Gutierrez v. Tostado (July 31, 2025, S283128) __ Cal.5th __ [2025 WL 2169453]
Francisco Gutierrez was injured when an ambulance transporting a patient rear ended his vehicle. Nearly two years later, Gutierrez filed a negligence complaint against Uriel Tostado, the EMT who drove the ambulance. Tostado moved for summary judgment on the ground that Gutierrez’s claim was time barred under MICRA’s one-year statute of limitations in Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5, which applies to actions “against a health care provider based upon such person’s alleged professional negligence.” The trial court granted Tostado’s motion, ruling that the MICRA statute of limitations applied because he was a healthcare provider who was rendering professional medical services within the scope of his license at the time of the accident. Gutierrez appealed, and a divided Court of Appeal affirmed. The Supreme Court granted Gutierrez’s petition for review.
The Supreme Court reversed, holding that MICRA’s one-year statute of limitations does not apply where a plaintiff sues a healthcare provider for breach of a duty owed to the public generally, as opposed to a violation of professional obligations owed to patients. The Court explained that the definition of “professional negligence” in section 340.5 “suggests the statute is only concerned with injuries resulting directly from the negligent rendering of medical care, as opposed to all injuries that might occur during or that arise out of the provision of medical care.” Because the ambulance driver’s alleged failure to follow traffic laws was connected not to a professional medical duty but to the general duty all drivers have to operate their vehicles safely, the two-year general negligence statute of limitations applied.
Although the Court did not decide whether the patient riding in the ambulance would have faced the shorter MICRA statute of limitations had they sued for injuries sustained in the accident, it stated that “the plaintiff’s status as a patient or nonpatient is not necessarily determinative.” The Court explained that the “possibility of different plaintiffs being subject to different statutes of limitation is neither unworkable nor inherently unfair.” The Court also explained that the claims of non-patients may be covered by MICRA, provided those claims stemmed from the negligent provision of medical care. The Court acknowledged that professional duties may overlap with general duties owed to the public, but nonetheless perceived a “fundamental distinction between claims involving ‘professional negligence . . . and claims involving only general negligence.” In the case of ambulance services, the Court held that, while the “existence of an emergency may affect what will constitute ordinary care, it does not fundamentally alter the fact that the ambulance driver’s duty to other drivers is one of ordinary care.”
Finally, the Court disapproved two prior decisions—Canister v. Emergency Ambulance Service, Inc. (2008) 160 Cal.App.4th 388 and Lopez v. American Medical Response West (2023) 89 Cal.App.5th 336. The Court explained that Canister and Lopez incorrectly suggested “that a plaintiff’s claim sounds in professional negligence whenever the plaintiff’s injuries ‘occur[ed] during the rendering of services’ to a patient.” The Court emphasized that MICRA requires more than just an injury occurring during medical services—the professional negligence must be the proximate cause of the injury, meaning there must be a breach of a professional obligation owed to a patient.
