Court Opinion

ID: 9754229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:50:54.013572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:50.908891
License: Public Domain

Justice HOENS,
dissenting.
Today, a majority of the Court announces that henceforth defendants in medical malpractice actions must affirmatively announce their area of practice in their first-filed pleading so that plaintiffs might be aided in complying with the obligation imposed upon them by the Legislature, through the enactment of the Affidavit of Merit statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-26 to -29, to demonstrate that their claims are meritorious. In doing so, the majority not only transforms the obligation that our Legislature chose to place on plaintiffs into a burden imposed on defendants, but it shifts the onus for demonstrating merit from the party in the best position to know whether the claim has merit onto the party who, by virtue of our system of notice pleading, may have little, if any, knowledge of the allegations.
*397More surprising, however, is that the majority has chosen as its vehicle for this new requirement a record in which plaintiff had no doubt about defendant’s area of specialty, because defendant told plaintiff what his specialized practice area was when alerting him that the first physician who attested to the claim’s merit lacked the statutorily-mandated type of expertise. That plaintiff ignored that advice and proceeded at his peril, that the statute therefore deems this Court to be without any authority to extend further plaintiffs time to comply, and that the claim by operation of law must fail are all ignored as the majority searches for a way to thwart the will of the Legislature by creating a new avenue to grant plaintiff relief from complying with the Affidavit of Merit statute.
Because the meaning of the Affidavit of Merit statute is clear, because its application to this matter demands that this complaint be dismissed with prejudice, N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-29, because the majority’s newly-announced rules engraft requirements onto the statute that defy the Legislature’s intent, and because the record demonstrates that plaintiff actually had all of the information that the majority suggests would have helped him comply with his statutory responsibility to demonstrate his claim’s merit, I respectfully dissent.
I.
The Affidavit of Merit statute was enacted in 1995 with the goal of weeding out frivolous claims against certain professionals, including physicians. See Galik v. Clara Maass Med. Ctr., 167 N.J. 341, 350, 771 A.2d 1141 (2001); Burns v. Belafsky, 166 N.J. 466, 474-75, 766 A.2d 1095 (2001). It “require[s] plaintiffs ... to make a threshold showing that their claim is meritorious, in order that meritless lawsuits readily ... [can] be identified at an early stage of litigation.” In re Petition of Hall, 147 N.J. 379, 391, 688 A.2d 81 (1997) (citing Peter Verniero, Chief Counsel to the Governor, Report to the Governor on the Subject of Tort Reform (Sept. 13, 1994)). *398The statute created a simple mechanism to ensure that claims meet this threshold by requiring plaintiffs who sue based on assertions of professional negligence or malpractice to serve an affidavit by a like professional attesting to the merit of the claim raised in the complaint. N.J.S.A 2A:53A-27. The statute includes a fixed timeframe for service of the Affidavit of Merit, ibid. (requiring that affidavit be served within sixty days of filing of answer to complaint), and sharply limits the authority of the courts to extend that time, ibid. (“The court may grant no more than one additional period, not to exceed 60 days, to file the affidavit----”). Finally, the statute deems the failure to serve the required Affidavit of Merit to be the “failure to state a cause of action,” N.J.S.A 2A:53A-29, the result of which ordinarily is dismissal with prejudice, Paragon Contractors, Inc. v. Peachtree Condo. Ass’n, 202 N.J. 415, 422, 997 A.2d 982 (2010); see Ferreira v. Rancocas Orthopedic Assocs., 178 N.J. 144, 151, 836 A.2d 779 (2003) (recognizing applicability of equitable remedies in extraordinary circumstances coupled with substantial compliance).
The statute was amended in 2004 as part of a comprehensive tort reform initiative, see N.J. State Bar Ass’n v. State, 387 N.J.Super. 24, 36, 902 A.2d 944 (App.Div.) (describing legislative history), certif. denied, 188 N.J. 491, 909 A.2d 726 (2006), at which time the Legislature added a more detailed set of requirements that relate specifically to claims of medical malpractice, see Ryan v. Renny, 203 N.J. 37, 51-53, 999 A.2d 427 (2010) (explaining revised requirements); N.J.S.A 2A:53A-41. The 2004 amendments created a hierarchy of relevant kinds and categories of practice engaged in by medical professionals and required that the professional providing the Affidavit of Merit match the level of expertise of the defendant. N.J.S.A 2A:53A-41. In this way, the statute continues to express the Legislature’s strong preference for “requiring the challenging expert to be equivalently-qualified to the defendant,” Ryan, supra, 203 N.J. at 52, 999 A.2d 427, in an obvious effort to ensure that both are approaching the matter of whether the claims are meritorious with the same level of exper*399tise and, by extension, that defendant’s acts are being judged in accordance with the appropriate standard of care.
