Civil Procedure – Medical malpractice statute of limitations doesn’t apply to claims against hospital

Where the district court held a man’s fraud and conspiracy claims against a hospital were subject to the statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims, it erred. Maryland courts have limited the Health Care Malpractice Claims Act’s applicability to traditional malpractice claims arising from the breach by a professional of his duty to comply with a standard of care. The claims here were instead about whether the hospital misrepresented itself as the employer of a doctor involved in his gallbladder removal surgery.

Background

Jon Lodwick Brunenkant appeals the district court’s order dismissing his complaint, which alleged two Maryland state law claims against Suburban Hospital Inc. and Suburban Hospital Healthcare System Inc., for fraudulent misrepresentation and conspiracy to commit fraud. Brunenkant says the court incorrectly applied Maryland’s five-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims in the Health Care Malpractice Claims Act, Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-109, when the court should have applied the state’s general three-year statute of limitations for civil claims in Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101.

Analysis

The Supreme Court of Maryland has never ruled on the precise question of whether fraudulent misrepresentation and conspiracy claims — such as those asserted by Brunenkant in his fraud and conspiracy complaint of May 2023, which stem from alleged medical malpractice — are subject to § 5-101 or 5-109. In 1983, however, the Maryland Supreme Court recognized that the state’s Health Care Malpractice Claims Act, which includes § 5-109, “covers only those claims for damages arising from the rendering or failure to render health care where there has been a breach by the defendant, in his professional capacity, of his duty to exercise his professional expertise or skill.”

Against this backdrop of Maryland legal principles, this court is of opinion that the claims alleged by Brunenkant in his fraud and conspiracy complaint fall well within the ambit of § 5-101, and not § 5-109. Although Suburban Hospital maintains on appeal that Brunenkant’s fraud and conspiracy claims relate to the emergency gallbladder removal surgery that Brunenkant underwent at Suburban in October 2015 — and thus appear to arise in the health care context — they are simply not the “traditional malpractice claims” subject to § 5-109’s five-year statute of limitations.

Thus, rather than invoking § 5-109, the district court should have applied Maryland’s general three-year statute of limitations for civil claims to assess whether the claims alleged in Brunenkant’s fraud and conspiracy complaint are time barred. Furthermore, in applying § 5-101’s three-year statute of limitation, Maryland courts utilize the so-called “discovery rule,” which provides that “the cause of action accrues when the claimant in fact knew or reasonably should have known of the wrong.”

And in a similar vein, Maryland’s high court has recognized that “[w]hether or not the plaintiff’s failure to discover his cause of action was due to failure on his part to use due diligence, or to the fact that defendant so concealed the wrong that plaintiff was unable to discover it by the exercise of due diligence, is ordinarily a question of fact for the jury.”

Vacated and remanded.

Brunenkant v. Suburban Hospital, Inc., Case No. 24-1197, May 21, 2026. 4th Cir. (King), from DMD at Greenbelt (Griggsby). Jon L. Brunenkant for Appellant. Michael E. von Diezelski for Appellees. VLW 026-2-184. 11 pp.

Full-Text Opinion
VLW 026-2-184