Court Opinion

ID: 9585717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:03:12.71302+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:52.078806
License: Public Domain

RUSSELL, J.,
dissenting.
In my view, the medical malpractice “cap” imposed by Code § 8.01-581.15 offends the prohibitions against special laws contained in the Virginia Constitution. Article IV, § 14, of the Virginia Constitution provides, in pertinent part:
The General Assembly shall not enact any local, special, or private law in the following cases:
(3) Regulating the practice in, or the jurisdiction of . . . the courts ... or providing or changing the methods of collecting debts or enforcing judgments ....
(12) Regulating labor, trade, mining, or manufacturing ....
*108(18) Granting to any private corporation, association, or individual any special or exclusive right, privilege, or immunity.
Article IV, § 15, provides, in pertinent part: “No private corporation, association, or individual shall be specially exempted from the operation of any general law, nor shall a general law’s operation be suspended for the benefit of any private corporation, association, or individual.”
The general law which constitutes our frame of reference is the entire body of statutory and common law which enables persons injured by tortious conduct to have free access to the courts, and to seek, as a matter of right, recovery of such damages as may be lawfully awarded by a properly constituted jury. A statute which purports to suspend or limit that right, favoring any special individual, class, or group, is, by definition, a special law.
The General Assembly enacted Code § 8.01-581.15 with the salutary legislative purpose of providing a remedy for a perceived social problem, the unavailability of medical malpractice insurance at affordable rates. Yet the unintended consequence of the Act was the creation of a class, described as “health care providers,” clothed with a special privilege in the courts. Alone among the multitudes of corporations, associations, groups, and individuals who are daily subjected to tort actions in the courts, the members of this privileged elite (and those who insure them) are granted a special immunity from all damages exceeding $750,000 (now $1,000,000). All defendants not falling within the favored class lack that shield and must pay the full amount a jury may decide to award.
The other side of this unhappy equation is that Code § 8.01-581.15 creates a corresponding disfavored class — those who are so unfortunate as to suffer injury as a result of the negligence of a “health care provider.” Their right to recover damages is limited by the Act while those injured by the torts of accountants, airlines, architects, barbers, bandits, banks, bus drivers, cooks, dog owners, engineers, financial advisors, horse trainers, golfers, hotel keepers, inebriates, jailors, kidnappers, lawyers, etc., retain an unlimited right of redress in the courts. This is precisely the kind of economic favoritism at which the special-laws prohibitions were aimed. As we recently observed in Benderson Development Co. v. *109Sciortino, 236 Va. 136, 146, 372 S.E.2d 751, 756 (1988): “[T]he special-laws prohibitions contained in the Virginia Constitution are aimed squarely at economic favoritism, and have been so since their inception.”
The majority opinion seeks to justify this legislative venture into the swamps of economic favoritism by invoking the test articulated in Mandell v. Haddon, 202 Va. 979, 991, 121 S.E.2d 516, 525 (1961): a classification will survive a special-laws challenge if it “bear[s] a reasonable and substantial relation to the object sought to be accomplished by the legislation.” The majority opinion then refers to the legislative determination contained in the preamble to the Medical Malpractice Act (Acts 1976, c. 611) to the effect that it had become so difficult for health care providers to obtain insurance at affordable rates that public health, safety, and welfare were adversely affected. The legislative remedy was deemed to “bear a reasonable and substantial relation to the object sought to be accomplished” and to be a general law because it affected all health-care plaintiffs and defendants. In other words, because the legislature declared that a problem existed, and attempted to alleviate it, and because all members of the privileged class are treated alike, the attempt must be constitutional.
In my view, the majority’s conclusion can only be reached by ignoring our own narrow interpretation of the Medical Malpractice Act and by resolutely closing our eyes to all concerns outside the narrow field of health care. In Richman v. National Health Laboratories, 235 Va. 353, 367 S.E.2d 508 (1988), a patient claimed injury due to the negligence of a medical laboratory which had erroneously misread a “pap smear” as “benign negative” when in fact it showed the patient to be suffering from active cervical cancer. The patient filed a “Notice of Claim” pursuant to the Medical Malpractice Act, naming the laboratory, certain physicians, and a professional corporation. The two-year statute of limitations ran before suit was filed, but the plaintiff patient relied on the tolling provisions of the Medical Malpractice Act. On appeal, we agreed with the trial court that the Act was too narrow to include the medical laboratory. We pointed to the statutory language: “ ‘Health care provider’ means a person, corporation . . . licensed by this Commonwealth.” Code § 8.01-581.1. The medical laboratory was licensed by the federal government and inspected by the Commonwealth. Therefore, we held that the laboratory was not a “health care provider” and fell outside the pur*110view of the Act. Id. at 357, 367 S.E.2d at 510-11. So also, one must assume, do all persons and organizations rendering health care which are not “licensed by this Commonwealth.”
