Cha v. Warnick
| Decision Date | 03 April 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 384S110,384S110 |
| Citation | 476 N.E.2d 109 |
| Parties | Jin CHA, M.D., Indiana Department of Insurance, and Donald H. Miller, As Commissioner of Insurance of the State of Indiana, Appellants (Defendants Below), v. Judith WARNICK and Charles Warnick, Appellees (Plaintiffs Below). |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Joseph Stalmack, Galvin, Stalmack & Kirschner, Hammond, for appellant Jin S. Cha, M.D.
Linley E. Pearson, Atty. Gen. of Indiana, Arthur Thaddeus Perry, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellants Indiana Dept. of Insurance and Donald H. Miller.
Lester F. Murphy, Murphy, McAtee, Murphy & Costanza, East Chicago, for appellees Judith Warnick and Charles Warnick.
Geoffrey Segar, Myra C. Selby, Ice Miller Donadio & Ryan, Indianapolis, for amicus curiae Indiana State Medical Ass'n.
Frederick Wm. LaCava, Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman, Indianapolis, for amicus curiae Indiana Hosp. Ass'n, Inc.
This cause comes directly to this Court pursuant to Ind.R.App.P. 4(A)(8) since the trial court found a state statute unconstitutional. Plaintiffs-Appellees Judith and Charles Warnick initiated this action against Defendants-Appellants Jin Cha, Indiana Department of Insurance and Indiana Commissioner of Insurance Donald H. Miller, on January 20, 1983, by filing a complaint for declaratory judgment in the Lake Circuit Court. Their complaint alleged that the Indiana Medical Malpractice Act, Ind.Code Secs. 16-9.5-1-1--16-9.5-10-5 (Burns 1983), was unconstitutional because "it usurps the judicial function, violates the right to trial by jury, violates the due process clause, violates the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, violates plaintiffs' right to access to the Court and is a taking of property without due process of law." Plaintiffs' action was tried before the Honorable J. Phillip McGraw, Judge of the Jasper Superior Court, on September 30, 1983. On November 2, 1983, Judge McGraw filed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law and entered his judgment holding the Indiana Medical Malpractice Act unconstitutional.
Plaintiffs previously had filed a medical malpractice action against Defendant Cha in the Lake Circuit Court on March 26, 1982. That action, based on the very same facts involved in the present case, eventually resulted in a default judgment against Defendant Cha which was appealed. An opinion was issued by the Third District Court of Appeals on November 16, 1983, which vacated the default judgment and remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings. Cha v. Warnick, (1983) Ind.App., 455 N.E.2d 1165, trans. denied. Transfer to this Court was denied on March 16, 1984. When the Jasper Circuit Court entered judgment in the instant case, the previous action pertaining to the default judgment was still pending before the Court of Appeals. We note that a copy of Cha's "Amended Brief of Defendant Appellant" which he filed in the first case before the Court of Appeals was introduced into evidence before the trial court in this second case.
The trial court heard evidence submitted by Plaintiffs in this second case in the form of statistics suggesting the history of the 2,349 causes filed with the Department of Insurance under the Medical Malpractice Act up until May 13, 1983. This evidence can best be summarized by the following table:
Average number of
Department of Insurance Number % of months pending
case classification filed total (30 day month)
-------------------------- ------ ------ -----------------
Fund payment completed 54* 2.32 27.96
Panel opinion rendered 418 18.33 23.83
Closed 146** 5.96 25.09
Closed--no panel decision 526 20.56 16.83
Progressing to panel 518 22.71 22.24
Pending--no panel selected 599 26.26 14.28
Problems 88 3.86 26.24
------ ------
2349 100.0
* includes 1 "invalid" case.
