Posted by Editor | Posted in Medical Malpractice
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among other news outlets, is reporting that the state of Illinois will reconsider its state law providing limitations on the non-economic damages awarded as part of medical malpractice jury verdicts.
Though the state has twice struck down medical malpractice laws, most recently in 1997, state lawmakers wrote a new law in 2005 that caps non-economic damages (money for things like “pain and suffering”) to $500,000 for doctors and $1 million for hospitals. However, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane Larsen ruled in favor of the mother of young Abigaile LeBron, who suffered extreme mental impairment and cerebral palsy as the result of injuries sustained during her birth, and in fact declared the medical malpractice caps unconstitutional, as statutory limits interfered with the duty of juries to award what they deemed appropriate verdicts.
This question of the separation of legislative and judicial powers will be at the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision this fall, and makes it fairly likely that the cap will be overturned once again, as the court previously ruled in favor of this separation both times it overturned malpractice caps.
There is no date set for the case to go to trial, but it could happen as early as next month, the Post-Dispatch reports.
