It was announced today that Gov. Cuomo will sign a bill to allow additional time for victims of delayed diagnosis of cancer to file a malpractice claim. Currently, if you didn't file a medical malpractice suit within 2 1/2 years of the malpractice your case could be dismissed as late--even though you didn't even know you had cancer until 2 1/2 years after the deadline to file had expired. So now with this new legislation to be enacted this week--the 2 1/2 year window to file a malpractice suit involving cancer starts when the patient discovers the malpractice. The time to file any other type of medical malpractice suit remains the same. This exception to the standard rule on when to start the 2 1/2 year window does not apply to any other type of illness caused by malpractice, other than cancer.

Under this newly agreed upon version of the bill that Gov. Cuomo promised to sign this week, those patient's whose deadline to sue expired within the last 10 months will get a 6 month extension to file their claim. This law is referred to as Lavern's Law, named after a woman who died as a result of a delay in diagnosing a curable form of cancer, but was deprived of justice because no one was aware of the malpractice until the 2 1/2 year deadline had expired.