Christy v. Miulli

• Decision Date: 18 February 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-2055.,03-2055.
• Citation: 692 N.W.2d 694
• Parties: Joyce CHRISTY, M.D., Individually and as Next Friend and Parent of Cole Hocker, Alex Hocker, and Erin Hocker, and as the Executor of the Estate of Daniel L. Hocker, Deceased, Appellant, v. Daniel E. MIULLI, D.O., an Individual, Douglas R. Koontz, M.D., P.C., a/k/a Iowa Neurological Surgery, P.C. and f/k/a Neurological Surgery, P.C., and Mercy Hospital Medical Center, legally known as Catholic Health Initiatives Iowa, Corp., Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

692 N.W.2d 694

Joyce CHRISTY, M.D., Individually and as Next Friend and Parent of Cole Hocker, Alex Hocker, and Erin Hocker, and as the Executor of the Estate of Daniel L. Hocker, Deceased, Appellant, v. Daniel E. MIULLI, D.O., an Individual, Douglas R. Koontz, M.D., P.C., a/k/a Iowa Neurological Surgery, P.C. and f/k/a Neurological Surgery, P.C., and Mercy Hospital Medical Center, legally known as Catholic Health Initiatives Iowa, Corp., Appellees.

No. 03-2055.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

February 18, 2005.

Jerry Crawford and Jim Quilty of Crawford Law Firm, Des Moines, for appellant.

Barry G. Vermeer and Loree A. Nelson of Gislason & Hunter L.L.P., Des Moines, for appellees Miulli and Koontz P.C.

Roberta M. Anderson of Schroeder & Anderson, Mason City, for appellee Catholic Health Initiatives.

TERNUS, Justice.

Nearly three years after her husband's death, plaintiff, Joyce Christy, filed a wrongful death action against the physician who had performed a biopsy procedure on her husband a week before he died, the physician's employer, and the hospital where the procedure took place. The district court dismissed the plaintiff's suit on the defendants' summary judgment motions, ruling the statute of limitations barred the claims asserted by Christy. On appeal, the plaintiff contends the district court erroneously rejected her argument that the statute of limitations was tolled under the doctrine of fraudulent concealment. She also asserts the court applied the wrong statute of limitations to the loss-of-parental-consortium claims she brought on behalf of the decedent's minor children. Upon our review of the record and the controlling legal principles, we affirm the dismissal of the plaintiff's wrongful death claim and loss-of-spousal-consortium claim against the hospital, reverse the dismissal of these claims made against the physician and his employer, and reverse the trial court's dismissal of the children's loss-of-consortium claims as to all defendants.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

The facts viewed most favorably to the plaintiff reveal the following events pertinent to our consideration of this appeal. See generally Cubit v. Mahaska County, 677 N.W.2d 777, 779 (Iowa 2004) (stating court, in considering summary judgment ruling, "`view[s] the entire record in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party [and] indulge[s] in every legitimate inference that the evidence will bear' in favor of the nonmoving party" (citation omitted)). On September 21, 1998, the defendant, Daniel Miulli, D.O., performed a brain biopsy on the plaintiff's husband, Daniel Hocker, for a suspected brain tumor. The procedure took place at Mercy Hospital Medical Center, which is operated by the defendant, Catholic Health Initiatives Iowa, Corp. At some point during the operation, Hocker developed a brain hemorrhage and his condition worsened significantly. Nonetheless, Dr. Miulli would later state in the medical records that the procedure had been performed without complication. Post-operatively, Hocker was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital, where, after a series of additional complications, he died on September 28, 1998.

In the period immediately following the biopsy procedure, Dr. Miulli told Christy of the bleeding that had taken place, but wrongly represented to her that the hemorrhage occurred some distance away from the biopsy site. He suggested that perhaps an unrelated infectious process such as viral encephalitis caused the bleeding. (After this lawsuit was filed, Dr. Miulli conceded the cause of Hocker's death was Dr. Miulli's error in performing the biopsy in the wrong location, thereby causing the hemorrhage.) Dr. Miulli repeated his false report of what had occurred in the medical records, including recording a final diagnosis of viral encephalitis.

In the spring of 1999, the Mayo Clinic examined the decedent's brain and prepared a pathology report. This report, provided to Christy, confirmed the presence of a brain tumor but did not mention viral encephalitis. Christy testified in a deposition that the absence of any discussion of viral encephalitis in the Mayo Clinic report did not raise any questions in her mind because she did not know whether the examination conducted by that institution could have identified encephalitis in the brain tissue. Christy later discussed this report with a Des Moines oncologist to learn whether there were any hereditary aspects to her husband's brain tumor that might be of concern to their children, but she did not further investigate the cause of her husband's death.

