delivered the opinion of the court:
Plаintiff Rebecca Thede sued defendant Dr. Helen Kapsas for medical malpractice. The trial court granted Kapsas summary judgment on her affirmative defense that the suit was untimely. Thede appeals. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
Rebecca Thede engaged the services of Dr. Helen Kapsas to remove a mole from hеr shoulder. She became a patient of Kapsas’s, at the CGH Prophetstown Family Medical Center, after the only previous doctor in Prophetstown and a second doctor in Sterling left private practice. Thede had been to see Kapsas at least five times before scheduling this surgery. She was aware thаt the clinic was operated by Community General Hospital of Sterling and that Kapsas had not independently billed her for services on previous occasions.
Thede and Kapsas intended this particular procedure to be an outpatient surgery conducted at the clinic. Kapsas gave Thede the choice of having the surgery seated or lying down; Thede chose to have the mole removed while seated. Kapsas administered a local anesthetic and proceeded to operate on Thede. During the surgery, Thede fainted and fell off the examination table, striking her face on a chair, breaking her front teeth and injuring her jaw and nose. Thede was then admitted to Community General Hospital for treatment of her injuries.
One year and eleven months after Thede was injured, she sued the hospital and Kapsas for malpractice. The complaint against Kapsas alleged that she was a hospital employee. 1 Kapsas admitted this allegation. Within two months, Thede amended her complaint for reasons unrelated to this appeal. She again alleged Kapsas was an employee of Community General Hospital.
The hospital moved for dismissal, establishing that it is a municipal corporation and personal injury suits against it were, at the time, subject to a one-year limitations period. 745 ILCS 10/8 — 101 (West 1998). The hospital’s motion for dismissal was granted. Thede amended her complaint against Kapsas again, this time alleging that Kapsas was a physician in private practice and the applicable limitations period was two years.
Kapsas moved for summary judgment on the affirmative defense that she was a hospital employee, the applicable limitations period for her was also one year, and it had expired. The trial court first denied summary judgment because the limitations period for public employees accused of medical malpractice had recently been changed from one year to two years, and there was doubt about whether the old rule or the new rule applied. It was later determined that the one-year rule would apply if Kapsas was a hospital employee. Kapsas then asked the court to reconsider summary judgment. The triаl court refused a second time, this time believing there was a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Kapsas was an independent contractor and not protected by the one-year limitations period. Discovery was ordered. At the close of discovery, Kapsas made a second motion to reconsider summary judgment. The court granted summary judgment, finding there was no genuine question of material fact with respect to Kapsas’s status as an employee of Community General Hospital.
ANALYSIS
Thede makes two claims on appeal. First, that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment because a genuine issue of material fact still exists regarding Dr. Kaspas’s employment relationship with the hospital. Second, that the trial court erred by not giving Thede equitable relief from the statute of limitations.
We review the trial court’s decision to grant Kapsas’s motion for summary judgment de novo. Happel v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,
I. Employment Relationship Between Defendant and Community General Hospital
The trial court found that Thede offered no evidence inconsistent with Kapsas’s evidence establishing that she was an employee of Community General Hospital. Thede contends that both Kapsas’s employment agreement and the universal consent form Thede signed create a genuine issue of material fact as to Kapsas’s status as a hospital employee. We disagree.
Summary judgment is available to a defendant “if the pleadings, depositions, and admissions on filе, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” 735 ILCS 5/2 — 1005(c) (West 2006). Pleadings, depositions, admissions, and affidavits must be construed strictly against the movant and in favor of the opponent. Adams v. Northern Illinois Gas Co.,
In February 2001, when Thede was injured, рersonal injury suits against municipal employees were subject to a one-year limitations period. 745 ILCS 10/8 — 101 (West 2002). Accordingly, if Kapsas was an employee of Community General Hospital, Thede’s suit is time-barred. Tosado v. Miller,
The nature of the relationship between a principal and an agent is a question of fact. Gilbert v. Sycamore Municipal Hospital,
Kapsas produced a copy of her employment agreement with Community General Hospital, as well as deposition testimony from herself and representatives of the hospital. Thede claims a genuine issue of material fact is created by a clause in Kapsas’s employment agreement and language in a consent form Thede signed. Thеde asserts these items controvert Kapsas’s evidence that Community General Hospital had a right to control Kapsas’s work as a physician. See Wheaton v. Suwana,
Whether a principal has a right to control the manner in which an agent works is the most important of eight factors in determining whether the agent is an еmployee or an independent contractor. Warren. v. Williams,
First, Thede argues Community General Hospital has no right to control Kapsas’s work because the hosрital bargained for the following language assigning it any income Kapsas earned for medically related activities outside the scope of her employment at the hospital:
“6. Outside Contract — Fees and Revenue belong to CGH Physician [Kaspas] shall not enter into any contract utilizing or altering any of CGH’s assets, nor shall she enter into any contract for the rendering of medical services to any third party.
