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Jacobs v. Flynn2/25/2000
the doctor's negligence in performing the operation, caused her injury. Judge Bloom, writing for the Court, said:
From the fact that she had an ectopic pregnancy that was not terminated by the suction curettage, appellant had a basis to believe that she had a cause of action against Dr. Ross for failing to diagnose her condition properly and, as a result, for failing to terminate her pregnancy as he had contracted to do. Even if appellant . . . had examined Dr. Ross's records much sooner than they did, they would have found appellee's written report, dated 24 November 1992, with Dr. Ross's handwritten notation that he reviewed the report on 1 December 1992. It would not have been illogical or unreasonable for appellant to assume, from the disparity between the date of the report and the date Dr. Ross read it, that appellee transmitted its report in time for Dr. Ross to have taken steps to prevent the rupture of her fallopian tube, but that Dr. Ross delayed reading it. That interpretation would have been entirely consistent with the theory already subscribed to; Dr. Ross was negligent. Id. at 309-10.
In Young, we distinguished Conaway, reasoning that in the earlier case the plaintiff knew he had been injured by substandard medical care rendered at a particular location:
In Conaway, the plaintiff knew more than three years before he filed a claim against Basil that he had been injured by the allegedly negligent medical care afforded him at the Maryland Division of Correction Brockridge facility in Jessup; he merely did not know the name of the physician who had treated him. . . . [Although] Ms. Young knew by 29 November 1992 of the allegedly negligent failure of Dr. Ross to successfully perform the contracted for abortion; it was not until about four years later that she discovered that appellee had allegedly committed a separate tort - breach of a distinct duty - that caused or contributed to the cause of her harm. Id. at 308.
This case is analytically closer to Conaway than to Young. We see merit in Dr. Flynn's argument that " istinct from Young is the fact that the medical care rendered to Mr. Jacobs by Dr. Flynn was for the purpose of diagnosing Mr. Jacobs' back condition, rather than intervening as a remote pathology laboratory performing an after-the-fact analysis."
In March 1991, while Mr. Jacobs was a patient at the University of Maryland Hospital, "the comments of several doctors who attended" him caused Mr. Jacobs and his family to believe that he had not been properly cared for by his prior physicians and that "the paralysis could have been prevented." In March 1991, the first week that she heard her father had been paralyzed, Mr. Jacob's daughter, Sheila, contacted a malpractice attorney to investigate possible claims. When asked why she felt "there was a need to file a lawsuit against doctors in Maryland" she replied:
Because my father had been in the hospital approximately 10 days before he became paralyzed. And I figured, based on my interactions with the doctors or medical staff, that 10 days was an awfully long time when they did not have a clear diagnosis still about the nature of my father's discomfort and extreme pain.
Thus, it was clear that in March 1991 she perceived that her father had a cause of action relating to the substandard diagnosis and treatment of physicians at HCGH. On her lawyer's advice, she prepared a calendar of important events relating to her father's care, and included a note on the March 2 entry that the "radiologist thinks maybe degeneration in back."
The bone scan in question was performed by employees of HCGH and interpreted by Dr. Flynn during the ten-day period she
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