Caseflicks

Massachusetts Appeals Court • 2008

Chace v. Curran

71 Mass. App. Ct. 258 | 881 N.E.2d 792

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Takeaway

In short, this case permits an independent fraud action for an alleged deliberate cover-up that caused a patient to lose a timely malpractice claim, even though the underlying malpractice action itself is extinguished by a statute of repose.

Background

During Andrew Chace’s 1995 birth, a prolapsed umbilical cord required an emergency Caesarean section. Andrew was born oxygen-deprived and needed resuscitation. Dr. Arlene Curran and Nurse Ann Taylor participated in that effort. Andrew and his mother later alleged that Curran and Taylor omitted or misstated critical events in his medical record, including a failed intubation attempt and several minutes in which Andrew allegedly received no therapeutic oxygen.

The plaintiffs sued the delivering obstetrician in 2001. In 2004, during discovery in that action, another nurse testified that Curran’s and Taylor’s records were materially inaccurate and incomplete. Nearly nine years after the birth, the plaintiffs sued Curran and Taylor for negligence and related claims, as well as fraudulent concealment and intentional misrepresentation.

A Superior Court judge dismissed the malpractice-based claims as barred by the medical-malpractice statutes of repose, but dismissed the fraud counts without prejudice and allowed amendment to plead fraud with particularity. After amendment, a second judge denied Curran’s and Taylor’s Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss the fraud claims, concluding that they alleged independent intentional torts rather than untimely malpractice claims. The defendants obtained interlocutory review.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the medical-malpractice statutes of repose bar claims that health-care providers intentionally falsified or omitted material information in medical records to conceal a possible malpractice action.

Holding

No. The amended complaint alleged independent fraud claims that were not subject to the medical-malpractice statutes of repose.

Reasoning

The court looked to the substance of the allegations, not the labels the plaintiffs used. A party cannot evade the medical-malpractice act simply by styling a treatment-based claim as an intentional tort. But the core of these amended claims was an alleged fraudulent cover-up after the resuscitation, not the defendants’ alleged failure to provide proper medical care.

The complaint sufficiently alleged the elements of fraud: false statements or material omissions, knowledge of falsity, an intent that the plaintiffs rely on the misleading record, actual reliance, and resulting detriment. It also alleged that the parties stood in a fiduciary relationship that imposed a duty of disclosure. For purposes of the motion to dismiss, the court accepted those pleaded facts as true.

The court treated the separately labeled fraudulent-concealment count as substantively the same kind of fraud claim as intentional misrepresentation. Although G. L. c. 260, § 12 can toll an ordinary limitations period when a defendant conceals a cause of action, the plaintiffs could not use it to toll the absolute malpractice repose periods. They could, however, pursue an independent common-law fraud claim based on the alleged concealment itself.

The claimed damages confirmed that the action was distinct from malpractice. The plaintiffs did not seek additional damages for personal injury caused by deficient resuscitation or by later treatment decisions. They sought the pecuniary value of the malpractice recovery they allegedly lost because the defendants’ fraud caused them to let the limitations and repose periods expire.

The medical care at issue would matter only if the plaintiffs first proved fraud, and then only to establish the amount of their lost opportunity. By contrast, if the plaintiffs could not prove a deliberate cover-up, the adequacy of the defendants’ resuscitation efforts would be irrelevant. That reduced role for the malpractice merits distinguished this case from an improper attempt to preserve an expired malpractice claim through allegations of fraud.

The court acknowledged that statutes of repose are meant to provide health-care providers finality even when a claim has not yet been discovered. But those statutes do not immunize a separate tort in which providers allegedly obtained repose protection through intentional deception designed to prevent the patient from suing in time.

Issue #2

Whether the plaintiffs’ fraud claims had to be submitted to a medical-malpractice tribunal.

Holding

No. Because the amended complaint alleged fraud rather than medical malpractice, a medical-malpractice tribunal had no role in deciding whether the action could proceed.

Reasoning

A malpractice tribunal evaluates the medical merits of a claim alleging negligent professional treatment. The alleged wrong here was not inaccurate record-keeping as a breach of the professional standard of care, nor a treatment-related misrepresentation that induced a patient to make a medical decision.

Instead, the alleged wrong was the intentional concealment of material facts to deprive the plaintiffs of knowledge needed to bring a timely claim. The factual questions central to liability concerned the defendants’ duty to disclose, their knowledge, their alleged false statements or omissions, their intent, and the plaintiffs’ reliance. Those questions did not require a direct inquiry into the medical standard of care.

The merits of the extinguished malpractice claim could be relevant later as evidence of fraud damages, potentially through a trial-within-a-trial. That possible damages inquiry did not convert the fraud action into a malpractice case requiring tribunal review.

Issue #3

Whether the court would consider counsel’s citation to an unpublished Rule 1:28 memorandum and order.

Holding

No as to the cited decision, because the court’s then-existing practice prohibited such citations; however, the court announced that Rule 1:28 decisions issued after this opinion could be cited for persuasive, but not precedential, value.

Reasoning

The court declined to consider the unpublished decision cited by Taylor’s counsel under its prior policy against citation of Rule 1:28 summary dispositions. It explained that such decisions traditionally were directed principally to the parties, might not fully state the panel’s rationale, and were not circulated to the full Appeals Court.

Recognizing that electronic research had made Rule 1:28 decisions widely available, the court modified its practice prospectively. Future summary decisions could be cited as persuasive authority, but not as binding precedent, and litigants were instructed to include the full text of a cited decision in an addendum pending adoption of a formal rule.