Guebard v. Jabaay

• Decision Date: 18 October 1978
• Docket Number: No. 77-6,77-6
• Citation: 381 N.E.2d 1164,21 Ill. Dec. 620,65 Ill.App.3d 255
• Parties: , 21 Ill.Dec. 620 Jane GUEBARD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gerald A. JABAAY, M.D., and the Glen Ellyn Clinic, S.C., an Illinois Corporation a/k/a Glen Ellyn Clinic, Loyola University Hospital, an Illinois Corporation not for profit, and Richard Angell, M.D., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 1164

381 N.E.2d 1164

65 Ill.App.3d 255, 21 Ill.Dec. 620

Jane GUEBARD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gerald A. JABAAY, M.D., and the Glen Ellyn Clinic, S.C., an Illinois Corporation a/k/a Glen Ellyn Clinic, Loyola University Hospital, an Illinois Corporation not for profit and Richard Angell, M.D., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 77-6.

Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.

Oct. 18, 1978.

James A. Geraghty, Wheaton, for plaintiff-appellant.

Hinshaw, Culbertson, Moelmann, Hoban & Fuller, Chicago, for defendants-appellees.

NASH, Justice.

Plaintiff, Jane Guebard, appeals from a judgment of the Circuit Court of DuPage County dismissing her complaint of medical malpractice insofar as it related to defendants Richard Angell, M.D., and Loyola University Hospital on the grounds the cause was barred by the statute of limitations (Ill.Rev.Stat.1969, ch. 83, par. 15).

Plaintiff originally filed her complaint on August 16, 1972, against only defendants Gerald A. Jabaay, M.D., and the Glen Ellyn Clinic. She alleged then that in January 1971 she had injured her knee in a skiing accident and thereafter came under the care of Dr. Jabaay, an orthopedic surgeon employed by the Glen Ellyn Clinic. When conservative treatment failed to alleviate her condition Dr. Jabaay recommended surgery to plaintiff which was performed (she then believed by him) at Loyola University Hospital in Maywood, Illinois, on June 22, 1971. As this operation failed to relieve her condition, Dr. Jabaay then performed a second surgery on plaintiff's knee at the Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois, on October 6, 1971. This procedure was also unsuccessful and she alleged her knee was left in worse condition than it had been before the operations. Plaintiff further alleged these parties had negligently treated her and sought damages for her resulting condition.

On July 25, 1973, plaintiff filed answers to interrogatories propounded by Dr. Jabaay and the Glen Ellyn Clinic. Interrogatory No. 26 requested plaintiff to identify each person known by her to have knowledge of any fact or record relating to her action and in response to it she referred to a list which included:

"8. Dr. Richard Angell

Loyola University Medical Center

Maywood, Illinois

June 22, 1971-possible operating physician".

On February 23, 1976, plaintiff filed an amended complaint adding Loyola University Hospital and Dr. Angell as defendants and alleging battery in that Dr. Angell, a resident surgeon employed by the hospital, actually performed the June 22, 1971, surgery on plaintiff without her knowledge or consent while she was unconscious. On March 3, 1976, plaintiff filed a second amended complaint which added counts for medical malpractice against these added defendants and also alleged that plaintiff first discovered that Dr. Angell had actually performed the June 21st surgery during a deposition of Dr. Jabaay taken on December 15, 1975. A third amended complaint, filed on March 12, 1976, added a general allegation that all of the defendants had conspired together in not disclosing to plaintiff that the June 21st surgery had, in fact, been performed by Dr. Angell rather than Dr. Jabaay.

On April 21, 1976, the trial court granted the motion of Dr. Angell and Loyola University Hospital to dismiss the third amended complaint as to them on the grounds that, although the alleged negligence occurred in 1971, the lawsuit naming them was not filed until 1976 and, therefore, it was barred by the two year statute of limitations (Ill.Rev.Stat.1969, ch. 83, par. 15).

Plaintiff was then allowed to file a fourth amended complaint in order to more specifically allege fraudulent concealment by Dr. Angell and Loyola University Hospital of the fact that Dr. Angell performed the first surgery in an effort to invoke the fraudulent concealment provisions of the Limitations Act (Ill.Rev.Stat.1969, ch. 83, par. 23) to toll the running of the statute. In it she alleged that the defendants had falsely indicated in hospital, clinic, insurance and other reports that the first surgery was performed by Dr. Jabaay and had also made statements to plaintiff indicating that he performed it.

