Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Patient in Cancer Misdiagnosis Case
7/31/2008
The Minnesota State Supreme Court has ruled that, in a failure to diagnosis cancer case, the statute of limitations begins at the point when, looking at the unique circumstances of the particular case, “some compensable damage occurred as a result of the alleged negligent diagnosis.” After reviewing the particular facts of the case at hand, the court ruled in the case of Margaret MacRae v. Group Health Plan, et al., that the statute of limitations had not run before Mrs. MacRae brought the lawsuit alleging that her husband had died because of the failure to diagnose the cancer . MacRae died on August 26, 2005 and a medical malpractice lawsuit was brought in 2006. The defendants had won a ruling in a lower court that the four-year statute of limitations had begun in January of 2001, the date when the physician wrongly told Mr. MacRae his lesion was not cancer.
Unlike most states, Minnesota does not allow a patient to wait until he knows or should know that a doctor’s negligence has caused him harm before bringing a lawsuit for medical malpractice. Minnesota instead has adopted the “some damage” rule which states that the time to bring a medical malpractice claim begins to run when there is “some damage” to the patient, regardless of the patient’s knowledge, applying the “some damage” rule. The MacRae case sets parameters to apply that rule in cancer misdiagnosis cases.
“In cancer misdiagnosis cases, no harm is often caused immediately. The patient had a cancer and the doctor did not cause that cancer,” Kay Nord Hunt stated. “The Supreme Court’s decision today recognizes that there is a period of time after the failure to diagnose cancer where the doctor’s negligent actions may create no greater adversity for the patient. In fact, sometimes, the patient may return for follow-up and the disease will be caught and treated without any harm caused by the initial misdiagnosis. But where the misdiagnosis goes undetected and the cancer progresses, the time to sue the medical provider for that misdiagnosis runs from the point in time where there is some compensable damage as a result of the misdiagnosis.”
You can view the decision at this link.