VALDOSTA, Ga. – The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge in the 2016 wrongful death lawsuit made a mistake in finding that the widow “waited too long” to join the lawsuit.

In 2014, dialysis patient John Seay was rushed to hospital after he began to bleed from the areas of the dialysis machine hook up. Seay died in the intensive care unit shortly after. In 2016, a lawsuit was filed against Dr. Van Chiang, the Valdosta Kidney Clinic, Total Renal Care, DaVita Accountable Care Solutions, DaVita Rx and five John Doe defendants.

The trial judge made this decision while agreeing with the doctor’s lawyers stating that the widow, Eunice Seay, could not intervene due to the two-year statute of limitations, according to Law.com. However, as of January 3, Judge Amanda Mercier, Judge Anne Elizabeth Barnes and, Judge E. Trenton Brown III came to the conclusion that by allowing the widow to join the suit the substance of the claim or circumstances of the original complaint would not be altered.

The defense argued that under state law the plaintiffs had no claim to make the original suit. The order of suit after death generally goes to the surviving spouse, if there is no surviving spouse then it would go to child/children, then to the parents of the deceased then lastly the estate may bring a claim. In this case, Eunice Seay had no interest in filing suit when the Seay’s estate executor and son, Roy Seay, decided to sue the doctor and clinic. Eunice Seay later changed her mind.

“We recognize that the statute of limitation expired on the wrongful death claim approximately two years before the plaintiffs moved to amend the complaint by adding the widow as a party,” the opinion said, “[m]ere delay in seeking leave to amend [was] not a sufficient reason”