Jacob O. Malatesta and Zach Pugh (Appeal) (Jackson, MS) represented UMMC on appeal.
The Mississippi Supreme Court, sitting en banc, has reversed and rendered summary judgment for the University of Mississippi Medical Center in University of Mississippi Medical Center v. Carter, No. 2024-IA-00038-SCT (Miss. Aug. 6, 2026). The Court held that the plaintiff’s medical-negligence claims were time-barred under the one-year statute of limitations in the Mississippi Tort Claims Act. The Court found that the discovery rule did not save the claims because the plaintiff’s own statements in her deposition that “something [was] done wrong” started the limitations clock over a year before her notice of claim. The Court rejected arguments that a later, second opinion delayed access to medical records or a latent-injury theory tolled the deadline
Notably, four members of the Court called for overruling Barnes v. Singing River Hospital Systems and its progeny, which judicially grafted a discovery rule onto the Mississippi Tort Claims Act’s one-year limitations period. The Legislature never enacted a discovery rule for MTCA claims, that the 2012 “absolute bar” amendment cannot be squared with one, and that the addition was a pernicious judicial rewrite unprotected by stare decisis or legislative acquiescence. MTCA entities and practitioners should be on notice that a substantial bloc of the Court is prepared to eliminate discovery-rule tolling in MTCA cases.
The result reaffirms that under Mississippi law, a plaintiff’s own suspicion of negligence triggers the running of the limitations period.