Patients in Texas must file malpractice claims within 10 years of when an alleged negligence occurred and within 2 years of discovering an injury, according to a pair of unanimous decisions handed down by the state supreme court last week.

Both rulings involved cases of surgical sponges being left behind in patients' bodies and centered on Texas' Open Court Provision, which declares a 10-year last-chance deadline for all malpractice cases and establishes a 2-year statue of limitations on malpractice lawsuits.

In Walters v. Cleveland Regional Medical Center, Shirley Kiefer, and Keith Spooner, MD, the supreme court ruled in favor of Tangie Walters — who learned she had a sponge lodged against her small intestine 9-and-a-half years after undergoing a tubal ligation procedure — because she filed suit 2 months after the sponge was discovered.

Meanwhile, in Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio, W.C. Schorlemer, MD, and Robert Schorlemer, MD v. Emmalene Rankin, the court ruled against Ms. Rankin, who in July 2006 learned surgeons had left a surgical sponge inside her following a November 1995 hysterectomy. According to court documents, Ms. Rankin sued both the hospital where the procedure took place and the 2 operating surgeons in October 2006, nearly 11 years after the sponge was left in her body.

The Rankin ruling upholds Texas legislation enacted in 2003 that responded to a lack of physicians and doctors' rising medical malpractice insurance premiums by prohibiting plaintiffs from filing medical malpractice lawsuits more than a decade after the act that forms the basis of their lawsuit, according to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who last November filed a brief with the state supreme court defending the healthcare reform act.

Daniel Cook