If the Medical Malpractice Act leaves uncovered clinical laboratories, their officers and agents, and all other persons engaged in the health care industry who are not “licensed by this Commonwealth,” it is difficult to see any rational relationship between the Act and the avowed legislative purpose of solving the “liability insurance crisis” even within the narrow field of health care. The Act has simply selected a relatively small group of potential defendants and given them special protection. After more than a decade’s experience with the Act, some commentators assert that it has had no appreciable effect on insurance rates. See Report of the Joint Subcommittee Studying the Liability Insurance Crisis and the Need for Tort Reform to the Governor and the General Assembly of Virginia, S. Doc. No. 11 (1987); Comment, The Constitutional Attack on Virginia’s Medical Malpractice Cap: Equal Protection and the Right to Jury Trial, 22 U. Rich. L. Rev. 95, 96-97 n.8 (1987).
But there is no reason to limit our view to the area of health care alone.
Because the power of judicial review is the only protection which exists against legislation which has become unconstitutional as applied, our role is not limited to examining the effect of legislative amendments. When the application of a law is fairly challenged under the Constitution, it is our duty to examine its actual effect upon those subject to it, regardless of the origin of the factors which combine to produce that effect.
Benderson, 236 Va. at 150, 372 S.E.2d at 758-59 (emphasis added). It is therefore incumbent on us to examine the effect of the Act in the wider context of all who must resort to the courts for redress.
Within and without the legal community, a controversy has raged for well over a decade concerning an alleged “liability crisis,” or “insurance crisis,” or “tort crisis.” It is charged by some that liability insurance is scarce and expensive because of a conspiracy by insurers to increase rates to cover faulty investment and underwriting decisions; it is countercharged by others that the *111problem is caused by greedy claimants, irresponsible lawyers, spendthrift juries, and unsound tort law. See, e.g., Smith, Battling a Receding Tort Frontier: Constitutional Attacks on Medical Malpractice Laws, 38 Okla. L. Rev. 195, 198-200 (1985); Comment, Constitutional Challenges to Washington’s Limit on Noneconomic Damages in Cases of Personal Injury and Death, 63 Wash. L. Rev. 653, 655 (1988); Reske, Was there a Liability Crisis? Vol. 75 A.B.A.J. 46 (Jan. 1989); Daniels & Martin, Civil Jury Awards Are Not Out Of Control, Vol. 26, No. 1, A.B.A. Judges J. 10 (winter 1987). I pretend to no special knowledge that would enable me to allocate the blame for the alleged “crisis,” if one indeed exists, but I think it fair to say that no unbiased observer could reasonably contend that the effects of the perceived “crisis” are limited to the field of health care.
News media and legal publications carry frequent reports of public-school athletic and social events cancelled, of swimming pools and playgrounds closed, of patriotic parades and fireworks displays discontinued, of useful products removed from the market, of municipal services curtailed, of businesses financially ruined, all attributed to the problem of tort liability and the expense or impossibility of insuring against it. Whether the problem is illusory or real, and if real, the allocation of responsibility for it, are questions beyond the scope of this case. It suffices to say that none of these wider aspects of the problem is related to health care, and none of them ever has been, or ever will be, ameliorated by the Medical Malpractice Act. In my view, therefore, when the actual effect of the statutory cap upon all those subject to it is fairly examined, it lacks any “reasonable and substantial relation” to the legislative objective.
It may be argued that the legislature, perceiving a problem, need not attempt its resolution at one stroke, but may move against it piecemeal. Thus, it would be constitutionally permissible to legislate with respect to the “liability crisis” within the field of health care at one session, to turn to the plight of municipalities at the next, and to other professions, businesses, and occupations at another. Fair enough. But the General Assembly enacted the Medical Malpractice Act in 1976, and has made no other discernible approach to the problem as it might affect others subject to the “liability crisis” in the courts during the ensuing twelve years. The special protection granted to the narrowly defined class of “health care providers” stands alone: a unique monument to the *112effectiveness of a particularly vocal group which sought and found a privileged position in the courts.
I have no doubt that the General Assembly has full constitutional authority to limit or restrict all damages, or all unliquidated damages, or all noneconomic damages, or all punitive damages, with respect to all plaintiffs and all defendants regardless of their identities. Having determined that a “liability crisis” exists, the legislature may take rational and proper steps to create a remedy, including limitations on “the practice in, and jurisdiction of the courts.” But it must do so evenhandedly. The remedy must not depend upon the identity of the defendant.
The familiar figure holding the scales of justice wears a blindfold. She should not be required to peer around it to ascertain whether the defendant is a “health care provider” before deciding what judgment to pronounce. The Virginia Constitution is particularly emphatic in proscribing laws which protect a select group of defendants or which limit the rights of a select group of plaintiffs to obtain redress in the courts of the Commonwealth.
Because I think Code § 8.01-581.15 to be unconstitutional as a special law, I would not reach the other questions presented upon appeal, but would reverse and reinstate the jury’s verdict.
THOMAS, J., and POFF, Senior Justice, join in dissent.