The Statute of Repose

Pennsylvania Personal Injury Statutes of Limitations

In 2002, The Pennsylvania Medical Society undertook an arduous campaign to enact tort reform in Pennsylvania, in which they claimed that medical malpractice awards by juries and high medical malpractice insurance premiums were forcing doctors to leave the state of Pennsylvania. In the spring of 2002, the Pennsylvania state legislature enacted a comprehensive medical malpractice bill known as the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) act. This restricted the rights of many patients to pursue meritorious claims.

This comprehensive and extremely restrictive legislation includes a section called the statute of repose, which places a time limit on how long a victim has to file a claim in court even if the discovery rule would otherwise apply and extend the time permitted to bring a suit. The statute of repose is applicable to all causes of action arising on or after March 20th, 2002. A link to the full text of the MCARE act is provided here (the MCARE act, like any complex legislation, should not be interpreted without the assistance of an attorney).

The statute of repose prevents claims from being brought more than seven years after the occurrence of the injury. So even if an injury or its cause is not discovered until long after the action or inaction creating the injury, the time available to pursue a case is limited to seven years from the date of the action or inaction

There are several important exceptions to this seven-year statute of repose. In situations where a foreign object is left in the body, the statute of repose does not apply. Death or survival claims must be filed within two years of the time of death, unless the cause of death was fraudulently concealed or actively misrepresented. Finally, in cases involving injuries to minors, claims must be brought within seven years from the time of the injury, or before the minor's twentieth birthday, whichever is later.

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