Court Opinion

ID: 9696498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:49:34.33035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:28.672146
License: Public Domain

SAUFLEY, C. J.,
with whom CLIFFORD, J., joins, concurring.
[¶ 14] I join in the analysis and result expressed by the majority opinion in this case, and I write separately to address an issue related to, but distinct from, the legal determination upon which the case before us turns.
[¶ 15] Specifically, I write separately to address the problem so clearly illustrated by the case before us. The medical malpractice screening panel provisions of the Maine Health Security Act were originally intended to create a streamlined pretrial process with a goal of limiting or eliminating frivolous litigation, thereby ultimately reducing the costs of medical care in Maine. See L.D. 727, Statement of Fact (108th Legis.1977). It has, unfortunately, become a cumbersome process with unpredictable results that costs both plaintiffs and defendants money and time in a way that was not intended by the Legislature.
[¶ 16] This case illustrates the point eloquently. James Edward Smith suffered what he believed was a bad outcome in the medical treatment of his ankle in 1997. He and his wife filed a claim against his doctor, Catherine Hawthorne, and others in October 1999, and a medical malpractice panel was convened. During the panel proceedings, discovery disputes arose and were resolved, including disputes about depositions and document requests. The medical malpractice panel did not file its decree with the court until November 2000, when it reported findings that the doctor had been negligent but had not caused the Smiths’ injuries. The result reached by the panel could have deterred the Smiths from proceeding to trial. Presented with the panel’s mixed findings, however, the Smiths elected to proceed to trial, as is their right. By the time the parties began the trial process, the panel proceedings had already consumed more than a year and a significant amount of the parties’ resources.
[¶ 17] The first trial, completed in January 2004, resulted in a hung jury, requiring a second trial. Smith v. Hawthorne (Smith I), 2006 ME 19, ¶ 6, 892 A.2d 433, 435.
[¶ 18] During the second trial, undertaken in April 2004, the panel findings that disfavored the Smiths were admitted against them, as anticipated by the Maine Health Security Act. Id.; see 24 M.R.S. § 2857(1)(C) (2006). The jury found in the doctor’s favor. On appeal, the Court concluded that the disincentive to trial written into the Act, which allowed that negative finding on causation to be admitted against the Smiths without the more positive finding regarding negligence, was unconstitutional. Smith I, 2006 ME 19, ¶¶ 22-25, 892 A.2d at 439Mb. The Court therefore vacated the jury’s verdict in favor of the *1056doctor and remanded for another trial. Id. ¶ 25, 892 A.2d at 440.
[¶ 19] In the third trial of this matter, undertaken in May 2006, the doctor elected not to present that negative finding to the jury because of a now-certain knowledge that the Law Court’s holding in Smith I would require the separate positive finding in favor of the Smiths to be presented along with the negative finding. Accordingly, the doctor moved in limine to exclude any evidence of the malpractice panel’s findings. The trial court, attempting to determine how the Court would analyze this dispute, denied the motion in limine and allowed both findings to go to the jury over the doctor’s objection. The jury found in favor of the Smiths.
[¶ 20] The Court has today considered whether the Legislature intended for a defendant doctor to have the option to decline to “subject” a plaintiff to a negative finding when to do so would carry to the jury additional positive findings — a possibility not anticipated by the Legislature before the Court’s pronouncements in Smith I. A majority of the Court concludes that the statute does give a defendant doctor the option to determine whether findings of that sort will be admitted in evidence. I agree with that conclusion. However, a significant minority of the Court disagrees, signaling continuing difficulty in interpreting this statute.
[¶ 21] The extensive litigation in this case, which has now consumed eight years of the parties’ lives, has cost untold dollars, and may result in a fourth jury trial, demonstrates that the Court’s varying interpretations of the statute have undermined predictability in the statute’s application. The parties and trial courts are unable to reasonably anticipate how the Court may interpret the Act as each issue comes before the Court for resolution.2 Even the plain language of the statute no longer guides the parties, having been overwritten by the Court on multiple occasions.3
[¶ 22] Thus, I write separately to suggest that it is time for the Legislature to evaluate the current efficacy of the Maine Health Security Act’s medical malpractice screening panel provisions as they have been interpreted, amended, augmented, and implemented over the years since their enactment. I do not pretend to understand the breadth of policy decisions or facts that ought to go into such an evaluation, and I am mindful of the reality that *1057the cases that reach the Law Court may not be representative of those cases that are resolved without appeal. However, from my perspective on this Court, it does appear that the process no longer reflects the original legislative intent, that it has become costly and cumbersome, and that the people of this state would benefit from a legislative evaluation of the medical malpractice screening panel system created by the Maine Health Security Act.

. This problem is further illuminated by the irony that, today, the dissenters suggest that the majority is reaching out to change the statute, when in Smith I, the very same jurists (the dissenters here) "changed” the statute by requiring the admission of an ordinarily inadmissible finding of the panel. See Smith v. Hawthorne, 2006 ME 19, ¶22, 892 A.2d 433, 439.

. For example, in Irish I, the Court interpreted the statute’s language requiring the admission of the panel findings “without comment” to require six separate statements to the jury. Irish v. Gimbel, 1997 ME 50, ¶ 12, 691 A.2d 664, 671. Our earlier decision in the case before us, which will now be referred to as Smith I, further altered the force of the statute by effectively eliminating the statutory disincentive to trial when the panel findings would have favored the physician. Smith v. Hawthorne, 2006 ME 19, ¶ 22, 892 A.2d 433, 439. Before the Court announced this new interpretation, the accepted practice in medical malpractice panel cases had been consistent with the clearly expressed legislative intent:
Only when a litigant insists on proceeding to trial in the face of a unanimous and unfavorable panel finding does the statute contemplate the admission of the panel finding against a defendant who refuses to settle a meritorious claim or against a plaintiff who refuses to withdraw a claim without merit. The legislature's intent to force final disposition of these claims short of trial is apparent on the face of this statute ....
Sullivan v. Johnson, 628 A.2d 653, 656 (1993) (citation omitted).