Godwin

Issue Presented

Plaintiff, Andrew Godwin, appeals from a summary judgment entered in favor of defendants Virgilio Panganiban, M.D., and Robert Hart, M.D. The superior court found plaintiff’s complaint for medical malpractice was untimely as against Drs. Panganiban and Hart, because it was filed after the applicable one-year statute of limitations. The court was called upon to interpret Code of Civil Procedure section 364, which requires a plaintiff to give 90 days’ notice before bringing a medical malpractice suit against a health care provider, but extends the applicable statute of limitations by 90 days if notice is served within the final 90 days of the original limitations period. The precise issue presented here is whether, when a plaintiff who knows the names of treating doctors serves a notice of intent to sue on the hospital within 90 days of the running of the statute of limitations, but fails to name or serve the known doctors, such notice extends the statute of limitations as to the unnamed doctors. Affirming the superior court, we hold that it does not.

Statement of Facts

The undisputed facts before the superior court established that on December 14, 1984,…