INDIANAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) – The estate of a man killed by his grandson with a frying pan has lost its effort to add even more claims in its lawsuit against a behavioral health facility.
The Indiana Court of Appeals on Nov. 30 rebuffed the effort of plaintiff Betty Miller to add a claim under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, reinforcing a prior decision that Miller said needed to be re-evaluated.
That prior decision, a case known as Williams, had the plaintiff hoping to avoid a two-year statute of limitations by claiming the EMTALA claim was not a new one but an expansion of his malpractice and negligence claims.
The lawsuit was filed in 2017 after Zachary Miller had been treated by several health care providers for suicidal ideations, major depression, drug abuse, threatening the lives of others and killing animals.
Community Howard Behavioral Health treated Miller at least five times during a month period. Treatment eventually failed, as Zachary Miller killed his grandfather John on Jan. 9 by breaking into his home, beating him with a frying pan and cutting his wrists because voices told him to.
Community Howard says Betty Miller lacks standing to pursue negligence and that it is immune from civil liability. When Betty tried to amend the complaint to add EMTALA claims, Community Howard said she missed the two-year statute of limitations to assert them.
“Contrary to Miller’s assertions that the plaintiff in Williams made an erroneous concession that relation back under Indiana Trial Rule 15(C) directly conflicted with and was preempted by EMTALA’s two-year statute of limitations, there is no indication in Williams that Williams conceded, let alone made an erroneous concession or admission, that Indiana Trial Rule 15(C) was in direct conflict with and was preempted by the EMTALA statute of limitation,” Judge James Kirsch wrote.
“As previously set forth, this court observed that Williams’s arguments were correct in ‘recognizing the conflict between Indiana Trial Rule 15(C) and EMTALA’s statute of limitations,’ but we do not find this language in Williams to be equivalent to a concession or an admission that Indiana Trial Rule 15(C) directly conflicts with the EMTALA statute of limitations.”