Court Opinion

ID: 9519610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:20:17.691471+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:33.445095
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE MILLS, dissenting: This is a case of wrongful birth. Yet the real issue is one of statutory constitutionality. And I differ with my colleagues. But who can disagree with the sonorous pronouncements of Holmes, Brandéis and Jackson, J.J.? Or quarrel with the logic of their writings? Certainly not I. It is simply that our facts here exceed the legitimate legislative bounds and the valid doctrines those venerated jurists elucidated. However, despite the soundness of such tenets, there does come a point at which a legislature can reach the end of its authoritative spectrum— where it either goes too far, or not quite far enough. I believe such is the case here. Depending on your viewpoint, the statute of limitations was applied to some, but not all, and there appears to me to be insufficient rationale or reasoning to arbitrarily carve out of the health care field the special class of “physician and hospital” for privileged treatment from others laboring in the vineyards of materia medica. Or in the converse, by not extending the protection to the entire group, it adds up to an improper classification — arbitrary and without sufficient exposition to justify a discrimination. The majority opinion totally ignores Skinner v. Anderson (1967), 38 Ill. 2d 455, 231 N.E.2d 588, which found section 29 of the Limitations Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1965, ch. 83, par. 24(f)) to be special legislation, and— therefore — unconstitutional. The issue posited there is the issue posited here. And on that narrow question of constitutionality, this case is indistinguishable from Skinner. In my judgment the unanimous opinion of our supreme court in Skinner is dispositive of this case: The legislature simply did not go far enough — by being selective (without adequate supporting rationale), it ended up enacting arbitrary, special legislation. On the basis of Skinner, and for the reasoning set forth in Woodward v. Burnham City Hospital (1978), 60 Ill. App. 3d 285, 377 N.E.2d 290, along with my concurring opinion therein, I would reverse this case on the sole ground that section 21.1 of the Limitations Act is unconstitutional.