In August 1999, an investigator with the Iowa Board of Medical Examiners contacted Christy about Dr. Miulli's treatment of her husband. Christy informed the investigator that she thought Dr. Miulli had provided excellent care to her husband. Later, when she told Dr. Miulli that the board had been asking questions about him, Dr. Miulli explained that a competing neurosurgeon had raised some questions, leading Christy to believe it was "a usual turf war kind of thing that you see in medicine all the time." (The plaintiff is also a medical doctor, specializing in family practice.) During this same conversation Dr. Miulli told Christy about his purported finding of a correlation between viral conditions and patients with brain tumors, and that he was interested in doing a research project on the alleged connection.

Nearly three years after Hocker's death Christy had a conversation with a friend of hers that led to the filing of the present lawsuit. In July 2001 a friend reported to Christy that an anesthesiologist involved in Hocker's biopsy had stated that no one had checked the coordinates for the biopsy location and that the bleeding occurring during the procedure was related to the site where the biopsy was performed, contrary to what Dr. Miulli had consistently stated. Once Christy had this information she promptly filed this action against the defendants in August 2001.

Christy brought a claim for wrongful death as the executor of her husband's estate and also filed loss-of-consortium claims on her own behalf and on behalf of the couple's three minor children. She alleged in her petition that Dr. Miulli's representations concerning the cause of her husband's death misled her and caused her to belatedly discover the actual cause of the decedent's death. After conducting discovery, the defendants filed motions for summary judgment, alleging the suit had not been filed within the applicable statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims, Iowa Code section 614.1(9)(a) (1999). Christy contended Dr. Miulli's fraudulent concealment of the true cause of Hocker's death tolled the statute of limitations, and in any event, the children's loss-of-consortium claims were timely filed under the statutes of limitations set forth for minors in section 614.1(9)(b) or section 614.8. The district court concluded the lawsuit had not been timely filed notwithstanding Christy's claim of fraudulent concealment, and that the extended limitations periods did not apply to the children's claims. The court dismissed Christy's suit against all the defendants, and she then filed this appeal.

II. Scope of Review.

Summary judgment is appropriate "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.981(3). "A fact question is generated if reasonable minds can differ on how the issue should be resolved." Walker v. Gribble, 689 N.W.2d 104, 108 (Iowa 2004). We review the district court's ruling on a motion for summary judgment for correction of errors of law. Schlote v. Dawson, 676 N.W.2d 187, 188 (Iowa 2004).

III. Wrongful Death and Loss-of-Spousal-Consortium Claims.

A. The parties' contentions. The parties agree the statute of limitations for medical malpractice contained in section 614.1(9)(a) governs the claim brought on behalf of Hocker's estate and Christy's claim for loss of spousal consortium. (To simplify our discussion, we will sometimes refer to these claims jointly as the wrongful death claim.) Paragraph (a) of section 614.1(9) provides in relevant part:

9. Malpractice.

a. Except as provided in paragraph "b", those [actions] founded on injuries to the person or wrongful death against any physician and surgeon ... or a hospital licensed under chapter 135B, arising out of patient care, [must be brought] within two years after the date on which the claimant knew, or through the use of reasonable diligence should have known, or received notice in writing of the existence of, the injury or death for which damages are sought in the action, whichever of the dates occurs first, but in no event .... more than six years after the date on which occurred the act or omission or occurrence alleged ... to have been the cause of the injury or death....

Iowa Code § 614.1(9)(a). The parties also appear to agree that the limitations period commences on the date the plaintiff has knowledge of the death giving rise to the cause of action and not when the plaintiff learns of the wrongful act that caused the death. See Schultze v. Landmark Hotel Corp., 463 N.W.2d 47, 48 (Iowa 1990) (holding, in wrongful death case, that statute of limitations in section 614.1(9) "commences on the date the death is discovered" (emphasis added)). Thus, unless the defendants are prevented from relying on the statute-of-limitations defense, the plaintiff's wrongful death claim is barred because it was filed more than two years after Hocker died.

That brings us to the plaintiff's contention that the doctrine of fraudulent concealment applies in this case to toll the medical malpractice statute of limitations. She cites our decision in Koppes v. Pearson, 384 N.W.2d 381 (Iowa 1986), where this court held the plaintiffs in a...