A woman’s lawsuit against a Casper doctor reached a court four days too late for her to pursue a negligence claim against him, Wyoming’s Supreme Court has ruled.
The court on Friday upheld a lower court’s decision against Merry Candelaria, finding her lawsuit against Dr. Mahesh Karandikar was filed four days after the statute of limitations expired in her claim against him.
According to the ruling, Karandikar performed seven surgeries on Candelaria’s spine between October of 2013 and March of 2016.
Candelaria stopped seeing Karandikar in March of 2016 and in March of 2018, she filed a claim against him with the Wyoming Medical Review Panel, which dismissed her claim.
Candelaria mailed her lawsuit against Karandikar to state district court in Casper on June 28, 2018. The record showed she tried to file her action four days earlier, but the delivery of the complaint was delayed because the address did not include a suite number for the district court.
Karandikar asked for a summary judgment against Candelaria, arguing she filed her action more than two years after her claim against him surfaced, so the statute of limitations had run its course.
The state district court ruled that to have been filed within the two-year statute of limitations period, Candelaria should have filed her action by June 25, 2018 — four days before the action was filed on June 29.
Justices unanimously upheld the district court’s ruling.
