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Quintana v. Los Alamos Medical Center Inc.12/2/1994
Opinion
ALARID, Judge.
Plaintiff Jose P. Quintana, personal representative of the estate of Roland Quintana, appeals from the order of the trial court granting summary judgment to Defendant Los Alamos Medical Center, Inc. (LAMC), a dissolved New Mexico nonprofit corporation. In seeking summary judgment, LAMC did not dispute the factual allegations of the complaint. During November of 1959, Roland Quintana, Jose Quintana's four-year-old son, had some cavities in his teeth filled at LAMC. In connection with this, he was given sodium pentothal. Roland never recovered consciousness after the procedure and died three days later, on November 21, 1959. At the time of his death, Plaintiff was told that Roland was hypersensitive to the sodium pentothal used during the procedure.
At the time of this incident, LAMC was a New Mexico nonprofit corporation, operated by a Board of Directors under a contract with the Atomic Energy Commission. On December 27, 1963, LAMC was dissolved.
Sometime in 1987, Plaintiff was advised that Roland had in fact been given an overdose of sodium pentothal, and that this was the cause of his death. Plaintiff filed suit for damages in district court on December 31, 1990. LAMC filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that because it had been dissolved in 1963, it no longer had the capacity to sue or be sued. In support of its motion, LAMC filed the certificate of dissolution and other information concerning its dissolution. Thus, the motion became one for summary judgment. See . The trial court granted the motion and dismissed Plaintiff's complaint. Plaintiff appealed to this Court.
We note at the outset that the parties have very different views of this matter. Plaintiff's arguments in this case are based primarily on tort law, while Defendant's arguments raise issues concerning corporate law. We assume without deciding that this is a claim for medical malpractice, and that the Medical Malpractice Act does not apply because the alleged act of malpractice occurred prior to the adoption of the Act. See NMSA 1978, § 41-5-13 (Repl. Pamp. 1989). Thus, the applicable limitations period is three years. See . We further assume without deciding that LAMC fraudulently concealed the cause of death from Plaintiff, and thus the limitations period was tolled until Plaintiff learned the true cause of his son's death in 1987. See ); ); but see (" ause of action accrues when the plaintiff knows or with reasonable diligence should have known of the injury and its cause."). Therefore, we assume that the complaint was filed within the limitations period. However, we hold that by the time that Plaintiff filed his complaint, LAMC could no longer be sued. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's dismissal of the complaint.
At common law, a corporation ceased to exist on the date it was dissolved, and all actions pending against it abated. In order to ameliorate the harshness inherent in the situation, equity allowed suits against the directors and shareholders who had received assets of the corporation on its dissolution, at least to the extent those assets could be traced. See ), cert. denied , ____ N.M. ____, ____P.2d ____ (1994); 16A William M. Fletcher, Fletcher Cyclopedia of the Law of Private Corporations § 8142 (perm. ed. rev. vol. 1988 & 1994 Cum. Supp.) (hereinafter Fletcher ); Suarez v. Sherman Gin Co. , 697 S.W.2d 17, 19 (Tex. Ct. App. 1985).
At this point, all states have adopted statutes that, in essence, continue the existence of a corporation for purposes of winding up its affairs after it is formally dissolved. Fletcher , supra , §§ 8143, 8157. These statutes ar
Page 1 2 New Mexico Personal Injury Attorneys
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