position argument and case where in this court found that common fund doctrine does not apply to health care professionals and providers under the health care services lina act two years later fifth district in the stanton decision acknowledged that when the decision prevented the common fund doctrine from being applied to health care lien holders but determined that under the statutory construction rules that it would allow the attorneys fees to be shifted over to the health care lien holders but it said that when ling did not apply because that case only dealt with the common fund doctrine and did not look at the statute and make no terminations in july of last year the fifth district again stated in mcveigh which is why we're here today that erred in its decision in looking at the fifth district case mcveigh and stanton which there are both i think basically the same they did the court look at statutory construction understaffed for construction the primary objective is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the legislature the most reliable indication such intent is the actual language of the statute which is to be given it's a plain and ordinary meeting  should not be limitations into a statute that the legislature did not originally include when the statute is clear and unambiguous on the plain language of the statute there is no reason for the courts to search for motives legislators justify the statutes giving a different meaning than the words that are actually written it should not rewrite statues to make them consistent with the court's idea orderliness and public policy in this case if you look at the statute it's very clear in unambiguous under the plain language of it it says we say it starts if you have a settlement and there are a lien holders in that settlement if you you multiply the settlement times forty percent or so much verdict ward compromise or judgment you multiply that times forty percent if the lien holders have liens equal or exceeding that forty if they do not then it does not if it does apply then you take that role settlement verdict judgment award or compromise and multiply it times forty percent and that is what is given formula and then decided that the legislature intended that the plaintiff get thirty percent which makes sense but that's where they start they said ok the legislature wants to give the pla thirty percent in this case therefore in order for them to get thirty percent we need to take the attorneys fees out of the subtle went first and include the cost and expenses then we would apply forty percent for the lien holders for example if you have one hundred thousand dollars settlement and let's say there's ten thousand dollars in costs and expenses you would take out forty thousand dollars which is the thirty percent to the attorney and the ten thousand dollars in costs which would leave you would leave you sixty thousand dollars they would then apply the forty percent to the sixty giving the the lien holders what's what twenty four thousand so instead of getting forty thousand which is what the statu is they didn't even pay any attention to the attorneys late act if you look at the attorneys leave act it's pacifically sets forth that the attorneys lean includes it's it's  have tried to argue that in the mcveigh decision that the attorneys lean that would control here and they paid no attention to it whatsoever i mean if you look at the opinions in both stanton end of day the attorneys lean act is not mentioned but if you look attorney's lien act also specifically references the health care services leave act saying that if the health care services lane act applies then the attorney's lien is going to be limited to thirty percent this would include costs and expenses so if you apply that to the health care lien act the plaintiff is always going to get thirty percent which is exactly what the statute says so you have forty percent to the lienholder thirty percent to the correct what happens if the agreement between the client and the attorney is that the client bear the costs what happens then that's not relevant to the statute the statute sets forth what the attorney gets i mean we're talking about the lien my question to you is this the attorney have an action a cause of action against the client sure but he would not have a lien against the settlements he would have a contractual you have a contract with the plaintiff that he's to get his costs back now what they do between now is up to them because under the hot under my lean i'm only going to get forty percent or from the only lien holder and limit the one third on the statute so any balance left over i could try and collect it in reality we may collect ten percent if that most of the time of written off the bat so i may have one hundred thousand dollar bill or lien and in most situations when we're dealing with motor vehicle accidents and this type of a mouse they don't have health insurance lot of times or on medicaid and you know it's just it would be a w from from raising the cost to litigate the case or maybe they shouldn't take in the case in the first place if it wasn't worth that you know i can't make that decision for them that's up to the attorney and up to the plaintiff i can only tell you we gave them medical services for which we have a bill and which we have a lien and the statute provides that we are to get forty percent of the gross verdict of settlement award compromise it doesn't state that we get forty percent of that attorneys not working for us were separate from that case we can't intervene in that case and therefore they can't get paid out of our forty percent if you look at the legislative intent and you know if you find that the language is not clear and unambiguous and you want to go to