Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

That's what I answered the first time. Criminal charges have the same or similar statutes of limitations as civil claims. If it ran out on the malpractice claim, it ran out then or within a few years after that on any applicable criminal charges. The DA can't bring criminal charges after the statute has run, just like you can't bring a civil case. The longest possibly applicable statute of limitations for intentional medical harm would be six years. It could be as short as two years depending on all the details. Any way you look at it, though, 15 years later is WAY too late to file criminal charges.

Your first post made it clear you were asking about criminal charges. There are limitations periods for criminal cases just as there are for civil cases. Where the same act could support both a civil suit and a criminal prosecution, the limitations periods are often similar but can be quite different. But the rules are more complex than you might suppose. Sometimes the clock doesn't start ticking right away. Sometimes it stops for a while and then restarts. There are other reasons why the usual limitation period might not apply in a particular case. They don't come up often, and even when they do they often delay the deadline only modestly. Occasionally, though, they will allow prosecutors to bring charges much later than the usual deadline. I see no reason to think that's true here, but it could be. That will depend on a lot of details that your question naturally did not include.

As I said a moment ago in response to your earlier post, you may want to re-submit your question under Criminal Law so that more lawyers who practice in that field will see it, and so other users with similar questions will be more likely to find it.

Good luck.