The trial court again dismissed plaintiff's complaint as to Dr. Angell and the hospital on the basis that her cause of action was barred by the statute of limitations and this appeal followed.

Plaintiff contends first that under the "discovery rule" the two year statute of limitations applicable to personal injury claims (Ill.Rev.Stat.1969, ch. 83, par. 15) did not begin to run as against Dr. Angell and Loyola University Hospital (hereinafter "defendants") until she learned during her deposition of Dr. Jabaay on December 15, 1975, that Dr. Angell actually performed the June 21, 1971, surgery. She argues that her suit was thereafter timely filed on February 23, 1976, that being within two years of December 15, 1975, the date plaintiff alleges she first discovered the identity of these possible new defendants.

A statute of limitations is a designated period of time during which a cause of action must be brought or be forever barred. (Roper v. Markle (1978), 59 Ill.App.3d 706, 707, 16 Ill.Dec. 827, 828, 375 N.E.2d 934, 935.) Its primary purpose is to require the prosecution of a cause of action within a reasonable time so as to prevent the loss or impairment of available evidence and to discourage delay in the bringing of claims. (Tom Olesker's Exciting World of Fashion, Inc. v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. (1975), 61 Ill.2d 129, 132, 334 N.E.2d 160, 162.) Before courts and legislatures began applying the discovery rule to limitations periods the statute ran from the time that the last act giving rise to a cause of action occurred (Gray v. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp. (1961), 22 Ill.2d 432, 435, 176 N.E.2d 761, 763; Roper, 59 Ill.App.3d at 707-08, 16 Ill.Dec. 827, 829, 375 N.E.2d 934, 936), which in a tort action was when all of the necessary elements were present, including a legal duty, breach of that duty and injury resulting from such breach (Roper at 708, 375 N.E.2d 934, 936; Coumoulas v. Service Gas, Inc. (1973), 10 Ill.App.3d 273, 274, 293 N.E.2d 187, 188). This rule takes no cognizance of the situation in which an injured party is unable to discover, regardless of his diligence, that he has been injured until after the limitations period has passed and his suit is forever barred. Its harshness, however, has been mitigated in certain types of cases by application of the "discovery rule". That rule provides that the limitations period commences not when the last act giving rise to a cause of action has occurred but when the plaintiff knew or should have known that he was "injured." Roper, 59 Ill.App.3d at 708, 375 N.E.2d 934, 936; Lincoln-Way Community High School District v. Village of Frankfort (1977), 51 Ill.App.3d 602, 608, 9 Ill.Dec. 884, 889-90, 367 N.E.2d 318, 323-24.

The discovery rule, as applied to the accrual of a cause of action in medical malpractice, was stated in Lipsey v. Michael Reese Hospital (1970), 46 Ill.2d 32, 262 N.E.2d 450. There the plaintiff alleged that she had been negligently advised by defendants that an excised tumor was not malignant when, in fact, it was and the faulty diagnosis resulted in amputation of a limb three years later, at which time plaintiff first discovered defendants' negligence. The trial court held that the action commenced by plaintiff more than two years after the alleged negligent diagnosis by defendants was barred by the two year statute of limitations for personal injury. The supreme court, however, following the discovery rule of Rozny v. Marnul (1969), 43 Ill.2d 54, 250 N.E.2d 656, held that the cause of action did not accrue until the plaintiff first discovered the defendants' diagnostic error stating that "in medical malpractice cases as this, the cause of action accrues when the person injured learns of his injury or should reasonably have learned of it." 46 Ill.2d at 40, 262 N.E.2d 450, 455.

Plaintiff's contention in the present case would extend the discovery rule as applied to medical malpractice cases to mean that the cause of action accrues when the person injured learns, or reasonably should have learned, of the Identity of the person responsible for his injury, even though he earlier knew of the injury itself. We are not aware of any case in which the discovery rule has been so extended or applied and we are not convinced that the logic of the rule warrants such an extension by us. (See Solt v. McDowell (1971), 132 Ill.App.2d 864, 868, 272 N.E.2d 53, 56-57.) In applying the discovery rule the court will balance the hardship on the plaintiff caused by the bar of his suit against the increased burden of a defendant to obtain proof of his defense after the passage of time. (Tom Olesker's Exciting World of Fashion, Inc. v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. (19...