Manning Kass Team Earns Two Victories

Congratulations to the Manning Kass Strategy, Writs, and Appeals team, who earned two victories surrounding the same incident.

The case revolved around an automobile accident and the actions taken by the plaintiff in the following years. The plaintiff was in a rear-end accident with an ambulance on Interstate 280. The ambulance was transporting a patient from one hospital to another and an EMT was in the rear of the ambulance attending to the patient. The driver and defendant was an employee of ProTransport-1, LLC at the time of the accident. The plaintiff sought medical treatment within 10 days of the accident and no further immediate action was taken.

Two years later, the plaintiff filed a complaint against the driver and ProTransport-1, LLC, alleging various personal injury claims. The Manning Kass team, led by San Francisco Partner Mark Wilson, filed a motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the plaintiff’s claims were time-barred under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA), which provides a one-year statute of limitations. The court agreed and granted the motion.

The plaintiff appealed the decision. The case then went in front of the appellate court, where a majority panel agreed with the original decision. The panel held that MICRA applied because, even though the plaintiff wasn’t the patient, the plaintiff was injured while the ambulance was rendering professional medical services to the patient.