Patient says hospital hid surgeon’s status, court revives suit

In Maryland, a patient’s claim that Suburban Hospital misled him about who was handling his gallbladder surgery is back alive in federal court. The Fourth Circuit vacated the dismissal of Jon Lodwick Brunenkant’s fraud and conspiracy claims, finding the case was thrown out under the wrong time limit.

Brunenkant says the hospital held out surgeon Said Daee as its employee or agent and later concealed that he was an independent contractor. The appeals court did not decide whether that story is true. It said only that the case should not have been measured as if it were a medical malpractice claim.

The deadline that did not fit

That mattered because the district court used Maryland’s five-year deadline for claims tied to health care services. The Fourth Circuit said Brunenkant’s complaint sounds in fraud, not malpractice, and fraud claims generally fall under the state’s three-year civil deadline instead.

The panel also noted that Maryland’s highest court has not answered this exact question. Even so, it said the lower court took too broad a view of the malpractice clock when it treated the case as if every dispute connected to care had to fit that longer rule.

Another chance to prove the claim

The published opinion sends the case back to the District of Maryland, where Brunenkant can keep pressing his allegations instead of losing on timing alone. The ruling gives him another shot to argue that the hospital’s representation of the surgeon mattered enough to support fraud and civil conspiracy claims.

Brunenkant is representing himself, though he is also a Washington lawyer and an active member of the Fourth Circuit bar. For now, the court said that detail does not change the legal question at the center of the case: which deadline applies when a patient says a hospital misrepresented who was really involved in his care.