Opinion
No. 2-815 / 02-0062.
Filed December 30, 2002.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Buena Vista County, JOHN P. DUFFY, Judge.
Christy McDonald appeals from a district court ruling sustaining defendant's motion for summary judgment. AFFIRMED.
Christopher Tinley of Root, Tinley Sondag, Council Bluffs, and James Welsh and Robert Meyer of Welsh Welsh, P.C., L.L.O., Omaha, for appellant.
Marvin Heidman and Rosalynd Koob of Heidman, Redmond, Fredregill, Patterson, Plaza, Dykstra Prahl, L.L.P., Sioux City, for appellee.
Heard by VOGEL, P.J., and ZIMMER and HECHT, JJ.
Christy McDonald appeals from a district court ruling sustaining defendant's motion for summary judgment. She contends the court erred in concluding the six-year statute of repose set forth in Iowa Code section 614.1(9)(a) (1999) bars her claim of medical malpractice. We agree with the district court's interpretation of the statute and affirm.
On August 23, 1999, McDonald filed suit against the Buena Vista Clinic (Clinic), alleging negligence and malpractice against the Clinic by and through its physicians and staff. She alleges her injuries stem from an episiotomy repair. She contends the repair was negligently performed by Dr. David M. Crippen on August 9, 1991, following the birth of her son. She also alleges that certain other doctors, who are members of the Clinic, failed to properly examine her and diagnose her condition after the birth of her child. Plaintiff was surgically treated for an anal sphincter injury in November of 1998. This injury appears to be related to the delivery of her child in 1991.
As a result of a motion for summary judgment filed by the Clinic, the district court ruled that the statute of repose set forth in section 614.1(9)(a) barred any claim by the plaintiff for alleged negligent acts occurring prior to August 23, 1993. Therefore, the only remaining issue to be tried was whether the medical care she received from physicians at the Clinic from August 23, 1993 through November of 1998 fell below the applicable standard of care.
Trial commenced on December 11, 2001. The trial court sustained the Clinic's motion for directed verdict based on the plaintiff's failure to provide evidence of the applicable standard of care and evidence of breach thereof, and dismissed the jury. McDonald appeals. She contends the district court should have rejected the Clinic's motion for summary judgment by applying the continuous treatment doctrine to the six-year limitation of section 614.1(9)(a).
Iowa Code section 614.1(9)(a) establishes the applicable statute of limitations and statute of repose for medical malpractice actions. The section imposes a two-year statute of limitations on the filing of medical malpractice suits that runs from the discovery of the injury and also imposes a six-year absolute limit on such claims that runs, not from the accrual of the claim, but from the act causing the injury. Albrecht v. General Motors Corp., 648 N.W.2d 87, 92 (Iowa 2002). The provisions of section 614.1(9)(a) are clearly applicable to this case. Because Iowa law does not allow an action for medical malpractice to be brought more than six years after the injury was caused, the district court correctly granted summary judgment.
McDonald urges us to apply the continuous treatment doctrine to the six-year limitation of section 614.1(9)(a). She contends her action should be excused from the time limitations of section 614.1(9)(a) because of the alleged continuum of negligent treatment by Clinic physicians between August 1993 and November 1998. In the context of this case, we find it unnecessary to determine whether the continuous treatment doctrine should be adopted in this state. At the close of plaintiff's case, the trial court made a judicial determination that based on the record evidence, the Clinic was not involved in any continuum of care. The record amply supports this conclusion. Moreover, even if the doctrine had been adopted in Iowa, the record reveals this case was properly dismissed on directed verdict because of the absence of evidence necessary to establish the standard of care applicable to the Clinic physicians. Accordingly, the district court's ruling is affirmed.
In Langner v. Simpson, 533 N.W.2d 511, 519 (Iowa 1995), our supreme court refused to adopt the continuous treatment doctrine. The court did state however that if a plaintiff could demonstrate that there "(1) was a continuous and unbroken course of negligent treatment, and (2) that the treatment was so related as to constitute one continuing wrong" that the statute of limitation would not begin to run until the last treatment. Id. at 522 (quoting Cunningham v. Huffman, 609 N.E.2d 321, 325 (Ill. 1993)). It should be noted that the court was addressing the two-year statute of limitation, not the six-year statute of repose. The court did not say that the rule, even if adopted, would apply to the six-year statute of repose.