Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in Virginia

It depends. There are only a couple of instances where Va follows a discovery rule as it pertains to the statute of limitations. Va does follow a continuing treatment rule, which MIGHT give you 2 years from the date of your last visit with the offending doctor.

Hello there--Allow me to expand on Gary's answer.

Va's tort law statute of limitations has a narrow exception for medical malpractice. It's not a pure extension for discovery, though it looks like one. It says you get either 2 years from the date of the injury (from what you said above, that's till Jan 2014) or one year from date of discovery (for you that's March 2013, which went by already). You can't stack those two periods, you get only one, whichever gives you more time. In other words, depending on the facts of a case, it's possible the discovery "extension" could run out before the underlying 2-year limitations period itself runs out. Not very nice, is it.

The "continuous treatment rule" is a judge-made rule in Va that says the 2-year period starts to run with the last treatment in a continuing course of treatment by the same doctor. The idea is to give the doctor a chance to mitigate the injury before your time to sue starts to run, to allow you the full 2 years to consider your options after the doc's attempt to fix things, re-do a surgery &c. My reading of the cases is that it has to be the same doctor, but I think it's still an open question whether immediate colleagues in the same medical group, say, or the same hospital staff, can be considered the same provider for this purpose. And "continuing" is also a litigable term: at least one Va case says if treatments were spread out, even if for the same condition, they might not be "continuous," and the limitations period would not be tolled for the discontinuous ones.

Anyway you have a month till your time runs out, if the facts you've given here are all the facts. Remember this is not legal advice--you should go see a lawyer and have a real consultation about it. I volunteer. My coordinates are below. Cheers and good luck.

Steve Pershing, Esq. (admitted in D.C. and Va.)

The Chavers Firm, LLC

1250 24th St NW Ste 300

Washington DC 20037

(202) 467-8324

[email protected]