Hat Tip to Letters In Bottles where Steve and Brad point out the partisan appearance of the UW Madison Law School Professors that Governor Doyle used to justify his veto of Medical Malpractice reform. The Legislature is attempting to re-establish a maximum limit for non-economic damages subsequent to the Wisconsin Supreme Court declaring the prior legislation unconstitutional in July.
Non-economic damages: Damages for pain, suffering, loss of companionship, consortium (love of spouse). These are as opposed to economic losses, such as loss of wages, medical bills, and damage to property. Occasionally, laws limit the amount of "non-economic" damages which can be recovered for torts.The absurdity of the logic in the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision to invalidate the existing cap, made in the Ferdon decision this last July, is eloquently summarized by the Governor’s Professors.
UW Law School Letter to Doyle: In Ferdon, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a statutory cap of $350,000 for non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, on the grounds that the cap violated the state equal protection clause. … By setting a damages cap … the legislation effectively created a distinction between two classes of medical malpractice claimants: those whose non-economic losses are less than or equal to the cap, and those with more serious injuries whose non-economic losses exceed the cap. The statute fully compensates the former group but undercompensates the latter.Allow me to rephrase the Democratic reasoning. Emotions are not marketable quantities and therefore, no price or monetary value can be assigned to them. This is why they are non-economic factors. However, some people have emotional losses that should be worth more money than others, so a limit on monetary compensation is unfair to victims whose emotions should be worth more money than the cap. Finally, unfair should mean unconstitutional no matter what the legislature says.
Of course, logic has nothing to do with politics and the Republicans won't be able to figure out how to override this latest illogical veto either.
