Issue

Negligent retention claim—corporate medical practice—statutory definition of medical malpractice action met—barred under applicable statute of repose

Summary

In a case filed more than four years after a doctor performed unnecessary spinal surgeries on plaintiffs' teenage daughter, the trial court properly granted summary judgment to defendant (the orthopedic clinic that employed the doctor) on plaintiffs' negligent retention claim, which the court properly found to be time-barred under the four-year statute of repose applicable to medical malpractice actions under N.C.G.S. § 1-15(c) because the claim met the definition of a "medical malpractice action" under N.C.G.S. § 90-21.11(2). Firstly, defendant–as a corporate medical practice–met the statutory definition of a "health care provider" against whom a medical malpractice action could be filed, since said definition included "persons," which in turn included non-human corporate entities. Secondly, where plaintiffs alleged that defendant negligently exercised its clinical judgment by continuing to employ the doctor despite several internal reports of him providing substandard care to patients, plaintiffs' claim necessarily arose from defendant's delivery of "professional services in the performance of medical [...] care" as required under 90-21.11(2)(a). Accordingly, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals' decision (reversing the trial court's summary judgment order with respect to the negligent retention issue) and ruled that plaintiffs' conditional petition for discretionary review concerning additional issues in the case was improvidently allowed.

Summary from the North Carolina Reports digest (official subject index). Read the opinion →