Posted on 01/05/2003 4:48:09 PM PST by Mark
Liberal bloc's last stand totally wrong
Editorial Sunday, January 5, 2003
Sunday, Jan. 5
IN ONE OF ITS LAST DECISIONS BEFORE MORE CONservative justices take over, the liberal bloc on the Ohio Supreme Court didn't just step over the line. It leaped.
Clinging to its predictable 4-3 liberal-conservative split, the court signed off on a startling $30 million judgment against an insurance company that had given a woman with brain cancer a horrible runaround. But even more shocking was the court's decision to order that upwards of $20 million of the award should go to a cancer clinic as a donation.
There is no law in Ohio that says a court can take part of an award a jury makes to an individual and give it to a charity. The majority just decided on its own that it didn't want to enrich the husband of the woman who had died, but it still wanted to financially punish the offending insurance company.
It is a breathtaking calculation any way you look at it.
The case came to the court after a jury awarded Robert Dardinger $49 million in punitive damages from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. After Mr. Dardinger's wife, Esther, was diagnosed with brain cancer, Anthem was amazingly inept at authorizing treatment. Even people who worked for the insurer were appalled at how the dying woman was treated.
First Mrs. Dardinger was authorized to get chemotherapy that quickly brought relief; then she wasn't; then her appeal pended for weeks.
In the end, just one Anthem doctor who had few of Mrs. Dardinger's medical records took 30 minutes to decide Anthem wouldn't pay for the regimen that had been shrinking her tumors.
Mrs. Dardinger's physician testified that as a result, she died sooner than she would have if she had been allowed to continue the treatment, and her death was more excruciating than it needed to be.
The jury said Mr. Dardinger should get $2.5 million in damages for his actual losses, and $49 million in damages that would serve to punish Anthem. The Supreme Court trimmed $19 million from the latter award, but said Mr. Dardinger should only get $10 million, while most of the remaining two-thirds should be given to a cancer clinic at Ohio State University.
Even after cutting the award by 40 percent, $30 million is still a huge judgment. It represents one-third to one-fourth of Anthem's annual profits.
(The three dissenting justices were silent on whether $49 million was too much, but they did want to send the case back to a lower court to reconsider the award.)
The legal questions before the top court centered on whether the damage award was excessive and whether Anthem, as a parent company, was liable. The latter question was important, because Anthem's profits were the major assets the jury considered in setting damages.
Anthem's actions were shocking from start to finish. Besides its "active inactivity" that the majority said cruelly tortured the couple, the company invented excuses after the trial to limit its liability. Even the dissenting justices weren't impressed with Anthem's arguments on that score.
Justice Paul Pfeifer, who wrote the majority decision and is a former legislator, was outraged at the misery Anthem caused the Dardingers. But he and the three justices who joined him can't just invent authority for themselves to give away someone else's money. They also should have shown a better sense of proportion. The award is just too huge.
This decision is a particularly dramatic reminder of why insurance companies and trial lawyers think nothing of dropping huge sums on behalf of their preferred candidates in elections. Campaign contributions are chump change compared to the cost of winning (or losing) the biggest cases that are before the court.
In this instance, Anthem lost too much, but the court treated Mr. Dardinger wrong, too.
Put the b***ard capitalist company out of business and everyone vill behave.
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