** includes 67 "invalid" cases
Plaintiffs' counsel also introduced two expert witnesses who were lawyers having experience with medical malpractice cases. Attorney Richard Tebik testified that he stopped handling medical malpractice cases after the Malpractice Act became effective. He thereafter referred malpractice cases to specialists because of the considerable delays created by the Act in the process by which medical malpractice cases are resolved. Attorney Timothy Schafer testified that he had been practicing law for approximately six and one-half years and was, at that time, involved in approximately twelve medical malpractice cases of which five already had been filed. Of those five cases, he had requested a panel review in two. He filed with the Department of Insurance for the first review in March, 1981, and the panel opinion was rendered in May, 1983. A pretrial conference was scheduled for September 21, 1983. The other case was filed in April, 1978, and thereafter became part of the consolidated case decided by this Court in Johnson v. St. Vincent Hospital, Inc., (1980) 273 Ind. 374, 404 N.E.2d 585. A panel opinion eventually was rendered in December, 1981, after the Johnson case was decided, and trial was scheduled for a date in October, 1982. Attorney Schafer also testified that some discovery takes place while malpractice cases are pending before a review panel. He could not render an opinion, however, about the length of time it takes to obtain a trial for medical malpractice cases as compared to the length of time it takes to obtain a trial for substantial cases not involving medical malpractice claims.
Defendant Cha presented the testimony of another expert witness, Attorney David Jensen, who had handled approximately three hundred medical malpractice cases while practicing law since 1971. At the time of the trial, Attorney Jensen had one hundred malpractice defense cases pending in his office. He testified that as cases progress through the formation of a medical review panel, almost invariably there is some discovery initiated by the parties in the form of interrogatories and depositions. Jensen further stated his opinion that most discovery involving the parties actually occurs during the review panel stage while the "expert phase of the trial preparation" takes place after the medical review panel has rendered its opinion. With regard to the time it takes to proceed from initial filing to trial, Jensen testified that cases under the Malpractice Act compare very favorably with similar types of litigation not required to follow the Malpractice Act procedure. Defendant Cha also presented Jeff Anderson who offered to the trial court his comprehensive statistical analysis of how Indiana medical malpractice cases filed between 1976 and 1983 were treated. This witness' testimony was that in all of those malpractice cases resulting in a panel opinion, the panel opinion was rendered in an average of 23.4 months from the date the case was filed. His statistics also showed that at least one case filed in each of the years of 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1980 pended for as long as 83.03 months, 74.99 months, 65.75 months, 53.88 months and 41.85 months respectively.
The trial court acknowledged that this Court declared Indiana's Medical Malpractice Act constitutional in 1980 in Johnson. The trial court took the position, however, that this Court in Johnson found the Act constitutional on its face without regard to its application to particular individuals and without having had an opportunity to consider the Act's actual experience. The trial court accordingly distinguished the application of Johnson on that basis. Moreover, the trial court found that among the decisions which this Court relied upon in finding Indiana's Act constitutional were Carter v. Sparkman, (1976) Fla., 335 So.2d 802, cert. denied, (1977) 429 U.S. 1041, 97 S.Ct. 740, 50 L.Ed.2d 753, and Parker v. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, (1978) 483 Pa. 106, 394 A.2d 932, which have since been overruled based on the actual experience of the Florida and Pennsylvania Acts. The trial court concluded that both the Florida and Pennsylvania Supreme Courts found unacceptable the delays caused by the Florida and Pennsylvania Acts since those delays impinged the constitutional rights of plaintiffs seeking relief under those Acts. Defendants challenged this conclusion, however, and argued that the Florida and Pennsylvania Acts were found unconstitutional based on elements of those statutes which are different from Indiana's Act. We agree. The Florida Act provided that if a decision was not rendered within ten months, the Medical Mediation Panel would lose jurisdiction over the Florida malpractice case and the case would revert to the law courts. In Aldana v. Holub, (1980) Fla., 381 So.2d 231, reh. denied, the State of Florida contended that the ten month jurisdictional period could be extended under the Act while the petitioners, who happened to be physicians, countered by arguing that the period could not be extended and that the Act therefore was unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court found the Florida Act unconstitutional because its operation had proven the Act arbitrary and capricious. The Florida Supreme Court specifically found that the absolute ten month jurisdictional period dictated by the Florida Act deprived the petitioners of due process. Aldana, supra. In the matter of the Pennsylvania Health Care Services Malpractice Act, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found:
"The stated purpose of the Act expressly provides as an objective that one who sustains injury or death as a result of the fault of a health car[e] (sic) provider 'can obtain a prompt determination of his claim and the determination of fair and reasonable compensation.' "
Mattos v. Thompson, (1980) 491 Pa. 385, 392, 421 A.2d 190, 193 [...
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