OKLAHOMA CITY (Legal Newsline) - A couple who sued over the loss of their 4-year-old son’s eye lost the case because they sued the wrong medical center and realized the mistake too late, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled.
The court rejected arguments the “discovery rule” triggering the start of the statute of limitations period to when an injury is discovered should apply to their belated realization they had sued the wrong parties.
Miranda and Colby Crawford sued St. Francis Hospital in February 2018, eight months after their son had his eye removed at the hospital due to what they claimed was an emergency-room misdiagnosis by Dr. Sawyer Hall. Sometime later, they discovered Dr. Hall was an intern or resident physician employed by OSU Medical Center, a state entity covered by the Government Tort Claims Act with a strict one-year statute of limitations.
The parents notified OSU Medical of their plans to sue in August 2018 and the school rejected it in December, based on the failure to file within a year. The parents appealed, arguing they assumed Dr. Hall was employed by St. Francis because he was working there and only discovered otherwise eight months after their son was injured.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected that argument in a March 22 decision by vice-chief M. John Kane.
Under the common law of negligence, the discovery rule applies to knowledge of the injury and “the wrongfulness and cause of the injury,” the court observed. The purpose of the rule is to leave the plaintiffs who discover an injury later in the same position as those who “suffer an immediately ascertainable injury.”
“In this case, the injury itself was ascertainable when C.C.C.'s eye was removed,” the court said. “At that point in time, the Crawfords had sufficient information to state a cause of action for medical negligence based on Dr. Hall's alleged misdiagnosis. The Crawfords did not need to know the identity of the tortfeasor's employer to state a cause of action.”
Justice Douglas Combs concurred in the decision, but said it shouldn’t be read to conclude Dr. Hall, who wasn’t sued, was covered by the GCTA. The law carves out an exception for medical residents when they practice medicine because that is considered outside the scope of their employment, he wrote.
The judge also criticized the defendants, saying “the confusion about which entity employed Dr. Hall is a direct result of the deception by perception engaged in by OSUMC, Dr. Hall, Saint Francis Hospital, Inc., and the other defendants, and that confusion has only served to delay the Crawfords in their attempts to hold the responsible parties accountable.”
Justice Yvonne Kauger dissented, saying Oklahoma law allowed minors under 12 to sue within seven years of the injury. She urged the court to overrule a precedent the majority cited to reject the argument for an extended statute of limitations in this case.