No action to recover damages for injury to the person, or to real or personal property, caused by negligence, or by reckless or wanton misconduct, or by malpractice of a physician, surgeon, dentist, podiatrist, chiropractor, hospital or sanatorium, shall be brought but within two years from the date when the injury is first sustained or discovered or in the exercise of reasonable care should have been discovered, and except that no such action may be brought more than three years from the date of the act or omission complained of, except that a counterclaim may be interposed in any such action any time before the pleadings in such action are finally closed.
McDonald v. Haynes Medical Lab., 192 Conn. 327, 471 A.2d 646 (1984). (A malpractice action commenced more than three years from the date of the negligent act is barred by the lapse of the limitation period, notwithstanding that the plaintiff did not, and could not, even with the exercise of reasonable care, discover the nature of his injury. The case involved the mistyping of blood resulting in Rh-factor incompatibility).
Burns v. Hartford Hosp., 192 Conn. 451, 472 A.2d 1257 (1984). (An action against the hospital was barred where more than two years had lapsed between the plaintiff's discovery of the child's injury (an infection from the use of contaminated intravenous tubes) and the institution of the action, notwithstanding the contention that "discovery" did not occur until the ultimate diagnosis was made of muscle or tendon scarring.)
Logan v. Greenwich Hosp. Assn., 191 Conn. 282, 465 A.2d 294 (1983). (In advising a patient who was about to undergo a closed needle biopsy of the kidney of possible alternative procedures, the physician must disclose even those procedures that involve more of a hazard than the one he is about to perform. The doctor did not mention the possibility of an open biopsy. The patient's gallbladder was punctured.)
Sherwood v. Danbury Hospital, 252 Conn. 193, 746 A.2d 730, 740 (2000). (A material issue of fact as to whether a continuing course of conduct tolled the statute of repose precluded summary judgment for the defendant hospital on the plaintiff patient's medical malpractice claim, which arose when the plaintiff allegedly contracted HIV from transfusions of untested blood at the hospital. The defendant's affirmative duty to notify the plaintiff that the blood she was given in surgery was not tested for HIV antibodies was not conditioned upon the plaintiff maintaining an ongoing relationship with the defendant, such that the absence of any ongoing physician-patient relationship beyond when the plaintiff was discharged from the hospital did not preclude a jury from applying the continuing course of conduct doctrine to toll the three-year statue of repose on the plaintiff's claim.)
Blanchette v. Barrett, 229 Conn. 256, 640 A.2d 74, 78 (1994). (The trial court improperly decided the existence of a physician-patient relationship as a matter of law. The plaintiff continued to regard the defendant, whom she had visited for many years, as her doctor even after the date of her last visit. Only when the doctor was busy did the plaintiff make an appointment with another doctor in the same office. The defendant retained the plaintiff's files for over two years after the plaintiff's last appointment, and the plaintiff's expert testified that under the circumstances the defendant had a continuing obligation to the plaintiff. Whether the physician-patient relationship continued even after the plaintiff's last visit was an issue for the jury.)
Maruca v. Standard, 19 Conn. App. 16, 559 A.2d 1167 (1989). (The question of whether a physician had fraudulently concealed the existence of a cause of action presented a genuine issue of material fact, and the trial court erred in granting the physician summary judgment.)