Court Opinion

ID: 9702777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:23:14.945884+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:41.521324
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE NIGRO,
CONCURRING.
In Mamalis v. Atlas Van Lines, Inc., this Court stated that vicarious liability is designed to afford a plaintiff an alternative *89source of recovery in the event that the party that is directly liable for the plaintiffs injury is unavailable or lacks the ability to pay. 522 Pa. 214, 560 A.2d 1380, 1383 (1989) (quoting Mamalis v. Atlas Van Lines, Inc., 364 Pa.Super. 360, 528 A.2d 198 (1987)). As such, I agree with the majority that once a medical malpractice plaintiff chooses to recover from a directly hable physician, that physician’s insurance coverage must be exhausted before tapping into the CAT Fund coverage for a vicariously liable hospital, which has itself engaged in no culpable conduct.
Here, the directly liable physicians have more than enough insurance coverage to satisfy the damages occasioned by their negligence. Each physician’s coverage consists of not only his $200,000 in basic coverage and $1,000,000 in CAT Fund coverage, but also a $3,000,000 layer of self-insured excess coverage, which is funded by none other than the vicariously liable hospital, Appellant The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of the Pennsylvania State University (“HMC”). Presumably, HMC would have no practical objection to exhausting the physicians’ coverage had it not chosen to provide the self-insured excess to its physicians. However, in light of its exposure in this case, it is now arguing that rather than tap the physicians’ excess coverage, recovery should first be had from HMC’s own privately-purchased basic and CAT Fund coverage. In support of this contention, HMC relies on section 1301.705 of the Health Care Services Malpractice Act, 40 P.S. § 1301.705(a). Unlike the parties here, however, I simply do not read section 1301.705(a) as addressing the priority of coverage between directly liable and vicariously liable parties. In my view, section 1301.705 merely makes clear that a provider’s CAT Fund coverage must be exhausted before its excess carrier will be liable for payment of a claim against that provider.
Accordingly, in this case, under the logic of Mamalis, the physicians’ coverage, including the self-insured excess, must be exhausted before the CAT Fund can be made to pay on behalf of HMC. Significantly, HMC made the business decision not only to provide the physicians with excess coverage, *90but also to self-insure the first $3,000,000 layer. This left it with significant exposure. It cannot now minimize that exposure by demanding that the CAT Fund contribute in each case a second $1,000,000 in coverage, for HMC’s vicarious liability, when, by HMC’s own design, the directly liable physicians have more than adequate coverage of their own.