Relevant to this appeal, the statute now differentiates between those engaged as general practitioners and those practicing as specialists, compare N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-41b (fixing standards relating to general practitioners), with N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-41a (establishing standards relating to physicians practicing in recognized specialty and physicians attaining board certification), and it differentiates between those who are simply practicing in a recognized area of specialty and those who are board certified in a specialty, see N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-41a. In clear terms, the statute demands that if the defendant physician practices in a recognized specialty and if the care that is in issue falls within that specialty, the Affidavit of Merit must likewise be provided by one who practices within that specialty. Ibid. Further, if the defendant physician is board certified in that specialty, the affiant likewise must be board certified. Ibid.
II.
In the early years following the Legislature’s enactment of the Affidavit of Merit statute, this Court was persuaded that there might be circumstances in which the “rigid application of the statute ... would result in the dismissal of an otherwise meritorious cause of action.” Ferreira, supra, 178 N.J. at 147, 836 A.2d 779. Apparently believing that lawyers representing plaintiffs with malpractice claims were confused about the statute’s meaning and operation and that they therefore needed the assistance of the courts to avoid dismissal of meritorious matters, this Court decided that a case management conference should be held in every such case. See ibid.; see also Knorr v. Smeal, 178 N.J. 169, 179-81, 836 A.2d 794 (2003) (concluding that defendant who inordinately delayed moving for relief based on plaintiffs failure to comply with Affidavit of Merit statute was barred from entitlement to dismissal by equitable estoppel and laches). The purpose of the conference was to ensure that plaintiffs would have the benefit of *400the court’s guidance about the statute and its requirements so that they would be able to serve a timely and appropriate Affidavit of Merit. See Ferreira, supra, 178 N.J. at 154-55, 836 A.2d 779.
Although this Court directed that such conferences be held, many practitioners waive them, presumably because the statute’s requirements have become so familiar that plaintiffs’ counsel are not in need of reminders about the obligations that the statute so plainly imposes upon them. As a consequence, we have not only recognized that the parties have the right to waive the conference, but we also have held that, even in the absence of a waiver, the court’s failure to convene the conference cannot operate to toll the statutory deadlines. See Paragon, supra, 202 N.J. at 425-26, 997 A.2d 982 (affording limited relief to litigants based on continuing confusion).
There can be little doubt that this Court’s holding that the failure to convene a conference cannot operate as “an overlay on the statute,” id. at 419, 997 A.2d 982, was inevitable, because the language of the statute is mandatory. It creates confined time-frames for compliance, permits courts only a limited power to extend the time to comply, and deems failure to comply to be a failure to state a claim that requires dismissal with prejudice. N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-27, -29. Through those three pronouncements, the Legislature spoke in a manner that leaves no option for tolling.
Moreover, the decision in Paragon was inevitable because the problem that the Ferreira conference was apparently designed to remedy, that is, some lack of familiarity with the meaning, intent, and consequences of the failure to comply with the statute, no longer has any basis. It is one thing to decide, shortly after a statute is enacted, that lawyers are unaware of its existence or unfamiliar with its requirements, but is a far different proposition to continue to presume lawyers do not know about its existence or understand its provisions fifteen years later. On the contrary, our observation in Paragon that practitioners routinely waive the conference proceeded from our recognition that they do so because the conference is unnecessary and burdensome to both *401litigants and the courts. See Paragon,, supra, 202 N.J. at 424, 997 A.2d 982.
If, as we held in Paragon, the failure to hold the conference cannot toll the time to file the Affidavit of Merit, id. at 419, 997 A.2d 982, and if, as the statute itself makes plain, there is no other remedy available to a litigant based on the court’s failure to hold the conference, N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-29 (mandating dismissal for failure to comply), the only logical result is that the conference has become a nullity. Rather than recognize that the plain language of the statute demands compliance and rather than applauding the increased sophistication of the bar about the meaning and intent of the statute, however, the majority doggedly clings to the notion that forcing attendance at conferences and creating new burdens on parties other than those targeted by the Legislature will somehow save meritorious cases from dismissal.
This appeal perfectly illustrates the two reasons why this cannot be so. First, the essential lynchpin for the majority’s new approach is the notion that plaintiff would have been able to comply with the statutory requirement had there only been a conference. That assertion, however, ignores both the fact that plaintiff has never argued that a conference would have mattered and the fact that plaintiff, knowing that the conference had been cancelled because the parties alerted the court that it was unnecessary, never sought to have it rescheduled.
