Gutierrez v. Tostado (Dec. 1, 2023, H049983) __ Cal.App.5th __ [2023 WL 8296004]
Francisco Gutierrez was rear-ended by an ambulance driven by Uriel Tostado—an emergency medical technician—who was transporting a patient between medical facilities. Nearly two years later, Gutierrez sued Tostado and his employer, a medical transportation company, for negligence. Tostado moved for summary judgment on the ground that Gutierrez’s claims were barred by the one-year statute of limitations in MICRA. The trial court granted the motion, and Gutierrez appealed.
The Court of Appeal affirmed in a split decision. Following Lopez v. American Medical Response West (2023) 89 Cal.App.5th 336 and Canister v. Emergency Ambulance Service, Inc. (2008) 160 Cal.App.4th 388, the majority held that the MICRA limitations period barred Gutierrez’s negligence claim because Tostado was a medical provider rendering professional services at the time of the accident. The court explained that MICRA applies to any “negligent act or omission to act by a health care provider in the rendering of professional services.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 340.5, subd. (2).) Accordingly, MICRA applied because Gutierrez was injured by Tostado’s alleged negligent driving of an ambulance transporting a patient: “transporting a patient in an ambulance qualifies as the provision of medical care . . . [and] driving the ambulance is an integral part of that care.” Moreover, the fact that Gutierrez was a third party not receiving medical care was irrelevant because MICRA is not limited to lawsuits by patients or recipients of medical services. The majority reasoned that it would be anomalous if different limitations periods applied to a patient and a third party who were both injured in the same accident.
The dissenting opinion criticized the majority for not following Lee v. Hanley (2015) 61 Cal.4th 1225, which construed the legal malpractice limitations period in Code of Civil Procedure section 340.6. Lee held that section 340.6 applied only where the attorney violated a professional obligation, rather than a generally applicable nonprofessional obligation. The Lee dissent would have held that section 340.6 applied to all negligence claims against an attorney performing professional services, and the dissenting justice in Gutierrez faulted the majority for applying the reasoning of the dissent in Lee. The Gutierrez dissent would apply the same distinction between professional and nonprofessional negligence to the MICRA limitation period that the Lee majority adopted. The dissent also reasoned that “it is neither impermissible nor impractical” to apply MICRA’s limitations period to some but not all claims involving the same conduct
