lawyer bar association

remember, this is all done just as a filteringprocess so that you don't have to spend hours and hours trying to identify the other issuesthat you need to look at in a medical malpractice case. so now if there's a wrongful death matter,happened in a municipal hospital, you do not get the two year benefit. maximum is stillonly a year and 90 days. let's talk about cases involving babies. in cases involvingimproper delivery that occurs at birth, anybody here know how much time you have in new yorkto file suit for a brain damaged baby? in new york, you have 10 years from the dateof birth in which to file a lawsuit against a private doctor or private hospital. now,what happens again if this incident happened in a municipal hospital? do you get the benefit?well, the short answer is no. you still have

that limited time requirement. but, as always,there are exceptions and i'm not going to delve into the detailed exceptions here. ialso want to bring up two other types of cases that may arise, that you may learn about duringyour discussions with your potential clients. cases involved against the state of new york,as well as cases against the veterans administration. those are two separate entities that havetheir own quirky requirements. both of which require claims to be filed and then, a periodof time later, require you to file a lawsuit but you have to give them a period of timein which to investigate. so again, i just raised that to give you an idea that thoseare separate and have their own complex time frames and i'm not really going to go intothat here, right now. now, let me throw in

a couple of other wrenches because this happensall the time. anybody here familiar with the term 'foreign objects'? i'm not talking aboutaliens. i'm talking about things that are left inside your body during the course ofa procedure or during the course of surgery - things that should not be left there. howmuch time -- anybody here know -- how much time you have in which to file a lawsuit formedical malpractice when there is a foreign object left inside your body? shout it outif you know. anybody? okay. in order to evaluate how much time you have you have to answertwo questions. the first question is was this object left inside of you something that wasintended to remain inside of you? this is a very important question for the purposesof determining whether or not you are timely

in a foreign object case. if the matter wasnot intended to be left inside of you, then the injured victim has one year from the dateof discovering that object in which to bring a lawsuit. and i should add one word to that:they have one year from reasonably discovering that object, when they should have reasonablydiscovered that object within which to bring a lawsuit. so let me put that in context.let's say you have a hernia repair and during the course of closing up the procedure, thedoctor is sewing you up and the tip of the needle breaks off. it can happen. and thedoctor while he's doing it, it just breaks off and he's searching for it in the areawhere you're doing the surgery and for whatever reason he can't find that tip of the needle.he's looking, he's looking; he's spending

time. he gets a magnet. they can't find it;they can't identify it. and finally the doctor says, "you know what? nothing is going tohappen to this patient. i'm not even going to bother to tell her about it. it's goingto be fine." okay. what do you think happens? it's foreshadowing, you know what's goingto happen. three years later, the patient winds up having massive back pain. goes toher doctor, who sends her for x-rays and the doctor tells her "eureka! here's your problem.you've got a needle sticking in your back." she says, "a needle? how do i have a needlein my back? i had surgery three years ago for a hernia. they get the operative reportfrom the original surgery and the doctor clearly put in there "tip of the needle broke off.made efforts to try and find it. couldn't

find it. didn't think it would be a problem."have a nice day. so now she has to have surgery to get this needle removed. and now she comesto you and says, "can i bring a lawsuit. am i timely?" well, let's answer that originalquestion. was this needle tip something that was designed to be left inside of her bodyas part of the hernia repair surgery? the answer is no. okay? it was designed to beused for the surgery but not to be left inside. and as a result of that, she would then onlyhave one year from the date of discovering that within which to bring a lawsuit.