Reese v. Rankin Fite Memorial Hospital

• Decision Date: 10 July 1981
• Citation: 403 So.2d 158
• Parties: Samuel Bert REESE, II, a minor, etc. v. RANKIN FITE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, et al. 79-129.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Page 158

403 So.2d 158

Samuel Bert REESE, II, a minor, etc. v. RANKIN FITE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, et al.

79-129.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

July 10, 1981.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 21, 1981.

Clifford Emond, Jr., and Lloyd W. Gathings of Emond & Vines, Birmingham, for appellants.

Sam M. Phelps and Eugene A. Beatty of Phelps, Owens, Jenkins, Gibson & Fowler, Tuscaloosa, for appellee Rankin Fite Memorial Hospital.

Edward R. Jackson of Tweedy, Jackson & Beech, Jasper, for appellee Dr. Aubrey L. Sewell.

PER CURIAM.

Defendants Rankin Fite Memorial Hospital and Dr. Aubrey Sewell filed motions in the Circuit Court of Marion County seeking to dismiss Samuel Reese's complaint. This is an appeal from a final judgment granting those motions.

On February 5, 1979, Samuel Bert Reese, II, a minor by and through his father, filed a medical malpractice action against Rankin Fite Hospital and Dr. Sewell. Reese's complaint alleged that the hospital and the doctor negligently administered excessive amounts of oxygen to Reese immediately following his birth on August 18, 1968. Reese further alleged that he suffered total and permanent blindness as a result of the alleged negligence. On June 12, 1979, Reese amended his complaint to include a count for breach of contract implied-in-fact. Dr. Sewell and Rankin Fite Hospital moved to dismiss on the grounds that the action was timed barred under Code 1975, § 6-5-482. The hospital further asserted sovereign immunity as a ground for dismissal. On October 3, 1979, the judge granted the dismissals. Reese appeals.

This appeal involves a constitutional attack, both state and federal, upon § 6-5-482, the statute of limitations of the Alabama Medical Liability Act. The following issues are presented:

1. Does § 6-5-482 violate § 45 of the Alabama Constitution, which requires that: (1) each act shall contain a single subject; and (2) the subject must be clearly expressed in the title of the act?

2. Does § 6-5-482 violate the equal protection provisions of the Alabama and the United States Constitutions?

3. Does § 6-5-482 constitute special legislation violative of §§ 104, 105, and 108 of the Alabama Constitution?

Section 6-5-482 provides in pertinent part:

(a) All actions against physicians, surgeons, dentists, medical institutions or other health care providers for liability, error, mistake or failure to cure, whether based on contract or tort, must be commenced within two years next after the act or omission or failure giving rise to the claim, and not afterwards; provided, that if the cause of action is not discovered and could not reasonably have been discovered within such period, then the action may be commenced within six months from the date of such discovery or the date of discovery of facts which would reasonably lead to such discovery, whichever is earlier; provided further, that in no event may the action be commenced more than four years after such act; except, that an error, mistake, act, omission or failure to cure giving rise to a claim which occurred before September 23, 1975, shall not in any event be barred until the expiration of one year from such date.

(b) Subsection (a) of this section shall be subject to all existing provisions of law relating to the computation of statutory periods of limitation...; provided, that notwithstanding any provisions of such sections, no action shall be commenced more than four years after the act, omission or failure complained of; except, that in the case of a minor under four yeas of age, such minor shall have until his eighth birthday to commence such action. (Emphasis added.)

This appeal more specifically concerns subsection (b) as it addresses the effect of the minority of the plaintiff in medical malpractice actions.

In the recent case of Thomas v. Niemann, 397 So.2d 90 (Ala. 1981), the Court held that § 6-5-482 does not violate the single subject/express title requirement of § 45 of the Alabama Constitution. We reaffirm that holding.

Reese next argues that § 6-5-482 violates the due process and equal protection provisions of both the state and federal constitutions. We cannot agree. The basis of this argument is that the statute treats minors injured through medical malpractice differently from minor victims of other torts. He points out that over one hundred years ago by act now carried in the Code at § 6-2-8, the legislature provided that the statute of limitations was suspended during minority and that the removal of that suspension for medical malpractice claims rendered the Medical Malpractice Act unconstitutional on equal protection grounds. Again, we cannot agree.

