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453 A.2d 1181

Box v. Walker

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided January 6, 1983

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1983-01-06

Relies on Myrick v. James · Tantish v. Szendey

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1983-01-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently March 2010

4 district · 8 state decisions

701983199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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NICHOLS and ROBERTS, Justices,

¶1concurring.

¶2We concur in the result reached by the Court. We respectfully disagree, however, with the route chosen by the Court to reach that result. In Myrick v. James, 444 A.2d 987 (Me.1982), we decided that the discovery rule would be applied to a case involving foreign-object surgical malpractice and to similar cases arising after that decision. We there expressed concern for uniformity and certainty in the application of legal doctrine. We would better meet the concern expressed in Myrickby addressing in the case before us the question of extending the discovery rule to negligently performed sterilization procedures. We need not leave that question open for later adjudication. The issue is squarely before us, fully briefed and argued. We can, and we should, decide it. Unfortunately, the Court here chooses to leave uncertain the scope of Myrickuntil presented with conduct occurring after Myrick.

¶3We join in the result in this case because we accept as the considered judgment of the Court in Myrickthat the application of the discovery rule would be prospective. In weighing the retroactivity vel non of its decision to overrule Tantish v. Szendey, 158 Me. 228, 182 A.2d 660 (1962), the MyrickCourt confronted complex principles of the judicial process. The Court tempered the *1184impact of its overruling decision by one of several possible methods. That we accept the result does not mean that we endorse the method. We should continue in the future to consider other means of dealing with the temporal application of the rule of a case.

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