90 Day Extension

California Medical Malpractice's Statute of Limitations (Legal Deadlines)

**This introduction is meant only to give general information about California's unique 90 day medical malpractice extension. The laws governing these types of extensions, and the malpractice statute of limitation itself, a very complex, involves specialized and extensive knowledge in this narrow issue of law, and frequently require an individualized evaluation. This background information is not intended to be complete or as a substitute for an individualized evaluation by a qualified medical malpractice attorney.**

Under our system of laws, virtually all civil claims are subject to some legal deadline known as the "Statute of Limitations". These deadlines are established by our elected officials in the Legislature and signed into law by the Governor. Statutes of limitations have always been a feature of American and English law even though it has long been understood that these deadlines can be harsh and unjust.

The length of the deadline can vary depending on the type of lawsuit involved. For most personal injury and wrongful death claims, the statute of limitations in California is 2 years from the date of the event. This extended 2-year statute of limitations does NOT apply to medical malpractice cases. In California, due to pressure from the doctors', hospitals' and insurance company lobbyists and their influences, the statute of limitations for medical malpractice cases is generally one year. While in most cases the starting date (or "trigger date" ) for a malpractice claim is obvious, there are many cases where the determination of that date can be complex and potentially controversial. Nonetheless, we should never take the statute of limitations lightly since it can be fatal to a legitimate claim.

In some cases, the Statute of Limitations can be as little as 6 months: generally, this involves cases against public entities in California, such as public hospitals and clinics. (Strangely, the University of California is subject to the general twelve-month Statute of Limitations and not the six-month rule. This may or may not apply to malpractice that is alleged to occur at UCLA, UCI or other UC-affiliated facilities.)

Determination of the Statute of Limitations in medical malpractice cases can be a complex and subtle matter which simply should not be attempted by non-attorneys or by wishful thinking. If a case is genuinely already irretrievably barred by the statute of limitations, it may serve no purpose to proceed in the face of hopeless odds. The question of whether the six-month or twelve-month deadline applies itself requires consultation with a qualified medical malpractice attorney, such as Mr. Kapp. If you have any doubt whatsoever whether your claim is subject to the six-month or twelve-month deadline, please consult with our office.

Our Approach: Try to Avoid Delay Which Potentially Can Cause Statute of Limitations Issues.

It is the practice of prudent attorneys and their clients to assume that the trigger date is the earliest possible date and simply avoid the problem of the statute of limitations. If, however, that date has already passed, the client will need to discuss this matter in detail with the Law Offices of Howard A. Kapp or another attorney familiar with medical malpractice law. It is generally NOT a good idea to discuss the statute of limitations with attorneys who do not have extensive experience with medical malpractice issues since the issues involving these deadlines can be quite different in medical malpractice cases than others.

The 90-Day Provision.

Since the 1974 adoption of California's anti-victim medical malpractice legal scheme, California has a special provision (California Code of Civil Procedure §364) which allows malpractice victims to extend the statute of limitations by 90 days; this special rule does not apply to claims that have already been time-barred or even some claims that are "too early" in the process. This special rule itself is complex and has been interpreted in ways that are frankly unexpected and bizarre. Nonetheless, properly done, this extension provision can provide you with an additional 90-day window to allow Mr. Kapp or other qualified medical malpractice attorney to properly and calmly evaluate the case.

While it is always better to have your case evaluated sooner than later, the Law Offices of Howard A. Kapp recognizes that some people, for many reasons, might find themselves approaching this deadline and may benefit by extending the statute of limitations. We therefore do offer a service, if we believe that it is potentially helpful to you, of preparing and serving these legal documents. Commonly, we will charge a base fee for up to 3 notices at the same time and there will be an additional charge for notifying additional potential malpractice defendants.

Generally, it is our position that this option is generally considered to be a potential emergency in your case, since you can lose your case if you do not file a lawsuit or otherwise protect your case from this legal deadline.

Our Providing this Service Does Not Mean That We Are Your Attorneys for Any Other Purpose.

Please understand that our providing this "90 day notice" service does not mean that we are providing you with legal advice, that we have had the opportunity to provide you with any input or opinions regarding the quality of your case, that we have accepted responsibility to file your lawsuit, or that Mr. Kapp is your attorney for any other purpose. We are simply doing this to give you and the attorneys additional time to consider your options. Even if we send these "90 day notices" on your behalf, neither you nor Mr. Kapp have any further obligations to the other. Of course, you and Mr. Kapp's office may later agree to do these things separately or in the future.

Please also understand that once we provide the other side with these notices, we should expect that the potential defendant health care providers will immediately re-review the hospital and clinic records that refer to your case. We are aware that, sadly, it is commonly reported that doctors and the hospital personnel may undertake to change or "doctor" the records in order to rewrite history to protect themselves. It is therefore invariably a good idea to make sure that we have copies of all potentially important or relevant records in hand before these notices are processed. Sometimes, of course, it is impossible because of the potential clients' failure to have obtained those records earlier. This is not a preferred situation, but sometimes we have no choice.

