Where an HCLA plaintiff sought to add a nurse practitioner’s supervising doctor and employer more than three years after the negligent act occurred, and plaintiff could not show that the new defendants were “aware of the wrong,” plaintiff could not prove the fraudulent concealment exception to the HCLA statute of repose and summary judgment should have been granted.
In Tucker v. Iveson, No. M2018-01501-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 11, 2020), plaintiff had a bad cough on Christmas Eve 2009 and believed she had bronchitis. Plaintiff’s friend, Ms. Johnson, suggested that her friend, Nurse Iveson, might be able to help. “Nurse Iveson was employed as a nurse practitioner at Sun Medical Express Walk In Clinic,” but she was not working that day and was out on personal business when Ms. Johnson contacted her. Either Ms. Johnson or plaintiff explained plaintiff’s symptoms to Nurse Iveson, who then wrote plaintiff a prescription for an antibiotic, oral steroids, and an inhaler. Ms Johnson retrieved the prescription and took it into Walgreens, and plaintiff later picked the prescription up. Some time after taking the medications plaintiff began experiencing tendonitis and was told by her physician “that the most likely cause of her condition was the medication prescribed by Nurse Iveson.” Plaintiff alleged that neither Nurse Iveson nor anyone at Walgreens told her that “one potential side effect of the antibiotic was tendonitis or that the risk of tendonitis increased if the antibiotic was taken with steroids.”