Illinois Supreme Court strikes down medical malpractice caps
The Illinois Supreme Court recently struck down limits on jury awards in medical malpractice cases passed by the Legislature four years ago amid spiking liability costs for medical providers.
The court ruled that the caps on pain and suffering and other non-economic damages — $500,000 per case for doctors and $1 million for hospitals — are unconstitutional.
The court’s opinion upholds a 2007 ruling by a Cook County Circuit Court judge determining that the law violated the Illinois Constitution’s “separation of powers” clause, essentially finding that lawmakers interfered with the right of juries to determine fair damages.
It’s the third time the state’s high court has quashed limits on medical malpractice awards, having tossed out similar laws in 1976 and 1997.
The ruling is a blow to physicians, hospitals and malpractice insurers, who successfully argued in 2005 that frivolous lawsuits and runaway jury verdicts were driving up insurance rates and forcing physicians to leave the state.
The court’s ruling stems from a malpractice lawsuit filed in 2006 by the family of a girl who suffered brain damage during her delivery at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park. Illinois’ trial bar selected the suit as its “test case” to challenge the law.
Liability insurance rates for Illinois doctors generally have held steady or dipped slightly since the caps took effect in August 2005, according to survey data from Medical Liability Monitor, an Oak Park-based trade publication. That’s roughly in line with national trends. Mike Colias reports.
The Wall Street Journal (2/5, Koppel) reports that the measure was initially intended to rein in increasing medical-liability insurance costs. Tort reform advocates saw the ruling as a setback, arguing that medical-malpractice suits play a large role in increasing healthcare costs.
Reuters (2/4) reported that Dr. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association, said the "decision threatens to undo all that Illinois patients and physicians have gained under the cap, including greater access to health care, lower medical liability rates and increased competition among medical liability insurers." But the Chicago Tribune (2/4, Japsen, Sachdev) reported, "Consumer groups and insurance industry officials say the fact that rates have stabilized" has "more to do with insurance market cycles."
Crain's Chicago Business (2/4, Colias) reported, "In declaring the jury-award caps unconstitutional, the court's decision also scraps several other insurance reforms included in the original law that both sides have said helped ease liability costs." One such reform is "a provision that forced" the state's largest malpractice insurer "to disclose the data it uses to set rates."
"Lawyers and other opponents of caps say those price controls were the real reason that malpractice insurance rates have gone down, rather than the presence of caps," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (2/5, McDermott) reports. The AP (2/4) also covered the story.