Choose *

I have provided the best information available to me about the health care providers to be named.

While I have made some good faith mistakes, I have provided the lawyers with the names, addresses and involvements of the people that I believe may have committed medical malpractice.

I understand that this information may take up to 3 business days to process and that it is my job to arrange and warn the lawyer's office if the deadline appears to be urgent.

I have worked out payment arrangements with the Law Offices of Howard A. Kapp

I understand that the Law Offices of Howard A. Kapp have no further responsibility regarding the statute of limitations or processing of this case, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

Spouse's Name (If The Victim Was Legally Married). If not married, write "Not Married" *

Please briefly describe the injuries claimed as a result of the malpractice. *

Your Name (and Name of Victim, if different): *

Anything else we should know?

Name of Victim and Brief Description of the Nature of the Claim *

Please provide us with the names and street addresses of each provider you want to sue. It is important that we have the right information here! *

If necessary, please explain why the date of malpractice discovery was delayed.

Victim's Date of Birth *

Please describe why you want to sue for medical malpractice. Please keep your comments here relatively short. Please DO PROVIDE the dates of any relevant events! *

Please tell us something about the victim including age, marital status, school or employment status and relevant family members. If you believe that there will be a claim for loss of earnings, please provide us with some job history.

Email: *

If we are claiming that we did not know about the injury on that date, what date did we first realize that the health care provider may have done something wrong?

What You Need to Provide the Law Offices of Howard A. Kapp In Order for Us to Prepare the 90-Day Notices

The issue of the 90-day extension virtually never arises except in the context of an emergency which our offices recognizes but did not create. We are not making a judgment as to whether our potential client should have acted earlier or not, but we are simply trying to stop the clock from running out. This is not a moral judgment but simply our reaction to an apparent legal emergency.

It is our usual experience that we know little or nothing about the merits of a particular case during the processing of the 90-day notices. Typically, the client will contact us and we will recognize that there is an approaching deadline. We may or may not have a decent understanding of your case, but we rarely have more than the bare-bones outline before we recognize that there is a statute of limitations issue that needs to be addressed urgently. We almost never have access to definitive written materials and, even if we do, we rarely have the time to have them properly evaluated. We therefore first address the issue of the approaching deadline and defer even preliminary discussions or decision-making regarding the merits of any case.

The most important information that we need immediately in order to prepare the 90 day extension notices is a PROPER name and street address for any health care providers who are genuinely suspected of malpractice. We cannot send the notices if we don't know where they are to be sent!

This invariably means that we have made no decision to determine who the probable medical malpractice defendants should be in the case. We cannot assume that responsibility and are totally dependent on the potential client or the family to provide us with the information regarding these people.

It is difficult to give one-size-fits-all advice as to the identities of the health care providers to be listed. We will give you some general guidelines here, but understand that these are simply guidelines that may or may not apply to your case.

1. If the potential malpractice occurred at a Kaiser facility, we can simply provide one notice to Kaiser's legal department and that itself will suffice to provide notice to any of its employees.

2. In certain cases where the services were provided by County-employee physicians and nurses, we can likewise simply provide notice to the County of Los Angeles or the relevant other county.

3. Generally speaking, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to provide us with the health care provider's full name and mailing address. If the malpractice was done by a private doctor, even if it is done at a hospital, we generally would provide notice to the provider himself or herself and very possibly to the hospital.

4. If the malpractice was done at a hospital by a physician (including emergency room doctors!), You need to provide us with the doctor's own personal address, not merely the address of the hospital where you saw the doctor! If you do not know the health care provider's address, you can find that information as to medical doctors here. If you have any difficulty or confusion as to which address is current or correct, please physically print out the information from the Medical Board or other sources so that we can establish that you made a good faith attempt to locate the proper address. Service on the bad address does not count!

5. If you have reason to believe that a health care provider actually did something wrong that contributed to the claimed injuries, you should provide us with that provider's name and address. It is usually best, however, not to shotgun every single health care provider who was incidentally involved in the relevant care. This only makes unnecessary enemies and subjects innocent people to unnecessary stress and legal and insurance consequences. It is generally very rare that more than 2 or 3 health care providers would be responsible for the same injuries.

6. This office does not accept credit cards or personal checks in prepayment of these services. We do accept cash, cashier's checks or payments through venmo.com. You can discuss the amount of the charges and the manner in which these can be paid with Regina Wilcots of our office.

What is the Best Telephone Number to Reach You If We Have Questions? *

Law Offices of Howard A. Kapp

First Date That The Malpractice Occurred *

3731 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 514, Los Angeles, California 90010 * (213) 927-8000 * staff@kapplaw.com

Please fill out the form at the bottom of this page if you want us to process 90-day notices!

But first please read the description below!

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