In the past year, I've just started experiencing pain from a staple that was left in me after my C-Section (I had C-Sections in both 1996 and in 1999)

You can sometimes toll the statute of limitations for equitable reasons.   The "discovery rule" is one of the equitable grounds to delay the running of the statute of limitations in most jurisdictions under the common law. Essentially, that doctrine holds that if it was impossible to discover that damages were related to medical malpractice then the statute of limitations does not start running until a reasonable person knew or should have known that he was the victim of malpractice. A common example given is when a surgeon leaves a foreign object in the body during surgery and somebody doesn't discover it until developing symptoms and undergoing exploratory surgery many years later. It would be fundamentally unfair to allow a doctor to defeat a claim with the SOL in those circumstances, because the patient could not reasonably have discovered that he was the victim of malpractice until the second surgeon found the foreign object. Your problem is that you were aware of the staple a few years ago, and arguably since a few years has gone by since then, even if the SOL was tolled earlier it has expired now.  Your argument is that you did not appreciate the significance of the harm until recently. In New Jersey, you would not prevail on this argument because case law explicitly rejects the idea that people can delay the statute of limitations until they fully understand the consequences of somebody's negligence. The public policy argument against this is that it creates a slippery slope that will significantly erode the certainty that the statute of limitations otherwise provides businesses and insurance companies. In most cases involving personal injuries, the exact quantum of damages is never known "for certain" and there is always an element of prognostication in these cases.  Because I am an attorney, when I write to people about legal matters I have to insert language to cover my rear-end and say things that are usually already pretty obvious. This is not because I think you are stupid, it is because lawyers are held to a higher standard than most people when they are providing explanations about legal issues and are easily criticized for being misleading when less than clear. So, please understand that I am not acting as your attorney, I am not doing anything to protect any legal rights that you have and you should not consider this email as legal advice. If you have questions and want to investigate a case, you should contact an attorney in your state. John Ratkowitz, Esq. Starr, Gern, Davison & Rubin, P.C. 105 Eisenhower Parkway Roseland, NJ 07068 Office: (973) 830-8441 Cell: (732) 616-6278 Fax: (973) 226-0031 Email: jratkowitz@starrgern.com.  Click here for my website.