Background
In November 2022, Stephen Barber was admitted to North Louisiana Medical Center for diverticulitis and received a PICC line (a catheter threaded into a vein near the heart). After transfer to Ruston Regional Specialty Hospital on November 22, 2022, imaging revealed the PICC line had pierced Barber’s pericardium—the sac surrounding the heart—causing pericardial tamponade and requiring emergency surgical removal. Barber alleged the injury resulted from improper insertion and placement of the PICC line.
On November 7, 2023, Barber filed a medical review panel complaint naming only the initial facility (NLMC) and Dr. Hunter Christy, who approved the PICC line placement there. Fourteen months later, on January 9, 2025, Barber amended his complaint to add Ruston Specialty and Dr. William Alexander, alleging they negligently caused the pericardial injury when administering contrast medium via the PICC line during a CT scan on November 29, 2022. Barber relied on an expert radiologist’s opinion received December 2, 2024, which proposed this alternate theory of injury.
Both Ruston Specialty and Dr. Alexander filed exceptions of prescription, arguing the amended complaint was filed more than one year after the alleged act and more than one year after Barber received their medical records—triggering Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive period for medical malpractice claims. The trial court sustained the exceptions and dismissed the claims.
The Louisiana Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal. The court held that under Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:5628(A), the one-year prescriptive period for medical malpractice claims begins when a plaintiff has actual or constructive knowledge of facts sufficient to excite attention and prompt inquiry—not when an expert opinion later confirms a specific theory of liability. The court found that Barber had constructive knowledge triggering prescription no later than September 5, 2023, when his counsel obtained Ruston Specialty’s medical records. More significantly, Barber’s own discharge papers from Ruston Specialty documented that Dr. Alexander had ordered a CT scan of the chest to rule out pulmonary embolism, and those results showed the PICC line had migrated into the pericardium. Any reasonable person reviewing these records would be placed on notice that medical treatment at Ruston regarding the PICC line could have contributed to the injury.
The court rejected Barber’s argument that prescription did not begin until he received his expert’s December 2024 opinion identifying power injection of contrast as the cause. The court emphasized that “the need for an expert to discern a potential claim does not extend the one-year prescriptive period.” The court also rejected Barber’s alternative argument that the initial complaint against NLMC and Dr. Christy suspended prescription as to Ruston Specialty and Dr. Alexander. Because Barber neither alleged nor proved that these providers were joint and solidary obligors, no suspension of prescription occurred as to the later-added defendants.