A recent appellate decision in Lafferty v. Avila, 2026 N.Y. Slip Op. 05147, addresses a question with significant practical consequences: when a physician makes a mistake filling out a form, is that medical malpractice or is it ordinary negligence? The answer determines which statute of limitations applies, and in this case, it determined whether a lawsuit could proceed at all.

The case arose from a devastating chain of events. A driver with a history of epileptic seizures underwent a medical evaluation to have his suspended driver’s license reinstated. As part of that process, his neurologist was required to complete a New York State Department of Motor Vehicles form certifying, among other things, the date of the driver’s most recent seizure. State law required that the driver be seizure-free for at least 12 months before his license could be reinstated.

The physician’s own treatment notes from the very examination at issue reflected that the driver’s last seizure had occurred just four months earlier. Yet the DMV form the physician submitted listed a seizure date from nearly two years prior, information that appeared to have been mistakenly carried over from an earlier, unrelated visit. Based on that inaccurate information, the DMV reinstated the driver’s license. Two months later, the driver suffered a seizure while operating a vehicle, causing a multivehicle collision that tragically killed two people.

The victims’ estates sued the physician and his hospital, asserting claims for the decedents’ conscious pain and suffering. Among their theories was that the physician’s inaccurate transcription of the seizure date on the DMV form was negligent and directly led to the tragedy.

In New York, medical malpractice claims must be brought within two and a half years, while ordinary negligence claims have a three-year window. The lawsuit here was filed just outside the medical malpractice deadline, but within the ordinary negligence deadline. The trial court sided with the defendants, ruling that the claim was about medical malpractice and was therefore time-barred.

The appellate court reversed, holding that the specific claim at issue-the physician’s inaccurate recording of the seizure date on the DMV form-sounded in ordinary negligence rather than medical malpractice.

The court explained that the key distinction between the two types of claims turns on the nature of the duty allegedly breached. A claim sounds in medical malpractice when it involves matters of medical science, skill, or professional judgment. A claim sounds in ordinary negligence when it can instead be evaluated using the common, everyday experience of a juror, without needing specialized medical expertise.

Here, the court found that transcribing a date from an existing treatment note onto a government form was fundamentally administrative, not medical, in nature. The physician wasn’t exercising medical judgment when he filled in that particular date; he was simply supposed to accurately copy information that was already documented. Because a juror doesn’t need medical training to assess whether that kind of transcription was done carelessly, the claim fell under ordinary negligence principles.

Importantly, the court noted that not every allegation in the case was of this character. Other questions on the same DMV form clearly called for the physician’s medical opinion and judgment, and claims based on those aspects of the form would likely sound in malpractice. But because the plaintiffs specifically limited this claim to the erroneous transcription of the seizure date, that narrower claim was properly analyzed under the ordinary negligence framework, and was therefore timely filed.

This case illustrates how the same professional, performing tasks connected to a patient’s care, can be held to different legal standards depending on the specific nature of the act in question. Not everything a physician does in connection with a patient automatically qualifies as “medical treatment” for legal purposes. When an error is administrative or clerical in nature, rather than a matter of medical judgment, it may be evaluated differently.

For plaintiffs and their attorneys, this decision is a reminder that how a claim is framed and characterized can be the difference between a case moving forward and a case being dismissed as untimely.

Giulia R. Marino, Esq.