TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) - A mother who lost her son to complications of intravenous drug use can’t escape New Jersey’s strict, 90-day deadline on notifying the state about potential legal claims, an appellate court ruled, rejecting her claim she was paralyzed by grief until several days after the deadline passed.
Austin Pisano suffered a stroke at the age of 20 and was admitted to the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, which is operated by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in December 2018. Doctors there diagnosed him with candidis endocarditis, an infection of the heart valve associated with injecting illegal drugs.
The young man remained hospitalized until he died on Jan. 25, 2019, with his mother Jennie Pisano at his side. Jennie Pisano said his death was “unexpected” and she watched the code team try to resuscitate him for 45 minutes without success. She said she was “in a state of shock” after his death and had a difficult time mourning his loss.
New Jersey’s Tort Claims Act requires plaintiffs suing state entities to file a notice of claim no later than 90 days after suffering an injury. Judges have authority to grant extensions due to unspecified “extraordinary circumstances,” but without that plaintiffs are forever barred from suing the state.
Jennie Pisano said she had no medical or legal training, was never informed her son was treated by state employees and didn’t get the names of any of them. For weeks after his death, she said, she “had to come to grips with the reality my son would not be coming home.” She also argued her claim accrued when she received the autopsy report on her son, not when he died.
Finally, Jennie Pisano consulted an attorney and filed a notice of claim for medical malpractice on May 1, 2019, six days after the deadline. New Jersey moved to dismiss and a judge granted the motion.
The plaintiff appealed, but in an April 9 decision, the appellate division of the Superior Court upheld the dismissal. While the New Jersey Supreme Court has allowed courts to extend the deadline under the Torts Claim Act, such as when a plaintiff’s lawyer served the notice of claim upon the wrong department of government, the window for such exceptions is narrow, the appeals court ruled.
Claimants seeking extensions specifically due to psychological stress have been denied, the appeals court said, and the mother’s claim dated from when her son died.
“The trial court properly noted that plaintiff grieved and made funeral arrangements for her son, but there were no extraordinary circumstances shown to prevent plaintiff from filing a timely notice of claim,” the appeals court ruled. “The trial court was correct in its analysis.”