You trust your doctors to make an accurate diagnosis. When you discover that you haven’t been given the right diagnosis, you might decide to seek compensation from the doctor through a medical malpractice lawsuit. It is vital that the lawsuit be filed within the statute of limitations or you run the risk of your lawsuit being thrown out. A recent case shows how important it is for the misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose lawsuit to be filed within the limit, which is one year in Kentucky.
The case has to do with a man who was diagnosed with HIV by a doctor at the University of Kentucky in 2004. Back then, the doctor told the man he was HIV positive. The man never saw the actual test results. When he did see the test results last year, he filed a lawsuit for medical malpractice. That was almost a decade after the misdiagnosis was made.
In the ruling, the judge said that the man “should have known about the misdiagnosis before the mandated timeframe.” He also said that the man had been told by other doctors that he was misdiagnosed by the UK doctors. The man’s lawyer argued that it was impossible to have a case until the man actually saw the test results.
This case shows how important it is for any patient who thinks he or she might have a case against a doctor for medical malpractice to act as quickly as possible to file the complaint. Often, this might mean moving ahead even while trying to fully establish the full scope of facts in the case.
Source: WTVQ, “Judge: Too Late to Sue for Misdiagnosis of HIV” Melanie Kendall, Sep. 15, 2014
