shall have died, whichever shall have first occurred; provided, however, that in no event shall the period of limitation begin to run prior to such minor’s ninth birthday unless such minor shall have died. (Emphasis added.) Clearly, Act 997 was enacted to reduce the time during which minors can bring claims arising from pregnancies and childbirths. Before Act 997, such an obstetrical claim could remain dormant for as long as nineteen years under § 4 of 709; the General Assembly passed Act 997 to reduce this period concerning obstetrical injuries. However, Act 997 makes no mention of non-obstetrical claims of minors. Nor did the General Assembly in that Act specifically repeal the earlier Act 709’s provision, which contains the longer limitation for a minor’s medical malpractice claim, permitting non-obstetrical claims like Jay’s. In simple terms, the General Assembly, by enacting Act 997, offered no clear language that all children (except those with obstetrical injuries) should be treated as adults. Under the majority opinion, a special class of children, namely those suffering from non-obstetrical injuries must, like adults, bring suit within two years from when they actually sustain an injury. In other words, the majority opinion’s interpretation leads to the absurd result that children with non-obstetrical injuries must be bound by the adult two-year limitation, while children with obstetrical claims have eleven years to file suit. This different classification of children’s claims and when they can bring suit on them makes no sense. Obvious reasons exist to treat children’s medical claims differently from those claims incurred by knowledgeable, experienced adults, but Act 997 does not make children with non-obstetrical or obstetrical injuries on equal footing with adults. If the General Assembly had intended to change Act 709 in order to severely reduce children’s right to sue in this respect, it could have easily done so by specifically repealing the longer limitation period for minors set out and established by Act 709. In fact, our General Assembly did just that in 1995 when it enacted Act 735, which employed language whereby the eleven-year limitation applied to all children’s medical injuries, removing the reference to the word “obstetrical.”. See Arkansas County v. Desha County, 342 Ark. 135, 27 S.W.3d 379 (2000) (as further evidence of the legislature’s intent, the supreme court may also consider subsequent amendments to statutes). Our law is settled that repeals by implication are not favored in interpreting our statutes. Shelton v. Fiser, 340 Ark. 89, 8 S.W.3d 557 (2000),2 See Nance v. Williams, 263 Ark. 237, 564 S.W.2d 212 (1978) (when a later act covers the entire matter of an earlier one, adding new provisions and plainly showing it was intended as a substitute for the first one, then the older act is repealed by implication). Stated another way, if the General Assembly intended to repeal § 4 of 709, it could have passed a law plainly showing it was intended as a substitute for that law, but instead, Act 997 in plain terms dealt only with obstetrical injuries, and not all injuries sustained by children. In sum, the only change intended by Act 997 was to reduce the limitation period for children’s obstetrical injuries. Again, absolutely no mention is made to reduce children’s injuries that are non-obstetrical, and the majority opinion stretches its interpretation of Act 997 to hold otherwise. One last significant point needs mentioning. While I thoroughly disagree with the majority opinion, Act 997, at the very least, may be said to lend itself to more than one interpretation. That being so, this court has long-established precedent, stating that doubt as to which of two or more statutes of limitations applies to a particular action or proceeding will be generally resolved in favor of the application of the statute containing the longest limitation. Matthews v. Travelers Indemnity Ins. Co., 245 Ark. 247, 432 S.W.2d 485 (1968). The majority court ignores this settled law in adopting the harsh, restrictive interpretation of Act 997 to deny Jay’s non-obstetrical claim. The majority opinion is wrong. CORBIN and Imber, JJ., join this dissent.   The full text reads as follows: (a) All actions for medical injury shall be commenced within two years after the cause of action accrues. (b) The date of the accrual of the cause of action shall be the date of the wrongful act complained of and no other time. However, where the action is based upon the discovery of a foreign body in the body of an injured person which is not discovered and could not reasonably have been discovered within such two-year period, the action may be commenced within one (1) year from the date of discovery or the date the foreign object reasonably should have been discovered, whichever is earlier. (c) A minor under the age of eighteen (18) years at the time of the act, omission, or failure complained of, shall in any event have until his nineteenth birthday in which to commence an action.    The majority opinion relies on Shelton in holding that the specific two-year statute of limitations found in the Arkansas Medical Malpractice Act applies to a minor’s medical malpractice claim, rather than the general savings statute found in Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-116. However, in finding the general savings statute did not apply to the appellant in Shelton, this court did not take the opportunity to interpret the applicability of Act 997 to non-obstetrical cases; nor did it address the issue of whether Act 997 repealed the earlier Act 709. Instead, this court applied Act 735 of 1995, the latest version of the minor savings statute in the Medical Malpractice Act to an injury that occurred in 1994, presumably when the applicable statute of limitations would have been under Act 997 of 1991 — the Act in question in the present case.