The fairness* of having time limits within which claims must be brought.
If you are fortunate, you have never had to think about bringing a lawsuit because someone or some entity harmed you and will not make it right on their own. In that circumstance, you would never have reason to know that there are time limits within which you must bring such a claim. These limits are legally known as the statute of limitations. But what is the statute of limitations?
These limits vary depending on the type of claim you must bring. For medical malpractice claims, the general rule is that a claim must be brought within three years from the date of negligence. But there are lots of exceptions to that general rule.
One is if the claim involves a federally funded clinic – then you have two years.
Another exception is when you had no reason to believe you have a claim, three years elapses, and then you discover that negligence may have occurred and caused you harm. One example is if a radiologist misses a finding on an x-ray, such as a lung nodule. Fast forward four years, and now unfortunately the patient has lung cancer. When she is in front of her doctor getting the bad news, the doctor says: “did you know that an x-ray taken four years ago shows the nodule that eventually became metastatic cancer?”
At that point, the patient is outside the general three-year time limit. However, the “discovery rule” allows the patient time to file a lawsuit if she wishes, so long as it is filed within one year of the date of discovery (that visit to the cancer doctor when she learned there may have been a miss).
HOWEVER, there is another rule about time limits in medical malpractice actions, and it’s called the statute of repose. It says that no matter what exception to the statute of limitations an injured patient wants to try and use to timely file their lawsuit, the claim cannot arise out of medical care that occurred more than eight years ago unless the reason it’s taken so long to bring the claim is because of fraud, intentional concealment on the part of the health care provider, or due to a surgeon leaving behind a foreign body (like a sponge or a scalpel) in your body.
So, imagine that same scenario as above, only it turns out that conversation is occurring eight and a half years after the x-ray was negligently read as normal, when the radiologist should have seen and reported the nodule. The statute of repose says, unfortunately, there can be no justice.
For those so inclined, you can read the full text of the law that lays out these time limits here: RCW 4.16.350.
*Fairness certainly to the health care provider. Not so much to the injured person.
