Haksluoto v. Mt. Clemens Regional Medical Center
Docket No. 153723
Trial Lawyers’ Bottom Line: When calculating limitations period for medical malpractice cases under the Revised Judicature Act, fractions of days are rounded to provide whole days of counting and thus more time.
Haksluoto went to the emergency room due to stomach pains. After a CT scan, a doctor at Mt. Clemens Regional Medical Center said the plaintiff was fine to return home. Ten days later, Haksluoto returned to the emergency room, and doctors determined that he needed immediate surgery. Haksluoto sued for medical malpractice for the misinterpretation of the original CT scan.
Two statutes determined when Haksluoto needed to bring his suit. Under MCL 600.5805(6), he had two years to file his medical malpractice claim, creating a deadline of December 26, 2013. In addition, the Revised Judicature Act (MCL 600.101 et seq.) requires a prospective medical-malpractice plaintiff to give 182-days notice to a potential defendant before filing a claim. The combined effect of the statutes is to create two-year limitations period, within which Haksluoto needed to serve his Notice of Intent (NOI) to start the 182-day clock. Then he had to wait 182 days before he could file his suit. While those 182 days are counting the statute of limitations is tolled. And once the 182 days pass, the counting of the statute of limitations resumes.
Haksluoto waited until the very last day of limitations period, December 26, 2013, to serve his NOI. This started the 182 days of tolling under Revised Judicature Act. If Haksluoto was considered to have filed his NOI on December 26, then he needed to file suit on June 26, 2014. But Haksluoto did not file his suit until June 27. The hospital filed a motion for summary disposition, arguing that the suit was time-barred. The trial court denied the motion, but the Court of Appeals reversed.
The panel held that MCR 1.108, which is the rule that determines the calculation of time, said the 182-day notice period began the day after Haksluoto served the NOI—meaning December 27, 2013—and expired on June 26, 2014. Because this meant that the NOI did not commence until after the two-year limitations had expired, the NOI could not have tolled that limitations period. The Court of Appeals wrote that its holding “means that a plaintiff who serves an NOI on the last day of the limitations period is legally incapable of filing a timely complaint and is, in effect, deadlocked from timely filing a suit.” The Court granted leave to appeal.
First, the Michigan Supreme Court made clear that there were two requirements for Haksluoto: (1) he had two years to file a claim under MCL 600.5805(6); and (2) he had to provide 182-days’ notice before commencing the action by serving the NOI. The Court also stated that Michigan uses a “mailbox rule” for providing the NOI.
Haksluoto mailed his NOI on the last day of the limitations period. Because the statute says the limitations period is tolled once notice is given, Haksluoto argued that when he mailed the NOI on the last day of the period, December 26, he tolled the limitations because there was still time left in the day. The Court of Appeals and the hospital pointed to MCR 1.108(1), which said that the day of the act or event after which the designated period of time begins to run is not included when computing time. In other words, because Haksluoto filed the NOI on December 26, that day—the day of the act—was not counted, so the filing did not occur under MCR 1.108(1) until the 27th.
The Court said that the Revised Judicature Act establishes limitations and tolling periods for civil cases exclusively. The Court continued, “Because it is undisputed that the notice here was filed on the final day of the limitations period (but before that final day ended), [the statute] has ostensibly been satisfied so as to trigger tolling.” But the Court did not stop there.
It pointed out that, as a general proposition, Michigan law rejects fractions of a day. Therefore, the Court had to choose either to round up or round down. The Court found no caselaw answering the question and instead turned “to the law of fractional days.”
Under MCL 8.6, when computing time, the first day is excluded and the last day is included. The Court determined that this principle could be traced through court rules back to the common law. The Court thus declared that this was “tantamount to a common-law principle.” The rationale was to ensure that parties receive the entire amount of time to which they are entitled. “In other words, when a party is afforded a certain number of days, that period is construed as a certain number of whole days, excluding the day which triggered the running of the period, to ensure that the party receives all of the tie to which he or she is entitled.”
Therefore, once the NOI was filed on December 26, 2013, “day 182” was on June 26, 2014. Because Michigan uses a mailbox rule for NOIs, the notice period ran for 182 whole days “plus whatever fraction of the day was left on December 26, 2013, at which time the NOI was placed in the mail.”
But, the Court cautioned, this does not answer whether the NOI tolled the statute of limitations. For that determination, the Court had to look to the law relating to rounding off of fractional days. The Court held that under its common-law jurisprudence of fractional days, a timely NOI preserves the day the NOI is served as a day to be used once the limitations period begins running after the notice period ends. Therefore, once the notice period ended and the tolling ceased, the time ran for a number of whole days that were remaining in the limitations period when the NOI was filed—plus one day to reflect the fractional day remaining when the NOI was filed.
In sum, Haksluoto filed his NOI on the final day of the limitations period, December 26, 2013. The fraction remaining on that day was treated as a whole day. Thus, the tolling left Haksluoto one full day to file his complaint once the 182-day notice period had ended. The Court also quickly rejected the hospital’s assertion that Haksluoto had to file his complaint on day 182, noting that the statute required 182 days to pass before he could file the complaint—which Haksluoto did.
Thus, the Court considered his NOI and his complaint to be timely. As a result, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals.
Full opinion here.