January 02, 2017
The time-stamped trail created by Facebook has cost a Pennsylvania woman the chance to sue the doctors who misdiagnosed her Lyme disease, a state court has ruled.
The nine-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court found plaintiff Nancy Nicolaou had missed the two-year window to file the malpractice claim against the physicians with the St. Luke's University Health Network who initially treated her.
The judge made the determination by reviewing Nicolaou's posts about her health to Facebook.
Nicolaou, of Lehigh County, was bitten by a tick sometime in 2001, according to court documents. Between then and 2008, she saw various doctors and underwent multiple health tests – including tests for Lyme disease, which returned negative results.
Ultimately, the plaintiff was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but she was never convinced she did not have Lyme disease. By 2009, Nicolaou had researched online a nurse practitioner who specialized in people suffering from Lyme disease who had wrongly been diagnosed with MS.
After some delays, Nicolaou was tested again for the tick-borne disease, this time by the nurse, and on Feb. 13, 2010, the plaintiff was informed the results had come back positive.
The same day, according to court documents, Nicolaou posted the following message to her Facebook page:
Today i got my blood test back from igenix [sic] labs to test for lyme disease and it came back positive!!!!!!!!!!!!! i had been telling everyone for years i thought it was lyme and the doctors ignore me, thank you god you have answerd [sic] my prayers!!!!!!!!! Now its [sic] all in your hands!!!!!!!!!!!!
On Feb. 10, 2013, Nicolaou and her attorneys filed the malpractice lawsuit against the St. Luke's doctors who initially treated her.
But in deciding Nicolaou's claim exceeded the statute of limitations, most of the Superior Court judges, like the defense, focused on a portion of the plaintiff's Facebook post that read: "... i had been telling everyone for years i thought it was lyme and the doctors ignore me ..."
They also noted a reply to the post from one of Nicolaou's Facebook friends who stated, “[Y]ou DID say you had Lyme so many times!”
The Superior Court judges were split in their decision, which was published last week. The majority's opinion, which can be read here, upheld an earlier ruling to dismiss the case by a Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas judge.
The dissenting opinion can be read here.
