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18. Is the court likely to allow the woman to amend her complaint?
Four weeks after the initial complaint, the woman sought to amend the complaint to add a negligence claim against the heart surgeon on the theory that he poorly performed the surgery and post-operative procedures.
One week later, the surgeon performed the surgery on the woman and the nurse practitioner was not present. The surgery went badly. On the last day before the statute of limitations for tort claims in that state ran out, unhappy with the results, the woman filed a single-count complaint against the heart surgeon, as the sole defendant, in federal court. The complaint's only assertion was that the heart surgeon failed to obtain informed consent because he did not disclose an alternative method he could have used to perform the surgery.
A woman met with a heart surgeon and his nurse practitioner about having surgery to fix a blockage in her artery. The heart surgeon and nurse together described the procedure and informed her of the risks. The woman agreed to have the surgery exactly one week later and signed the consent form.
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Sometimes, the statute of limitations runs out between the filing of the original complaint and the amendment. Under FRCP 15(c)(B), to avoid a time bar, a litigant may argue that their amended pleading «relates back» to the date of the original pleading. An amendment relates back to the date of the original pleading when the claim or defenses asserted in the amended pleading arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out in the original pleading.
However, the relation back doctrine only applies where the pleading as amended arose out of the same conduct, transaction, or occurrence as set forth in the original pleading. Contrary to the liberal policy regarding amending complaints, courts have generally taken a very narrow view of when the newly-pleaded material and the original pleaded matter arose from the same conduct, transaction, or occurrence.
When deciding whether an amended pleading «relates back,» or falls under a single conduct, transaction, or occurrence, courts focus on the issue of the defendant's notice of an additional claim to the original pleading. If the defendant, reading the original complaint, would not be placed on notice of the essence of what will later be claimed in the amended complaint, then the two complaints do not involve the same conduct, transaction, or occurrence, and relation back will not apply.
B is correct. The issue here is amending a complaint such that it relates back to the event set forth in the original complaint. FRCP 15(c)(B) requires that the claim asserted in the amended pleading arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out in the original pleading. The court will determine whether the defendant, looking at the original complaint, would have been on notice of the essence of the additional claim based on the same event.
Here, the original complaint was about the surgeon advising the woman about her surgical options, along with a nurse practitioner, and the failure to obtain informed consent during that event. The later claim is about the surgeon's alleged negligence during and after the surgery, where the surgeon acted alone. The event giving rise to the informed consent claim was different from the event giving rise to the negligence claim, where the parties, conduct, and alleged violations differed. The court is not likely to find that the surgeon would have been on notice of the second claim when reading the initial complaint because it concerns the failure to explain the surgical options with a member of his staff in the room, while the second claim concerns his actual performance as a heart surgeon. The claims have different issues of material fact and would require different discovery.
A is incorrect. This answer choice states the correct conclusion with the incorrect legal reasoning. The court is not likely to allow the woman to amend her complaint, but not because the statute of limitations for the underlying claim has expired.
Under FRCP 15(c), the relation back doctrine allows a plaintiff to amend a complaint, even if the statute of limitations on the underlying claim has run, if the amended pleading arises out of the same event. As explained above, the court is unlikely to find the facts of these claims related enough to put the surgeon on notice that they'd be in the same complaint.
C is incorrect. This answer choice is referencing the standard for whether a plaintiff may change parties, the «know or should have known» rules. Although the issue of notice is relevant here, it is not whether the surgeon knew or should have known about the negligence claim, but for a mistake. As explained above, the heart surgeon was not on notice, and therefore the negligence claim will not relate back, because the original complaint concerns an alleged tort that occurred before the surgery in different circumstances from the subsequent claim, which would add allegations of tortious actions during and after the surgery.
D is incorrect. This choice misapplies the law to these facts. The woman's original complaint only contained allegations about the heart surgeon's actions prior to surgery when he and the nurse were advising the woman about her surgical options. The second claim contains new allegations about the heart surgeon's negligent actions during and after the surgery. Because of this distinction, the heart surgeon would not have been on notice that he would face liability for all of the above events in a single complaint. As such, the court is unlikely to find that the amended complaint relates backs to the original filing.