Source: https://gregpiche.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/illinois-supreme-court-clobbers-tort-reform-caps-1.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:00:52+00:00

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ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT CLOBBERS (TORT REFORM) CAPS.
Bucking a trend in other states, the Illinois Supreme Court held this week that state liability caps imposed on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases violated the Illinois constitution’s separation of powers clause. It found that the legislatively imposed caps was too bold an intrusion on the powers of the judicial branch. A number of states have already passed similar statutes that have been upheld by the highest courts in those states. See Garhart v. Columbia/Health One, LLC, 95 P 3d 571, 581-82 (Colo. 2004); Judd v. Drezga, 103 P 3rd 135 (UT 2004) and Kirkland v. Blaine County Medical Center, 49 P 3rd 115, 121-22 (ID 2000).
The Illinois court chose to reject the precedents in other states. ‘That “everybody is doing it” is hardly a litmus test for the constitutionality of a statute,” said Chief Judge Thomas Fitzgerald, who wrote the majority opinion in the case, Abigaile Lebron, a minor, v. Gottlieb Medical Center, __Ill.___( (Feb. 4, 2010). Miss Labron, a seven year old young lady suffered substantial brain injury at her birth by Caesarian Section. According to her complaint she is afflicted with severe brain injury, cerebral palsy, cognition impairment and must be fed by a gastronomy tube. Along with the hospital, one of the defendants is her mother’s physician, Dr. Levi D’Acona, M.D. He is represented in the case by former U.S. Solicitor General, Theodore Olsen, the prevailing attorney in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).
The Illinois caps are relatively generous as these things go, limiting non-economic damages to $1 million dollars for hospitals and to $500 thousand dollars for physicians. Miss Labron’s malpractice case was likely chosen as a platform to challenge the Illinois caps because of her significant “big casino” non-economic damages over her lifetime. Her case underscores the differential in potential recovery for poor people with low economic damages, but hight non-economic damages and the challengers allegation of a lack of justification for the discriminatory treatment under the law.
He is perhaps suggesting that the political underpinnings of a decision be delivered by indirection and innuendo, perhaps like in Bush v. Gore, supra.

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