A gain from Lavern’s loss
Capping a session where the state Legislature failed miserably on multiple fronts, the warring state Senate and Assembly had the decency to pass Lavern’s Law, which grants cancer patients and survivors harmed by medical malpractice a fair shot at justice shockingly denied until now. Amen. Gov. Cuomo, you know what to do. Lavern Wilkinson was 41 when she died in 2013 of lung cancer, after the doctors at the cityrun Kings County Hospital had failed three years earlier to flag the mass an X-ray showed was growing ominously in her chest.
The single Brooklyn mom died not only pierced with pain but also panicked about how her survivors would afford to care for her severely autistic daughter. That’s because a cruel and counterintuitive New York law lets patients sue public hospitals for malpractice only during the 15 months following a doctor’s misdeed. In private hospitals, the clock runs out at 30 months.
Patients like Lavern, whose developing illness revealed malpractice years after the fact, got nothing more than a shrug at the courthouse door.
The just-approved measure starts the clock where it always should have begun: at the moment the patient discovers, or ought to have discovered, that something went wrong. From that point, they have 21 years to sue, enough time to allow a case to be brought — so long as the first legal papers are filed no later than seven years after the medical mistake.
Why did the law finally pass after years of false starts? Because legislative leaders, in this one arena, had the good sense to compromise.
Even as the Assembly, prodded by the Daily News, correctly backed the full reform, the Senate leadership — despite 41 “yes” votes in the 63-member body — wouldn’t come around.
To satisfy lingering concerns, Senate Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco crafted a compromise that limits Lavern’s Law to cancer patients and drops retroactive eligibility for patients who discovered in the past year that they’ve been wronged.
It passed both houses. Wronged patients will be better off. Lavern Wilkinson, who died far too young, leaves a lifesaving legacy.