Williams v. Nassau County Medical Center

• Decision Date: 04 April 2006
• Citation: 6 N.Y.3d 531,847 N.E.2d 1154
• Parties: Tymeik WILLIAMS, an Infant, by His Mother and Natural Guardian, Lekesha FOWLER, Appellant, v. NASSAU COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

847 N.E.2d 1154

6 N.Y.3d 531

Tymeik WILLIAMS, an Infant, by His Mother and Natural Guardian, Lekesha FOWLER, Appellant, v. NASSAU COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER et al., Respondents.

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 4, 2006.

Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald, P.C., Yonkers (John M. Daly, John E. Fitzgerald, Eugene S.R. Pagano, Mitchell L. Gittin and Christopher J. Lennon of counsel), for appellant.

Lorna B. Goodman, County Attorney, Mineola (David B. Goldin and Karen Hutson of counsel), for respondents.

Michael A. Cardozo, Corporation Counsel, New York City (Kristin M. Helmers and Janet L. Zaleon of counsel), for New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, amicus curiae.

OPINION OF THE COURT

ROSENBLATT, J.

In General Municipal Law § 50-e, the Legislature enacted a protocol for serving a notice of claim as a condition precedent to a suit against a public corporation. Section 50-e (1) requires that the notice be served within 90 days after the claim arises. The Legislature, however, gave courts discretion to extend the time and devised criteria for determining whether to grant extensions (see Cohen v. Pearl Riv. Union Free School Dist., 51 N.Y.2d 256, 265-266, 434 N.Y.S.2d 138, 414 N.E.2d 639 [1980]).

Section 50-e(5), the late-notice statute, directs the court to consider, in particular, whether within 90 days or a reasonable time thereafter the public corporation (or its attorney or insurance carrier) acquired actual knowledge of the facts underlying the claim. In deciding whether to grant an extension, the court must also consider a host of factors, including infancy and whether allowing late filing would result in substantial prejudice to the public corporation.¹

In the case before us, the infant plaintiff alleges that his epilepsy and developmental disabilities were the result of negligence on the part of Nassau County Medical Center and its employees in connection with his birth in September 1993. The medical employees in attendance gave his mother Pitocin, a drug used to facilitate the birth. The delivery involved two attempts at vacuum extraction and, ultimately, the use of forceps. According to the hospital records, the mother's pelvis was adequate to accommodate the baby's head and the birth was without complication. The infant weighed 8 pounds, 3½ ounces. His Apgar score (an index to evaluate the condition of a newborn infant with 10 being a perfect score) was within satisfactory range: eight at one minute after birth and nine at five minutes after birth. The records also reveal that there were marks on his forehead from the forceps and his clavicle was broken.

In support of his motion for late service of a notice of claim, plaintiff submitted an affidavit from a physician who interpreted the hospital records and alleged that the hospital knew or should have known that complications would and did occur. He averred that the size of the mother's pelvis and signs of fetal distress argued against the use of Pitocin, and that after birth the baby was trembling and showed physical signs of trauma. The defendants argue that plaintiff's disability was not apparent until, at the age of one or two, he began to experience epileptic seizures and show delayed development.

The record reveals that in 1995 plaintiff had an electroencephalogram (EEG), a test to trace his brain waves. The results were normal, but EEGs in 1998 and 1999 showed signs of abnormality. On September 5, 2003, 10 years after plaintiff's birth, his counsel sent the hospital a notice of claim alleging, in essence, that plaintiff suffered brain damage resulting from the hospital's malpractice during his delivery.

Exercising its discretion, Supreme Court granted leave to serve the late notice. The Appellate Division, however, reversed "on the law and as a matter of discretion" (13 A.D.3d 363, 363, 786 N.Y.S.2d 207 [2d Dept.2004]). We affirm. We will treat the three relevant General Municipal Law § 50-e (5) criteria in their statutory order.

Actual Knowledge of the Essential Facts

Plaintiff argues that the Appellate Division erred by requiring that the defendants have actual knowledge of the "specific claim." In support, plaintiff emphasizes that section 50-e (5) contemplates "actual knowledge of the essential facts constituting the claim," not knowledge of a specific legal theory. We agree, but do not read the Appellate Division's decision as deviating from that principle.

The hospital's records reveal that the delivery was difficult, but that when it was over there was scant reason to identify or predict any lasting harm to the child, let alone a developmental disorder or epilepsy. The infant's Apgar scores were satisfactory, and even two years later his EEG was normal. Under these circumstances defendants could well have concluded that when plaintiff left the hospital there was nothing wrong with him beyond a broken clavicle.²

We disagree with plaintiff's suggestion that because defendants have medical records, they necessarily have actual knowledge of the facts constituting the claim. Merely having or creating hospital records, without more, does not establish actual knowledge of a potential injury where the records do not evince that the medical staff, by its acts or omissions, inflicted any injury on plaintiff during the birth process.

The relevant inquiry is whether the hospital had actual knowledge of the facts — as opposed to the legal theory — underlying the claim. Where, as here, there is little to suggest injury attributable to malpractice during delivery, comprehending or recording the facts surrounding the delivery cannot equate to knowledge of facts underlying a claim.

Infancy

As to this factor, plaintiff claims that the Appellate Division improperly required that he show a "nexus" between his infancy and the delay in service, or, put differently, that the delay was a product of his infancy. The history of section 50-e (5) and the case law demonstrate that a nexus between infancy and delay, while not a requirement, remains a statutory factor that a court should take into account. The Appellate Division concluded that "the 10-year delay in moving, in effect, for leave to serve a late notice of claim was not the product of the plaintiff's infancy" (13 A.D.3d at 364, 786 N.Y.S.2d 207). Its holding does not treat the absence of a nexus as fatal to a plaintiff's claim.

Before 1976, section 50-e (5) allowed late service, at the discretion of the court, "[w]here the claimant is an infant, or is mentally or physically incapacitated, and by reason of such disability fails to serve a notice of claim within the time specified" (emphasis supplied). Even then, this causation requirement was not inflexible. Analyzing the previous version of the statute, we stated in Matter of Murray v. City of New York, 30 N.Y.2d 113, 331 N.Y.S.2d 9, 282 N.E.2d 103 [1972] that "[t]he impediment [to timely filing] may reasonably be presumed to attend infancy; there is no requirement that it be factually demonstrated" (id. at 120, 331 N.Y.S.2d 9, 282 N.E.2d 103). Rather, the causative relationship between infancy and the delay was a matter committed to the court's discretion, in view of the circumstances in a given case (id. at 119, 331 N.Y.S.2d 9, 282 N.E.2d 103; see also Sherman v. Metropolitan Tr. Auth., 36 N.Y.2d 776, 368 N.Y.S.2d 842, 329 N.E.2d 673 [1975]).

The Legislature deleted the causation language and added a list of considerations that should come into play, including the simple fact of infancy. This change, however, does not preclude a court from examining whether infancy caused the delay in serving the notice. In deciding whether to allow late service of a notice of claim the court must consider "all other relevant facts and circumstances" (General Municipal Law § 50-e [5]). A delay of service caused by infancy would make a more compelling argument to justify an extension. Conversely, the...