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Szczuvelek v. Harborside Healthcare Woods Edge1/24/2005
y rule.
B.
I believe that plaintiff satisfied the statute of limitations period because he filed his complaint within two years of obtaining "some reasonable medical support" demonstrating a causal connection between Burns's death and Harborside's conduct. See Mancuso, supra, 163 N.J. at 34.
The concurrence's conclusion that plaintiff discovered Harborside's negligence at the time of Burns's death hinges on language in Martinez v. Cooper Hospital-University Medical Ctr., 163 N.J. 45, 52 (2000): "The question is whether the facts presented would alert a reasonable person... that he or she was injured due to the fault of another... whether plaintiff knew of should have known of sufficient facts to start the statute of limitations running." (Internal quotation marks and citation omitted). However, in Mancuso, supra, decided the same day as Martinez, we further modified "knowledge of fault" in the unique circumstances of complex medical causation cases. 163 N.J. at 34. In such situations, the statute of limitations will not start until plaintiff has "some reasonable medical support" for his suspicions. Ibid.
Under that formulation of the discovery rule, plaintiff first discovered Harborside's malpractice when he received Burns's medical records -- some time after plaintiff consulted with his attorney two to three weeks after Burns's death. As the concurrence notes, those records "evidenced that the medical care Burns received at Harborside contributed to his death." Ante ___ N.J. at ___. Until that point, as defense counsel conceded at oral argument, plaintiff could only "speculate" or make an "uninformed guess" that Harborside had been negligent. The contradictory conclusions of the medical experts demonstrate the problematic causal nexus in this case. It is unfair to demand that plaintiff -- a former police officer and gas station owner -- be able to identify a causal connection between Burns's death and Harborside's refusal to suction Burns. Indeed, this Court, in our unanimous per curiam opinion, does not expect laypersons to understand fully the medical significance of suctioning, given the inclusion of a footnote explaining the technical process and function of suctioning. Ante ___ N.J. at ___. Nonetheless, the concurrence requires this plaintiff to recognize the causal nexus between Harborside's conduct and Burns's death without the aid of some reasonable medical support.
In complex medical causation cases like the present matter, it is not enough for statute of limitation purposes that plaintiff knew that Burns was dissatisfied with the care he received. Rather, Mancuso, Vispisiano, and Guichardo instruct that plaintiff must have some reasonable medical support for his belief that defendant committed medical malpractice. The heart wrenching pleadings of a frightened and sick man do not constitute medical support, even if the patient's fears are later realized. To hold otherwise is to encourage plaintiffs to file medical malpractice claims, even in the unique circumstances of complex medical causation, whenever they are dissatisfied with their treatment without first obtaining some reasonable medical support for their claims. That approach invites frivolous litigation and is inconsistent with our decision in Martinez, supra, 163 N.J. at 58, on which the concurrence depends. There, we held:
It is not necessary every time a person dies in a hospital for his or her relatives to immediately suspect malpractice. People die in hospitals in the absence of wrongdoing (for example, those gravely injured in accidents and the infirm elderly). Many times complications arise even if a procedure is performed perfectly.
[Ibid. (citing Newm
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