CINCINNATI (Legal Newsline) - An Ohio lawsuit alleging malpractice over back surgeries performed in 2011 can proceed after an appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling that the action was filed outside the state’s four-year statute of repose for medical malpractice actions.
The First Appellate District of Ohio ruled on Dec. 9 that Ohio’s savings statute preserved the case for Rachel Jones, who had the surgeries, and her husband Jeff Jones against Dr. Abubakar Atiq Durrani, the Center for Advanced Spine Technologies, Inc (CAST) and Riverside Health Institute (RHI).
In the case, Rachel Jones contends that her back pain only worsened after two surgeries, one in January 2011 and another in August. Dr. Durrani performed both surgeries; the first at West Chester Hospital, which was dropped from the suit, and the second at RHI.
The Hamilton County Court of Common Please granted RHI’s motion to dismiss, and the move for judgement on pleadings by Dr. Durrani and CAST, as the complaint fell outside the four-year window.
But appeals judge Russell Mock wrote in his opinion that the complaint was timely since it was filed initially in 2014 within the four-year period in Butler County, then voluntarily dismissed and refiled as a “largely indistinguishable claim” in Hamilton County within one year of the first filing.
Given that the two complaints were “substantially the same,” the savings statute, as confirmed by recent case law, saved the case for Rachel Jones, the judge wrote.