Professional Negligence Law Reporter

The Iowa Supreme Court held that the state’s two-year limitations statutes applicable to medical malpractice claims applied to a lawsuit alleging breach of contract and negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation against a physician and medical spa.

Christine Kostoglanis received medical services, including liposuction, from physician LeRoy Yates at the Diamond Medical Spa & Vein. She required postoperative wound care and began treatment at a wound clinic a month after she underwent the liposuction. Three years later, she sued Yates and Diamond Medical Spa, alleging breach of contract and negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation. The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing the plaintiff’s claims were untimely under the two-year limitations statute governing malpractice actions, Iowa Code §614.1(9). The trial court granted the motion.

Affirming, the state high court found that a plaintiff cannot avoid complying with the applicable medical malpractice limitations period through artful pleading. Here, the court said, the plaintiff’s causes of action arose out of patient care and the provision of medical services and flow from a doctor-patient relationship. It is the substance, not the form, of the cause of action that determines the applicable limitations period, the court held, adding that here, to prove her claim, the plaintiff must show that the defendant physician failed to perform the procedures within the accepted standard of care.

Consequently, the court held that the state’s two-year limitations period applied to the plaintiff’s claims, and summary judgment for the defense had therefore been proper.

Citation: Kostoglanis v. Yates, 956 N.W.2d 157 (Iowa 2021).