More than a decade ago, Susan Rivas went into Overlake Hospital in Bellevue for a renal angioplasty, a procedure that involves using a catheter to clear a blockage in the main blood vessel to the kidneys rather than requiring surgery. There were complications, and the next day, July 20, 1996, Rivas was told one of her kidneys would have to be removed.
Three years and one day later, Rivas filed a medical malpractice suit against Overlake, claiming that physician negligence during the procedure caused her to lose the kidney. Rivas’ suit was literally a day late—the statute of limitations on such claims is three years. The hospital asked a Superior Court judge to throw the case out, saying Rivas had run out of time to file suit under the statute. She appealed, noting that when the three-year clock began ticking, she was in an intensive-care unit recovering from the botched procedure.
The trial court sided with Rivas, saying she had a right to have both her case and the question of whether she had waited too long to file suit decided by a jury. Overlake asked the state Court of Appeals to review the verdict. The higher court reversed the Superior Court’s decision, ruling that Rivas had been lucid during her convalescence, which disqualified her for incapacity exceptions to the limitations statute.
Twelve years later, the whole thing finally reached the State Supreme Court, whose justices on August 7 ruled six to three that the medical question of whether or not Rivas was adequately incapacitated at the time is a trial issue, thus allowing her claim to proceed. Dissenters argued that Rivas’ time in intensive care may have set her back a few days, but didn’t impact her ability to file suit during the ensuing three years.
But perhaps the most interesting part of the whole case is a footnote to the majority opinion. In noting whether Rivas could legitimately claim that her recovery in the ICU should push back the statute-of-limitations date, majority author Justice Tom Chambers refers to the Glasgow Coma Scale. (Rivas was given the highest score while she recuperated, meaning she was not considered comatose.) In explaining the scale and its relationship to the case, Chambers includes a footnote with a reference for hapless law students who may someday have to dissect the opinion: Wikipedia, which describes the Glasgow scale thusly: “A neurological scale which aims to give a reliable, objective way of recording the conscious state of a person, for initial as well as continuing assessment. A patient is assessed against the criteria of the scale, and the resulting points give a patient score between 3 (indicating deep unconsciousness) and either 14 (original scale) or 15 (the more widely used modified or revised scale).”
And as everyone knows, if it sounds technical in the communal encyclopedia, it must be true.
