Roldon-Barrios v. United States

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for two days in his right leg. Appellant was once more diagnosed with cellulitis and admitted to the hospital through December 2, 1995. He subsequently experienced recurrent infections in his right leg, resulting in repeated VA hospital visits from March 19, 2004, through July 18, 2018.

On August 8, 2018, Roldán filed an administrative claim under the FTCA for medical malpractice related to the 1995 intramedullary rod fixation and removal surgeries. Two months later, the VA denied the claim, concluding that it was time-barred. He then filed suit in federal district court for the District of Puerto Rico on April 9, 2019. In February 2020, Roldán received an MRI of his right knee that revealed an old, healed tibial fracture and "[s]mall metallic artifacts" in his tibia and knee. He then amended his complaint to include the results of the MRI. Roldán subsequently underwent a CT scan of his right knee in April 2022, and the scan revealed "no acute displaced fracture or dislocation" and "small metallic densities . . . probably associated to postsurgical changes."

The government moved for summary judgment, contending that Roldán's medical malpractice claim was untimely and that the 2020 MRI did not toll the accrual date. While the summary judgment motion was pending, Roldán submitted an affidavit presenting two primary claims. First, he averred that an unnamed infectious disease specialist told him in 2018 that his recurring infections

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were caused by the 1995 surgery on his right leg. Second, he stated that he first learned about the metal in his right leg after the 2020 MRI, which induced him to request his medical records and discover a 2012 x-ray report containing findings that there were metallic traces in his right tibia. As relevant here, the government argued that, inter alia, the new facts in the affidavit would not toll the accrual date.

The district court agreed, concluding that Roldán's claims accrued, at the latest, on December 2, 1995, because he would have been "well aware that he was potentially developing side effects of the rod fixation surgery" at that time. Thus, the 2020 MRI could not toll the accrual date of a claim that was already time-barred.

On appeal, Roldán asserts that the district court erred when it found that his FTCA medical malpractice claim was time-barred because it accrued in 1995. Specifically, he theorizes that his claim first accrued in 2018, when he was told that his infections were related to the 1995 surgeries, and that the 2020 MRI revealing the metal in his leg also tolled the accrual date. He further contends that his Puerto Rico law claims were timely for the same reasons as his FTCA claim. These arguments fail. We review decisions to grant motions for summary judgment on statute of limitations grounds de novo, construing the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party.

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Morales-Melecio v. United States (Dep't of Health & Hum. Servs.),

890 F.3d 361, 367 (1st Cir. 2018) (quoting Rodríguez v. Suzuki Motor Corp., 570 F.3d 402, 405-06 (1st Cir. 2009)). We will affirm so long as "there is no genuine issue of material fact and the undisputed facts indicate that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Id. at 367-68.

The FTCA "forever bar[s]" a tort claim against the United States "unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues." 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b). Generally, a FTCA claim "accrues at the time of the plaintiff's injury." O'Brien v. United States, __ F.4th __, 2025 WL 2621596, at *7 (1st Cir. Sept. 11, 2025). In medical malpractice cases, the discovery rule "may delay accrual until a plaintiff knows (or reasonably should know) both that he is injured and what caused his injury." Sanchez v. United States, 740 F.3d 47, 52 (1st Cir. 2014). Nevertheless, for a claim to accrue, the plaintiff does not need to know the full extent of the injury or whether the injury was negligently inflicted; nor must the plaintiff possess definitive knowledge of the injury's cause. See Morales-Melecio, 890 F.3d at 369 (citing cases). However, once a plaintiff is aware of the probable cause and existence of the injury, it is incumbent upon him to "bear[] the burden of seeking further advice from the medical and legal communities to decide whether he has a viable cause of action." Id. at 368. We use "an

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objective standard," Sanchez, 740 F.3d at 52, to evaluate "what a reasonable plaintiff should have known or discovered." Donahue v. United States, 634 F.3d 615, 624 (1st Cir. 2011). The district court correctly determined that Roldán's claims accrued when he was discharged from the VA on December 2, 1995, after a multi-week hospital stay to treat cellulitis on his right leg.²The hospital stay followed a September 1995 infection and subsequent surgery to remove the intramedullary rod and nail. Thus, by December 1995, Roldán should have been on notice that he had a claim, because he had suffered repeated infections in his right leg and needed surgical correction to that leg -- the same leg that the VA originally operated on in January 1995. See, e.g., McCullough v. United States, 607 F.3d 1355, 1360 (11th Cir. 2010) (finding that pain, swelling, and fever, as well as surgery in the same location as the pain should have alerted the plaintiff to negligence by VA doctors); Reilly v. United States, 513 F.2d 147, 150 (8th Cir. 1975) (affirming the determination that a hospital readmission and subsequent procedures were sufficiently "extreme and unexpected consequence[s]" to put appellant on notice); Mello

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v. United States, 435 F. Supp. 3d 327, 329 n.1 (D. Mass. 2020) (concluding that a plaintiff who developed a "large, red blister"

at his acupuncture site could "hardly disclaim knowledge" of his injury and its cause). Roldán therefore had sufficient information for his claim to accrue in December 1995, and any information he learned after that time from the infectious disease specialist and MRI does not toll the accrual date for his FTCA claim. See Bradley

v. U.S. by Veterans Admin., 951 F.2d 268, 271 (10th Cir. 1991) ("To allow Plaintiff to postpone accrual until he is passively informed by an outside source that his injury was negligently inflicted would serve to undermine the purpose of the limitations statute, that claims against the government require diligent presentation.").³

For similar reasons, Roldán's claims under Puerto Rico Civil Code Articles 1802 and 1803, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. §§ 5141-42, are also untimely. Pursuant to Puerto Rico law, the statute of limitations for medical malpractice actions under these articles

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is one year. See Santana-Concepción v. Centro Médico del Turabo, Inc., 768 F.3d 5, 9 (1st Cir. 2014) (citing P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, § 5298 (2008)). Given that the district court correctly concluded that Roldán's claims for his leg injury accrued in 1995, it properly dismissed his state law claims as untimely.⁴

Affirmed.