Six and one-half years have passed since “Lavern’s Law” became effective and provided a long overdue date of discovery rule to protect victims of negligent failures to diagnose cancer from having their statutes of limitations expire before they knew or had reason to know that they were injured by medical malpractice. See CPLR 214-a(b); CPLR 203(g)(2). Since that time, a handful of published decisions have addressed the application of the statutory amendment. Those decisions are the subject of this column.
The specific statutory provisions of Lavern’s Law were described and analyzed in a column published days after it became effective. For the purposes of the instant column, a brief recap of certain provisions is warranted.
