Medical Malpractice Bill Could Be an Important Law for Patients-If It’s Brought to a Vote

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It’s been called Lavern’s Law-a bill that’s garnered the signatures of more than 32 state senators in New York. It would fix the statute of limitations for medical malpractice lawsuits so that the clock starts ticking not when the negligence occurs, but when the patient first discovers that he or she has been harmed.

It’s a bill that’s clearly pro-patient and just since many victims of medical malpractice don’t realize that they have been victimized at the time the medical error occurred.

According to the NY Daily News, “Lavern Wilkinson died in 2013 from a curable form of lung cancer because Kings County Hospital doctors never told her a chest X-ray in 2010 showed a small suspicious mass.

When she found out she had terminal cancer in 2012, the 15-month statute of limitations had run out, and she could no longer seek justice in the courts.

Legal experts estimated a jury would have awarded her $8 million to $10 million — enough to have paid for compassionate round-the-clock care for the severely mentally disabled and autistic child Wilkinson, 41, left an orphan.”

Kevin Dugan
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