Illinois Supreme Court knocks down malpractice award limits

Illinois' Supreme Court, in a 4-2 decision, has dealt a major blow to doctors and hospitals, and — dissenting justices say — to efforts at health-care reform, as well.

Justices declared that caps the legislature imposed on "non-economic compensatory damages" in medical malpractice cases — that's awards for "pain and suffering" —  violate Illinois' constitution (you can find the opinion in Lebron, a minor vs. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital on the Supremes web site).

Why? Because Illinois judges already have the right to reduce jury awards for damages, if they think they're unreasonably high. So the Supremes say lawmakers violated the separation of powers, by taking away "the fundamentally judicial prerogative of determining whether a jury's assessment of damages is excessive."

Illinois lawmakers capped awards in malpractice cases — $1,000,000 for hospitals, $500,000 for doctors — in 2005, in an effort to reduce the cost of med-mal insurance, and therefore, of health care. Republican House leader Tom Cross claims, in the Capitol Fax blog, that the caps had increased competition by insurors, leading to a 5-30% drop in malpractice insurance.

17 other states have similar caps, but the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald, says his only concern is the Illinois constitution, writing: "That 'everyboy's doing it' is hardly a litmus test for the constitutionality of the statute."

Justice Llyod Karmeier invoked Obama health-care reform plans in his dissent, arguing that scrapping med-mal caps may hurt such efforts: "The cumulative harm from reduced access to medical treatment could easily overshadow the benefits a few individual plaintiffs stand to realize from abolition of damages caps."

Karmeier's invocation of Obama is ironic-- the justice is a Republican who won what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called an "ugly, dispiriting, destructive, misleading, money-drenched race" with heavy backing from business groups who have lobbied to curb lawsuit awards.