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Harrison v. Beckham5/24/1999
In the Court of Appeals of Georgia
SM-006
The facts underlying this case have appeared before us in a previous appeal. In Harrison v. Digital Equipment Corp., 219 Ga. App. 464 (465 SE2d 494) (1995) (Harrison I), we affirmed the trial court's holding that Brenda Harrison's pro se action against her employer, an architect, and a contractor for damages resulting from "sick building syndrome" was barred by the applicable statute of limitation. Harrison then brought suit against attorney Walter H. Beckham, III, alleging that he committed legal malpractice by failing to advise her regarding the applicable statute of limitation in her first action. The trial court granted Beckham's motion for summary judgment on the basis of expiration of the statute of limitation for legal malpractice, and Harrison appeals. Because this statute of limitation also expired before Harrison brought suit, we affirm.
1. The statute of limitation on Harrison's claim for legal malpractice began to run when the statute of limitation on her original personal injury claim expired without suit being filed against the defendants. Plumlee v. Davis, 221 Ga. App. 848, 851 (1) (473 SE2d 510) (1996). Since this action was filed on September 10, 1996, if Harrison's malpractice cause of action accrued before September 1992 all her claims are barred by the four-year statute of limitation. In turn, if the statute of limitations on Harrison's underlying tort claim expired before September 1990 that claim is likewise barred. We therefore examine the underlying tort action to determine the date on which that earlier statute of limitation began to run.
"The test for determining when the statute of limitation began to run against plaintiffs is not when they were diagnosed with symptoms consistent with . . . poisoning, it is when they suspected that their alleged injuries may have been caused by [defendants'] conduct. [Cits.]" (Emphasis supplied.) Thomason v. Gold Kist, Inc., 200 Ga. App. 246, 247 (1) (407 SE2d 472) (1991). While Harrison now insists that she was unsure of the cause of her illness until September of 1990 and has filed an affidavit to that effect, her earlier testimony in a workers' compensation claim against her employer directly contradicts this assertion. There, she testified that as soon as she entered the new building on her first day of work in July 1989, she started having a runny nose. During the next six weeks, she began to experience fatigue, tightness in her chest, throat problems, eye irritation, and an inability to concentrate. She also noted that when she left the building for lunch, her symptoms improved. By September 1989, she had experienced flu-like symptoms, pneumonia, and double pneumonia. Dr. Horowitz, the physician who treated her for pneumonia, released her to return to work, but as soon as she returned to work she was "totally unable to breathe" and had to go to the emergency room, where her symptoms quickly subsided. Harrison described this as "a situation . . . that led us to believe that it was a hundred percent the building . . . . that's when we figured it back to the building and he sent me, referred me to an allergist." She also stated that Dr. Horowitz "knew something was wrong at that building."
Harrison was not satisfied with the first allergist she consulted, because "by then I was very, very suspicious of the building, and his attitude towards me was he didn't have the belief structure that aligned with that at all. And so I yanked my medical records and walked out of his office." In January 1990 she consulted another allergist, Dr. Melby. In his initial evaluation of Harrison, Dr. Melby wrote, "Temporally there is a clear relationship between her s
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