legislative intent well you look back at the congressional record and the debates that they had if you look at that they simply stayed in there that we are going and it goes back to two thousand and three when this actually first came in there was an agreement had between the only trial lawyers association the state medical society and the only hospital soci we had a problem back then where you had eight different lean statutes and there was a case where because of those statutes and there was no limitation the plaintiff ended up with nothing so they sought that was wrong so let's fix that the way they fixed it was they came up with agreement with this formula they put in the statute and they said ok we'll give forty percent to the lien holders will give thirty percent of the attorney in the balance opposed to the plaintiff that was the intense for the statute that was the reason they put the statute in it because you had a plaintiff getting nothing the fact that the attorney in the stanton case had so much in expenses had nothing to do with the intent of the legislature they said  eternal gets thirty percent that includes their costs and expenses and it's interesting you know you turn these lean act has been around since one nine hundred ninety that portion of it plus cost expenses has been there for over twenty years but the only time it's come up that i know of is in this case where you know the attorney ran up causing expenses and maybe had to spend that i don't know but he's only entitle to thirty percent under both of the statutes first district agreed with this they said our reading of the statute the plain language of the statute states that lien holders get forty attorney gets thirty and the casa expenses are included in that thirty so if you look at it at the plain language of the statute it's very clear i see i don't see any and ambiguity and i don't see any reason to go outside of the statute itself there's no further questions thank you thank you dollars for i like to use the man when it started ten thousand and so they say it's a very simple case and if you've got multiple liens on the medical providers and get worth a thousand i'm going to get three thousand clients going to get three thousand what is the court has appropriately centered on what do we do in the case where the costs are three thousand dollars and that's exactly what happened in thousand dollars my client is going to get three thousand dollars and i'm going to get absolutely nothing from my time because i i got to recapture those but is this court analyzing the case law in other jurisdictions and saying the common fund did not apply in other jurisdictions you just weren't going to do it here and i understand why and that makes a lot of sense but statute i don't know that i have a lean on the settlement proceeds that the seventy five hundred active in medical providers been paid in this case essentially six thousand dollars but i do have a write i suppose i could set it off and i could say thank you very much for your time and energy client but given the way that the costs break out in your agreement to reimburse me for my costs you get absolutely nothing yeah health care ok the answer he has there's no express hwang wage in the act that provides that and i make an argument in the array that the literal construct and couldn't be necessarily apply in this case because that's what happened in those in the first desperate cases they took the definition of costs in the atrocity lean and grafted it does say attorneys leans but it doesn't say in the health care act it doesn't specifically say yes but they take the definition of cost in the attorney when you act and say well they have the embrace that definition and so therefore it has attorney that was supposed to benefit the attorney that was the reason why it was in there the attorney not only gets paid for his time and energy or her time and energy but also gets the deposition costs of filing fees other costs of the case but now what's with your example where the attorney gets nothing on the ten thousand dollars but the attorney has already the plaintiff's attorney right in most if not every aspect says if if we don't recover you pay nothing right that includes eating the costs in those cases three so if you take in a client and it doesn't settle and you go to verdict and the verdict is for the defendant you eat those costs  do you know you eat you don't get paid for your time you don't get paid for your costs right so you come up with this small settlement relatively small settlement of ten thousand dollars the the hospital never cut that kind of deal with the plaintiff in the case so although i empathize i mean if someone is going to be caught out in that small settlement situation isn't and but here is the point if you look at the settlement the west like i said i just went back sixty settlements the simple fact of the matter is and i and and i think we have to be realistic about this and mcveigh's not going to be rewarded because he's going to get no money at all i'm not going to be rewarded because i'm not bringing the suit on the healthcare provider they're not going to be rewarded because there's going to be no fun which they're going to collect any money and mr daly just admitted that they don't bring those suits and they write ninety percent of them off as a business yet so the only person to get t reference in the health care act to the attorneys lean and look at the attorneys link and we believe that it's clear that the lien and clues return these fees and costs how do we get to these policy issues that you're talking about i'm glad that you were the one that asked that question because like yesterday i read and read what i thought was a very fine opinion written by you of course and there wilson