SPONGE AFLOAT INSIDE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 66, 26 March 1913, Page 6

SPONGE AFLOAT INSIDE.

CURIOUS AMERICAN LAWSUIT. Chicago, March 18. If a sponge is left floating about in the interior of a patient who has been operated on, and is not discovered until seven years have elapsed, does the Statute of Limitations apply from the date of the operation or the date of its discovery? This is the legal teaser that Judge Carpenter of this city has been called upon to decide. The point arose in a case in which a man named George Montgomery sued Dr. Kalke, alleging that the surgeon negligently left a sponge in his abdomen after an operation for appendicitis. Seven years later other physicians discovered the presence of the sponge, and another operation had to be performed to remove it. The defendant avers that the period covered by the Statute of Limitations began when the original operation was carried out.