An appellate court has ruled that a family’s medical malpractice
lawsuit may proceed after the trial court dismissed it as untimely. The plaintiffs in
Arroyo v. Plosay allege that their mother died inside a hospital morgue freezer after being
incorrectly declared dead. The family had originally filed suit for alleged
disfigurement of her remains, but filed a new lawsuit after an expert
witness concluded that she was alive when the injuries occurred. The new
lawsuit asserted causes of action for medical negligence, wrongful death,
and, alternatively, negligence based on the theory that the hospital mishandled
her remains.
The decedent, eighty year-old Maria de Jesus Arroyo, was taken by ambulance to White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on July 26, 2010 after suffering a heart attack. Hospital staff pronounced her dead shortly after her arrival, and her body was placed in a freezer in the hospital morgue. Workers from a mortuary company came to retrieve the body several days later. They found the body lying face-down in the freezer with a broken nose and multiple contusions and lacerations. The injuries, which the mortuary company said it could not mask, were not present earlier when the family viewed the body.
Arroyo’s eight children filed suit against the hospital on January
31, 2011. Concluding that the injuries occurred after Arroyo’s death,
they asserted causes of action for negligence and intentional infliction
of emotional distress. The court dismissed several of the plaintiffs’
claims, and the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the remaining claims
in January 2012. They filed a new lawsuit in May 2012 against the hospital
and the doctor who pronounced Arroyo dead. An expert retained by the plaintiffs
concluded, based on deposition transcripts from the earlier lawsuit, that
the declaration of death was premature, that Arroyo had regained consciousness
inside the morgue freezer, and that the injuries resulted from her efforts
to escape.
The plaintiffs alleged medical negligence and wrongful death based on
the allegation that the injuries occurred pre-mortem. They based their
third cause of action, negligence, on the original theory of post-mortem
damage. California’s
statute of limitations for medical malpractice suits requires a plaintiff to file suit within
the earlier of three years of an injury, or one year after the date they
discovered, or should have discovered, the injury. (Maryland law sets a time limit for medical malpractice claims of five years after the
injury or three years after its discovery.) To get around this deadline,
the plaintiffs claimed that they could not have learned of Arroyo’s
injuries until they received the expert’s opinion in December 2011.
The trial court dismissed the lawsuit, holding in part that the complaint was time-barred because the plaintiffs knew about Arroyo’s injuries in July 2010, giving them one year to file suit from that date. The appellate court reversed as to the medical negligence and wrongful death claims, but affirmed the dismissal of the general negligence claim. It held that the one-year statute of limitations for claims based on a pre-mortem injury theory did not begin until December 2011.
For more than twenty years, Wais, Vogelstein, Forman & Offutt’s medical malpractice attorneys have represented Maryland patients and their families, helping them recover damages for injuries resulting from misdiagnosis, surgical errors, medication errors, and other forms of medical negligence. We are available 24/7 and can visit you in your home or at the hospital. To schedule a free and confidential consultation to discuss your case, please contact us today online, at (410) 567-0800.