When something goes wrong and a patient suffers harm in a hospital, it can be difficult to determine just who bears responsibility and if a medical malpractice lawsuit is warranted. It’s important for potential plaintiffs to understand the deadlines for taking legal action. Ohio has a 12-month statute of limitations for bringing such claims. Plaintiffs also can be granted up to an additional 180 days to add defendants not named in the original claim.

More about the case

That extension was tested this year in a case that made it up to the Supreme Court of Ohio. A woman originally sued a hospital after she fell out of bed and broke her neck. She claimed that in her medicated state, she should not have been left unattended.Originally, she named the hospital and listed ten additional “John Doe” defendants, identified as “physicians, nurses, hospitals, corporations, health care professionals, or other entities that provided negligent medical or health care…” within the statute of limitations. Fourteen months after her injury, within that 180-day extension period, she named some of John Does. Among them were her doctor and the medical group that employed him. Both claimed that because she didn’t specify them as defendants until after the 12-month statute of limitations ran out, even though they weren’t unknown to her, she missed the deadline for doing so.The trial court agreed with them, so the case was appealed to a district court that sided with the plaintiff. That’s how Ohio’s high court ended up hearing the case.

The challenges of identifying the culpable parties

The court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, stating in part that the rule that offers a 180-day extension has “the limited purpose of accommodating a plaintiff who has identified an allegedly culpable party but does not know the name of the party at the time of filing a complaint.” Further, “the plaintiff may have trouble determining the names of every defendant to include in a complaint and commencing an action against each defendant before the statute of limitations expires.”The high court acknowledged that determining specific defendants in a medical malpractice claim can be particularly challenging because many medical groups and facilities have a legal name that’s different than the one they’re known by. This is just one reason why getting experienced legal guidance as early as possible can be critical to a successful malpractice claim.