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Court of Appeal:
MICRA Applies to Accident Caused by Ambulance Driver
Read-Ended Motorist Had One Year in Which to Bring Personal Injury Action, Majority Holds
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The one-year statute of limitation relating to medical malpractice actions applied to a lawsuit for personal injuries brought by a motorist who was rear-ended by an ambulance that was transporting a patient, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has held, in a 2-1 opinion.
Presiding Justice Mary J. Greenwood authored Friday’s majority opinion, in which Justice Adrienne Grover joined. Justice Daniel H. Bromberg dissented.
The majority opinion affirms a summary judgment by Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Christopher G. Rudy in favor of the ambulance driver, Uriel Tostado, and his employer, ProTransport-1 LLC.
Plaintiff Francisco Gutierrez brought his action within the two-year period generally applicable in personal injuries actions but not within the one-year period specified in the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (“MICRA”) for professional negligence. Rudy held that it was time-barred.
Question Presented
“[T]he question here is whether an injury to a third party, who is not a patient, is subject to MICRA’s statute of limitations because the injury occurred during, and as a result of, the provision of medical care by a medical provider,” Greenwood wrote. She answered the question by saying:
“…MICRA is not limited to suits by patients or to recipients of medical services as long as the plaintiff is injured due to negligence in the rendering of professional services and his injuries were foreseeable.”
The jurist explained:
“The provision of ambulance services involves driving on the road, sometimes at a very high speed. Getting a patient to the hospital quickly is often as integral to the provision of this medical service as performing CPR or administering medication intravenously. It is. therefore, entirely foreseeable that collisions may occur where third parties are injured. The fact that Tostado was not driving quickly here or that Gutierrez was in a separate vehicle rather than in the ambulance does not change the analysis or our conclusion that third parties injured in a collision with an ambulance when it is rendering medical care are subject to MICRA.”
Hypothetical Posed
She told of a hypothetical posed to Gutierrez’s lawyer at oral argument: a hospital attendant is wheeling a patient on a gurney, moving rapidly, and bumps into and injures a visitor, also injuring the patient. Greenwood said there was a “concession” by the lawyer that under the approach urged by his client, the two-year statute would apply to the visitor and the one-year statute would be operative as to the patient.
“Under Gutierrez’s proposed approach,” she pointed out, “two people involved in the same accident at the same time would be subject to two different statutes of limitations, possibly resulting in two separate lawsuits with inconsistent judgments and greatly increased costs for all involved.”
“[E]ven though Tostado may owe a duty to the public to drive the ambulance safely when not in use for medical care, the injury to Gutierrez occurred while Tostado, a medical provider, was performing the integral function of transporting a patient by ambulance,” Greenwood declared.
Bromberg’s Dissent
Dissenting, Bromberg said the majority’s “interpretation extends MICRA’s statute of limitations unpredictably and unfairly.” He wrote:
“This case arises out of a run-of-the-mill traffic accident involving an ambulance that happened to be transporting a patient on a non-emergency matter, presumably with its siren off. As a consequence, plaintiff Francisco Gutierrez had no way of knowing that the ambulance that rear ended him was transporting a patient and therefore no way of knowing that, under interpretation adopted by the majority, MICRA’s statute of limitations applies….As a consequence. Gutierrez and his counsel were quite likely surprised to learn that his traffic accident claim is subject to MICRA’s one-year limitations period rather than the two-year period now generally applicable to personal injury claims.”
He went on to say:
“In my view, MICRA’s statute of limitation should be interpreted…to apply only to claims requiring proof that a professional obligation owed by health care providers has been violated. Because Gutierrez’s claims are based on the generally applicable, nonprofessional duty of care owed by all drivers, I also would conclude that his claims are not subject to MICRA’s statute of limitations and reverse the judgment.”
The case is Gutierrez v. Tostado, 2023 S.O.S. 3628.
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