The policy considerations leading up to the passage of the Alabama Medical Liability Act are stated in the legislation itself. The preamble to § 6-5-482 in Acts 1975, No. 513, § 2, reads as follows:

It is hereby declared by the Legislature of the State of Alabama that the availability of medical liability insurance at reasonable rates for the medical profession, medical institutions, and other health care providers is essential to provide adequate health services to the people of Alabama, and without such insurance medical services by the medical profession may be curtailed, and that while the need for such insurance is increasing, availability is limited and likely to become increasingly so, unless remedial legislation is enacted. The Legislature further finds and declares that by reason of complicated and highly technical medical concepts, and the existence of sophisticated medical techniques, decisions with respect to optional procedures of diagnosis and treatment have become increasingly complex and are necessarily made on the basis of professional judgment, on which opinions may and often will reasonably vary. It is the purpose of this act to insure that the citizens of the State of Alabama are able to receive necessary health services by providing an environment in which the medical profession can be assured of medical liability insurance coverage and be afforded reasonable protection against personal liability for consequences proximately resulting from decisions with respect to diagnosis and treatment arrived at in the bona fide exercise of professional judgment.

To withstand an equal protection challenge, the Court need only find that the classification made by the legislature is not arbitrary or unreasonable. As this Court recently held in Tyson v. Johns-Manville Sales Corporation, 399 So.2d 263 (Ala. 1981):

A statutory discrimination between classes is held to be relevant to a permissible legislative purpose if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.

The Medical Liability Act was the legislature's response to a crisis which developed nationwide in the 1970's. We cannot say that the equal protection provisions of the Constitution restrict its authority to withdraw the legislative grace given minors in § 6-2-8 in the field of medical malpractice claims.

We note that a number of other states passed similar legislation during this period. While we might have drafted a different act, we cannot substitute our judgment for that of the legislative branch, whose enactments come to us clothed with a presumption of validity. Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory, 246 Ala. 1, 18 So.2d 810 (1944), stated this principle as follows:

At the outset reference may be made, as is often done, to the principles by which courts are guided when it is sought to strike down as violative of the constitution a legislative act. Uniformly, the courts recognize that this power is a delicate one, and to be used with great caution. It should be borne in mind, also, that legislative power is not derived either from the state or federal constitutions. These instruments are only limitations upon the power. Apart from limitations imposed by these fundamental charters of government, the power of the legislature has no bounds and is as plenary as that of the British Parliament. It follows that, in passing upon the constitutionality of a legislative act, the courts uniformly approach the question with every presumption and intendment in favor of its validity, and seek to sustain rather than strike down the enactment of a coordinate branch of the government. All these principles are embraced in the simple statement that it is the recognized duty of the court to sustain the act unless it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that it is violative of the fundamental law. State ex rel. Wilkinson v. Murphy, 237 Ala. 332, 186 So. 487, 121 A.L.R. 283.

Another principle which is recognized with practical unanimity, and leading to the same end, is that the courts do not hold statutes invalid because they think there are elements therein which are violative of natural justice or in conflict with the court's notions of natural, social, or political rights of the citizen, not guaranteed by the constitution itself. Nor even if the courts think the act is harsh or in some degree unfair, and presents chances for abuse, or is of doubtful propriety. All of these questions of propriety, wisdom, necessity, utility, and expediency are held exclusively for the legislative bodies, and are matters with which the courts have no concern. This principle is embraced within the simple statement that the only question for the court to decide is one of power, not of expediency or wisdom.

246 Ala. at 9-10, 18 So.2d 810.

We hold that the Medical Liability act does not offend either the due process or the equal protection provisions of the state or federal constitutions.

The last argument made is that the act violates §§ 104, 105, and 108 of the state constitution. Again, we disagree. All three of these constitutional provisions deny to the legislature power to enact special, private, or local laws. Such laws are defined in § 110 of the Constitution. The Alabama Medical Liability Act does not fall within the constitutional definition of special, private, or local laws. Rather, it...