Fuller v. Tucker
California Court of Appeal
101 Cal. Rptr. 2d 776 (2000)
Annie Fuller (plaintiff) suffered a nerve injury paralyzing her leg during bladder-lift surgery; Dr. James Tucker (defendant), the anesthesiologist, was not named on her consent form (which no one explained to her, since she was illiterate), though his name appeared in her medical records and he examined her the day after surgery. Fuller sued several parties including a "John Doe," and only after the statute of limitations had run did she amend her complaint to name Tucker as that Doe defendant. The trial court found Fuller should have known an anesthesiologist would play a significant surgical role and should have found Tucker's name in her own medical records, and on that basis ruled her Doe amendment untimely and entered judgment for Tucker.
Whether, under California's fictitious-name statute, a plaintiff who does not know a defendant's name when filing suit may name that defendant as "John Doe" and later amend the complaint once the name is discovered, without having exercised reasonable diligence to discover it sooner.