Equitable Amendment of Complaint Allowed to Toll Statute of Limitations in Medical Malpractice Action Even Where Original Complaint Filed Prematurely Before Expiration of Mandatory Notice Period

The Court of Appeals has issued its conflict panel opinion in the case of Furr v. McLeod, M.D., et al.  

This is a case I previously wrote about in which the Court of Appeals convened a special conflict panel to determine whether the filing of an original complaint before the expiration of the mandatory notice period for medical malpractice actions can serve to toll the statute of limitations if the trial court allows a subsequent, untimely complaint to be filed adding parties.  In this case, the trial court allowed equitable amendment of the complaint despite the defect and thus allowed the action against the defendants to proceed despite the expiration of the two-year statute of limitations as against them.

The opinion is here:

Furr.v.McLeod.et.al.conflict.panel.coa.opinion

I previously wrote about the intricacies of this issue when discussing the original opinion.  That blog post is here:

Furr v. McLeod – Court of Appeals Requests Conflict Panel to Resolve Conflict Over Tolling of Statute of Limitations in Medical Malpractice Action

Given that the panel here is still split over the resolution of this issue, and actually acknowledges the Supreme Court is going to have to address it, I suspect there will be more to say on this case in the near future.

The underlying issue affects the timeliness of medical malpractice claims and the necessity of plaintiffs to strictly comply with the notice periods and filing deadlines of complaints.

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