PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ...

Santos’s mother retained counsel for her daughter, who
investigated Santos’s potential liability claim against York
Health and its employees. Santos’s counsel identified four
persons he believed were the negligent healthcare workers who
caused Santos’s injury, a doctor, two dentists, and a physician
assistant, and also identified their employer, York Health, an
apparently private corporation. Thereafter, Santos’s counsel
performed a public records search on York Health, corresponded
with York Health, obtained Santos’s medical records, visited the
clinic, and reviewed pertinent records onsite. To evaluate
Santos’s potential liability claim, her counsel retained a family
practice expert, a dental expert, a professor of pediatric
otolaryngology, and a board-certified spinal surgeon, all of
whom prepared expert reports.
On May 25, 2005, about two years and five months after
a physician at York Hospital diagnosed Santos with
osteomyelitis, her counsel filed a malpractice action on her
behalf in the Court of Common Pleas of York County,
Pennsylvania, against the allegedly negligent parties, York
Health and the four professional employees. Santos’s counsel
believed that notwithstanding Pennsylvania’s two-year statute of
limitations on malpractice actions set forth in 42 Pa. Cons. Stat.
Ann. § 5524 (West 2004), her filing was timely because a
Pennsylvania statute, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5533(b)(1)(i)-(ii)
(West 2004), tolls the statute of limitations in a civil action
brought on behalf of a minor until she reaches her majority at
the age of 18 years. Undoubtedly, if the tolling statute had been
applicable, his belief would have been correct.
Santos’s investigations did not reveal, however, that for
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