on their own comparative negligence and awarded roughly five hundred and seventy thousand dollars in damages from last year at least to the use state loss of household services and non economic damages totaling two hundred and fifty number one meet was a wrongful death case to meet in the book incurred somewhat less than two hundred thousand dollars in medical expenses before she died three boston all wrote off more than one hundred  or purposes of the reasonable value of medical expenses as an item of damages and granted partial summary judgment against me as that element because she did not pay any of the bills out  summary judgment on the element of medical expenses as an element of damages meet held that medical bills are admissible specifically the order of the purpose of proving the reasonable value of medical services rendered which is an element of damages that has been recognized in montana many that as the meat court said and i quote ultimately there is a fa what they had to pay to the hospital because they didn't have to pay anything to the hospital so it's not an offsetting windfall is d it really how can you legitimately say the government gets a windfall if it doesn't have to kohl's and the court awards eight hundred thousand medicals then the insurance company's going to get that back from the victim were you saying there's a procedure where that doesn't happen that's correction i he but i'm here to help you so you can get if you give me some help there as to whether it's just theoretical or why it would happen well it's not a matter record your arm but as a practical matter it happens all the time in this particular worse here is really undisputed that what with the plaintiffs are asking for in this case is an award of the one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars of medical expenses that understand how this would normally work in montana i will confess that i didn't find either your brief for the plaintiff's break all that helpful because you guys relied mostly on the case law and just doesn't seem to me that the cases help us very much in this particular instance so let me describe for you how i think this should work and if it's adverse to your position i want you to tell me why i might have montana long first of all if you would concede i gather that under the normal traditional common law doctrine the plaintiff here could recover the full value of the medical services regardless of whether they were forgiven or whether somebody else paid you can see that that it doesn't matter from the defendant's standpoint what happened to the amount the plaintiff was billed whether it was forgiven and in full whether it was paid in part by ensuring the commonwealth rules that the defendant really doesn't get any benefit from any of that the plaintiff just gets to recover ok so what i'm trying to figure out and to what extent is that the background role in montana and if that is in fact the traditional call rule has been adopted there i'm guessing that the only way you could prevail is if you could show trial but then afterward that would be reduced under under the collateral source statutory model if if the amount forgiveness qualifies as a collateral source payment right under the statute and that's where i guess do it seems to me that forgiveness by the hospital gets excluded from the definition of the collateral source and under the montana statute which means that it cannot be deducted from the plaintiff's recovery so we're just back to the traditional common law which means that she she recovers everything so that's what i need your help if you can explain to me why that's wrong i would be prepared to rule against your position and you're saying that  a gratuitous you know a gift or critter gratuitous contribution that gets  made but i think there will be a question about obviously it's called charity care but then the hospital is as a nonprofit hospital obvious half of a hospital and and again i would go back to our earlier argument and i know you disagree with it but i would go back to to the earlier question about  or gratuitous contribution a language you know designed for when your rich uncle or bill gates writes you a check for a one hundred thousand to help you out as opposed to  your way out of that yes i think i as i think that is that if that is that is better stated then then i did and again we'd be happy to raise this issue again this is not an issue that that is raised in any of the briefing here or in the core polow and we'd be happy to get a more more concerted answer to it because that is that isn't something that i that i had thought a lot about prior to this so