All fees, billing and revenue generated or attributable to Physician’s services in any way related to the practice of medicine and/or surgery, whether within or without CGH shall belong to CGH. This includes any renumeration [sic] received by Physician for outside medically-related activities. CGH may, at its sole discretion, grant exceptions to the outside income rule.”
Thede asserts that this provision anticipates and approves of Kapsas practicing medicine without the hospital’s supervision, and the portion of paragraph 6 appearing in Thede’s brief could be read that way. But when the paragraph is taken as a whole, it restates Kapsas’s fiduciary duties to the hospital and generally prohibits Kapsas from outside medical employment. See ABC Trans National Transport, Inc. v. Aeronautics Forwarders, Inc.,
A trial court is not required to entertain unreasonable inferences raised in opposition to a motion for summary judgment. Purdy Co. v. Transрortation Insurance Co.,
Second, Thede argues the hospital’s universal consent form is evidence that Kapsas was a contractor and not an employee. The form stated, “Physicians providing care are independent practitioners and are not employees or agents of CGH Medical Center.” Patient consent forms are almоst conclusive in determining a hospital’s liability for an independent physician’s malpractice. York v. Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center,
Here, we are not dealing with the hospital’s vicarious tort liability for a physician’s decisions. We are dealing with a state statute that depends solely on the actual employment relationship between Kapsas and Community General Hospital. 745 ILCS 10/1 — 202 (West 2006). When an actual agency relationship exists, the principal cannot alter that relationship by denying it to a third party. Daniel Forbes Co. v. Leonard,
Finally, neither of these items supports an inference that Kapsas treated Thede while moonlighting as an independent physician. Contrary to Thede’s argument on this point, the provision of the employment agreement Thede offered as evidence expressly prohibited Kapsas from treating Thede independent of Community General Hospital. The consent form Thede signed was prepared by the hospital, not Kapsas. The negligence of which plaintiff complains took place inside the four walls of Community General Hospital. There is simply no evidence to support the argument that there is a question of material fact regarding whether Kapsas treated Thede outside of her employment relationship with the hospital.
There is no genuine issue of material fact regarding the actual employment relationship betweеn Kapsas and Community General Hospital, nor is there evidence supporting an argument that Kapsas was acting as an independent physician when Thede was in her care. The trial court correctly granted summary judgment in Kapsas’s favor.
II. Equitable Extension of Limitations Period
Thede claims the trial court abused its discretion by not granting equitable relief from thе statute of limitations. A trial court abuses its discretion only when no reasonable person could agree with its decision. In re Marriage of Getautas,
A defendant may be equitably estopped from asserting a particular defense, such as the statute of limitatiоns, if the defendant made a representation that would preclude exercising that defense and the plaintiff relied on the representation to her detriment. Phillips v. Elrod,
A limitations period may be equitably tolled “if the defendant has actively misled the plaintiff, or if the plaintiff has been preventеd from asserting his or her rights in some extraordinary way, or if the plaintiff has mistakenly asserted his or her rights in the wrong forum.” Clay v. Kuhl,
Thede argues that Kapsas had an affirmative duty to notice and correct the misstatement on the hospital-рrovided consent forms. Even an innocent misstatement by a defendant’s agent can constitute actively misleading a prospective plaintiff and trigger the doctrine of equitable tolling. Varga v. Rumsfeld,
The limitations period can be tolled against a defendant who did not mislead the plaintiff if the plaintiff faced an extraordinary barrier to asserting her rights in a timely fashion. Extraordinary barriers include legal disability, an irredeemable lack of information, or situations where the plaintiff сould not learn the identity of proper defendants through the exercise of due diligence. Griffin v. Willoughby,
Thede contends that she relied on the passage in the universal consent form stating that, “[p]hysicians providing care are independent practitioners and are not employees or agents of CGH Medical Center.” Her assertion that but for the consent form, she would have timely filed suit against Kapsas is belied by the record. Thede filed suit against the hospital late as well. It is clear that plaintiff was simply unaware of the one-year limitations period for both Kapsas and the hospital.
In essence, equity calls for us to sometimes look beyond the letter of the law in order to effect a more just result. The suit before us involves Kapsas and not Community General Hospital. We find no justice in tolling the statute of limitations against Kapsas because of a misrepresentation made by her employer. We note that in Thede’s original complaint, she alleged an employer-employee relationship between Community General Hospital and Kapsas. She obviously was not misled. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence is that Thede was unaware of the one-year limitations period, applicable to both the hospital and Kapsas. Had she sued the hospital within one year but waited to sue Kapsas, this would be another matter.
Again, we are talking about equity. We cannot find any equity in giving relief to a party, on the basis that the party claims to have relied on a misrepresentation, when the party’s pleadings unmistakably demonstrate that there was no such reliance. We find no abuse of discretion.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the circuit court of Whiteside County is affirmed.
Affirmed.
McDADE, EJ., and CARTER, J., concur.
Notes
We recognize that this original complaint was nullified and withdrawn when Thede later filed her amended complaints against Kapsas. Barnett v. Zion Park District,