Second, the record demonstrates that plaintiff served two timely Affidavits of Merit, neither one of which was signed by a physician qualified to opine on the treatment offered by defendant. The first, issued by a psychiatrist, was inappropriate because defendant does not practice in that specialty and did not provide plaintiff with treatment falling within that field. When that affidavit was received, defendant did not seek some unfair advantage by waiting for the time allotted under the statute to lapse. Instead, defendant immediately alerted plaintiff about the deficiency and advised that his area of specialty was family practice. Notwithstanding that truthful and entirely unrebutted representa*402tion, plaintiff ignored him and, two days before the end of the extended time permitted by the statute, served the second Affidavit of Merit, signed by a specialist in emergency medicine.
Although the majority suggests that the absence of a conference left plaintiff without the information needed to correctly identify defendant’s area of specialty, that is belied by defendant’s prompt notice to plaintiff, well within the time allotted for service of the Affidavit of Merit, that the psychiatrist’s report did not meet the statute’s requirements and that he was engaged in family practice. In light of that clear and correct advice, a conference with the court could not have been of benefit to plaintiff.
The majority, while failing to explain how a conference could have made any difference, instead engages in irrelevant forays outside of the record in an effort to find a basis on which to intervene where the statute precludes relief. It does so by citing to internet searches as support for its views about the training of physicians, ante at 385-87 (25 A.3d at 244-45 & n. 3, n. 5), and relies on an unwarranted supposition about diplomas it thinks defendant might have had hanging on his office walls touting his board certification in emergency medicine, ante at 392 (25 A.3d at 248-49), a specialty not relevant to any issue in this appeal save for plaintiffs decision to use a specialist in that field for his second Affidavit of Merit.
All of those efforts, however, spring directly from the majority’s refusal to recognize that the statute bars the relief the Court seeks to make available. The latest date on which the Affidavit of Merit could have been served was May 25, 2009. Plaintiff, in full knowledge of the fact that defendant held himself out to be a specialist in family practice, and in full knowledge that he was not consulted by plaintiff as an emergency room doctor or as a specialist in emergency medicine, elected to serve, on virtually the last possible day under the statute, an Affidavit of Merit signed by one not qualified under the relevant provision of the statute. That failure not only requires dismissal with prejudice, but it is beyond the power of this Court to cure.
*403There is nothing in this record that is the least bit unfair about that plain reading of the statute. Nor is there anything in this Court’s original effort to create a safety net for plaintiffs through the creation of the conference, see Ferreira, supra, 178 N.J. at 154-55, 836 A.2d 779, that alters the calculus here. As we have recognized, the failure to hold the conference does not toll the statute’s operation, see Paragon, supra, 202 N.J. at 426, 997 A.2d 982, and in any event in this case, that failing did not matter. Even the majority’s criticism of the trial court for what is now described as an inadvertently-issued order about waiver of the conference, see ante at 385 (25 A.3d at 244 & n. 4) (relying on post-oral argument order vacating April 2007 order), is of no consequence, because plaintiff had both the only copy of that order and complete information about defendant’s field of practice when he chose to proceed with an Affidavit of Merit that did not comply with the statute.
III.
Notwithstanding the clear language of the statute mandating that this matter be dismissed, the majority today essentially ignores that necessary consequence and embarks on a new approach. It reaffirms its insistence that trial courts convene irrelevant and burdensome conferences and it announces that henceforth, all physician defendants who are faced with malpractice claims must affirmatively state their field of medicine as part of their answer to the complaint, ante at 395-96 (25 A.3d at 250-51).
No matter that plaintiff knowingly waived the conference; no matter that the conference would have made no difference in this case; no matter that this defendant in fact told plaintiff what his field was and that plaintiff ignored him; no matter that the statute mandates that the complaint is now deemed to have failed to state a claim; no matter that heretofore only affirmative defenses have been required to be set forth in answers, see R. 4:6-2, the majority *404simply creates new requirements and presumes that this complaint should proceed.
The majority’s distaste for the efforts of our Legislature to stem the tide of frivolous litigation through the Affidavit of Merit statute is clear and its continuing preference for adding burdens on the trial courts and on defendants in place of enforcement of the Legislature’s plain language are neither views nor approaches that I share.
I therefore respectfully dissent.
For reversal, reinstatement and remandment — Chief Justice RABNER, Justices LONG, LaVECCHIA, and ALBIN — 4.
For affirmance — Justices RIVERA-SOTO and HOENS — 2.