i'm reasonable results we just can't go with the liberal construction of the statute and this case stanton is a beautiful example of that we here have a legislative the plaintiff or the claims attorney or combination of their up have nothing to lose but to try to case is there are there is the statute absurd in every circumstance it is not your honor and i and i give you that one case where the settlement was i think several million dollars and you know when you get and less that it's difficult to see in most of those kinds of large settlement cases where the costs are going to influence the decision to s but in this case in the state of wilson the suggestion was in the actual wanga each of the case is that some unscrupulous williams could have used the said on its face everything has to stop neither judge has to take a look at that and decide whether the substitution of judge has any merit in this court said it the  legislature could not have meant that given one would again that much power and basically we used to apply the statute literally and i don't think that the stanton case is just an outli where they where they actually went to verdict and plaintiff got some money they're kind of in me stanton the v a range where the costs are going to be a significant factor in how that money is divvied up what about the wolf case what can i say i mean obviously with the wolf case he cited it rejected a reasoning of stanley it was where stan rejected stanton said look we felt we feel that  case when we started this at the very beginning i thought i went into the courthouse and i said well we got stand here and you know i'm going to win this one anyway and and mr da with this court set in when was the common fund doctrine doesn't apply and it didn't if you didn't really carse the statute in fact you didn't even and when we come out with a analysis of how much follow when playing by looking at the statute in trying to come up with some kind of result that would lead to these unreasonable absurd results the simple fact of the matter is if i go back to my hypothetical ten thousand four thousand medical providers three thousand to clients three thousand to me but we got three thousand in costs down well let's just assume i split it with is practically eat can't have a client leave your office with nothing and you know you're absolutely right you're not going to do that but some of nabi almost going to be satisfied with fifteen hundred dollars she's actually a personal friend of mine and so if at all and now i don't know wolf is not on review here but you could certainly could in your opinion suggest that wolf and others like it be reviewed with your  thousand range that mr de lay's used to dealing with i think it's more that seventy five hundred fifteen thousand the ten thousand that i'm used to dealing and if you just load all those cos to either the client or if you the attorney where have them split it in one way you're not getting the legislative history says forty percent health care providers thirty percent attorney thirty percent why you're not getting them you won't get it and you won't even come close to it there are any other questions thank you i hope you my argument fortunately most of them are in the ten fifteen twenty twenty five thousand dollar range otherwise we wouldn't be in court dealing with titian to adjudicate the lane couple of days i think the point brought up that the attorney is taking the risk when they bring the case if you want to look at have served results what happens if the judgment mcveigh had been a thousand dollars and we go thirty percent for the attorney well then he's still go out a ton of money so what is the difference between that and a ten and seventy five hundred dollars settlement you still got his suppose of serve results but that was what the case was worth or what the jury decided or what the settlement was or what the maximum amount of insurance and one of the biggest problems we have with these liens is that the insurance most of the time is the minimum amount and you can't even go to the r and spend a night the hospital without spending ten thousand dollars unfortunately that's the case you know you want m r i it's five thousand i wish it were less if it were less we wouldn't be here dealing with these l so yeah maybe the two work fees or is being rewarded but that's part of dealing with the legal system maybe they're you know the liability wasn't there maybe there wasn't a live billet in there to settling the case to get rid of it i'm sure that happens many times so what the mcveigh wants you to do in this case is rewrite the statute and that is the forum of the legislature not the form of the courts in order to get to the results that he wants in this case she would have to rewrite it says state that the plaintiff receives thirty percent the attorney receives thirty percent plus his costs and then the health care via gets whatever's left only in their case instead case that's not even sure either because the attorney's going to get his money plus his costs we're going to get forty percent after that and then the plaintiffs are going to get the rest so many times  to receive more than thirty percent that's not what the statute says we have to go with what the legislature put into plain language of the act and that is that lien holders get forty percent of the verdict settlement award judgment or compromise your tourney gets thirty percent and the plaintiff it's the balance i don't see any other way of interpret ing that without rewriting it which is in my opinion what the fifth district did in this case in answer to your earlier question in order to go with the standard formula you absolutely have to overrule wolf they're the same case the same decisions were made in him they just came out