Barnes v. Greenwich Hospital

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, L and her husband, sought to recover damages from the defendant physician, Z, her employer, and a hospital for, inter alia, injuries L sustained during a colonoscopy procedure performed by Z. The plaintiffs failed to attach an opinion letter written and signed by a similar health care provider to their original complaint, as was required by the applicable statute (§ 52-190a), and the defendants filed motions to dismiss the complaint for that failure. In response, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint as of right pursuant to the applicable rule of practice (§ 10-59), and attached such an opinion letter. The amended complaint was filed and the opinion letter was dated after the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations. Following oral argument, the trial court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction as a result of the plaintiffs' failure to attach an opinion letter to their original complaint. On the plaintiffs' appeal to this court, held that the trial court did not err in its decision to grant the defendants' motions to dismiss: the plaintiffs failed to comply with the requirement set forth in § 52-190a (a), as they did not attach an opinion letter to their original complaint, obtain an opinion letter prior to filing the action, or file the amended complaint prior to the expiration of the statute of limitations, and such noncompliance mandated dismissal of the action under § 52-190a (c) when it was timely raised by the defendants; more- over, the plaintiffs were not entitled to amend their deficient complaint as of right under the rule articulated in Gonzales v. Langdon (161 Conn. App. 497), because the scope of that remedy was limited to curative efforts initiated prior to the expiration of the statute of limitations, allowing only for the amendment or substitution of an existing opinion letter, and the plaintiffs' amendment instead sought to introduce a new opinion letter; furthermore, this court d