For the third time, the Illinois Supreme Court found caps on medical malpractice damages unconstitutional because the legislature was encroaching on the inherent powers of the judiciary. The limitation on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits violated the separation of powers clause of the Illinois Constitution.
The limitation had been set forth by the legislature as a way to enact reform to the health care system in Illinois. However, these limitations did not reform the system. Instead, injured parties were blamed for an unfair system that saw rising costs and unfair treatments.
One of the concerns of the Court in its opinion was that the statute reduced a jury’s award of noneconomic damages to a predetermined limit, irrespective of the facts of the case.
In the case before the court, a mother alleged that certain acts and omissions by the doctors and the hospital caused her newly born child to sustain numerous permanent injuries. Under the statute, the jury’s weighing of damages based on the injuries in this specific case could not outweigh the legislature’s pre-determined cap. Although the child suffered greatly from injuries including, but not limited to, severe brain injury, cerebral palsy, cognitive mental impairment, inability to be fed normally such that she must be fed by a gastronomy tube, and inability to develop normal neurological function, she could not be awarded noneconomic damages to justly compensate her for the injuries she sustained.
The arbitrary number created by legislators simplified the damages that the mother and child suffered and limited the powers of the judicial branch to assess the case before it. By finding the caps unconstitutional again, the Supreme Court placed the powers back into the rightful hands of our judicial branch to ensure fairness for all injured parties in medical malpractice suits.
