Rose v. Fife

In Rose v. Fife (1989) 207 Cal.App.3d 760, the plaintiff suffered an infection and complications from an intrauterine device (IUD) but did not file a complaint against her doctor and the IUD manufacturer until almost three years later. The appellate court rejected her argument that she did not learn of wrongdoing until reading a newspaper article linking her particular IUD type to injuries similar to her own. Instead, a reasonable person would have suspected wrongdoing when the doctors who treated her during her hospitalization told her they felt the IUD was the cause of her infection and it had to be removed. (Id. at pp. 766-767.) The court concluded that even if the plaintiff did not suspect wrongdoing when she was hospitalized, she reasonably should have suspected wrongdoing. "We hold as a matter of law that a reasonable person would have suspected wrongdoing by the doctor and would have inquired; she would have gone to find the facts rather than waiting until October 1985 for the facts to come to her." (Id. at p. 770.) The court reasoned the one-year period commenced "when a plaintiff's 'reasonably founded suspicions have been aroused' and the plaintiff has 'become alerted to the necessity for investigation and pursuit of her remedies.'" ( Id., at p. 768.) In Rose, more than one year before filing suit, the plaintiff had reasonably founded suspicions she had been harmed by the prescribed used of an IUD. The court reasoned that even though she did not know the identity of the manufacturer of the IUD she used, she knew the identity of the person who prescribed the IUD, and she could have sued him and named the manufacturer as a Doe defendant. ( Id., at p. 770.)