Quick takes from today's Illinois Supreme Court opinions
Our panel of leading appellate attorney's review Thursday's Illinois Supreme Court in civil opinions Studt v. Sherman Health Systems, Sheffler v. Commonwealth Edison, Snyder v. Heidelberger, Genius v. County of Cook and criminal opinions People v. Ward, People v. White and People v. Hawkins.
CIVIL
Studt v. Sherman Health Systems
By Karen Kies DeGrand, Donohue Brown Mathewson & Smyth LLC In the context of a medical malpractice lawsuit, the supreme court considered three challenges concerning the professional negligence standard of care instruction, IPI Civil (2006) No. 105.01. The plaintiffs sued a hospital based on claims of institutional negligence and vicarious liability for the alleged failure of emergency room physicians to diagnose appendicitis. Following a trial where only expert testimony was presented to establish the physicians’ standard of care, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs. First, the supreme court held that the instruction erroneously places evidence of bylaws, rules, regulations, policies and procedures on the same footing with expert testimony. The court emphasized that professional negligence actions usually require expert testimony to prove negligence; an institutional negligence case may not. This distinction, however, is lost in No. 105.01. In professional negligence cases, the instruction should limit a jury’s consideration of evidence on the standard of care to expert testimony. By suggesting that the jury consider other evidentiary sources, the 2006 IPI departs in a “significant and unwarranted” manner from the law governing professional negligence cases. Second, the court found the instruction incomplete in its definition of professional negligence. It lacks any reference to the professional’s knowledge, skill and care which had appeared in the prior version of No. 105.01. Third, the court disagreed with the hospital’s challenge to the closing reference in No. 105.01 to “you” -- the jury -- deciding how a “reasonably careful” professional would act. This aspect of the instruction passed muster. The court noted the preceding language stating that jurors “must not attempt to determine this question from any personal knowledge” and the absence of language listing personal knowledge as an evidentiary source. Despite the two problems with the instruction, the court found no serious prejudice resulted, so reversal was not required. The parties had introduced evidence of the standard of care for both the professional and institutional negligence theories through expert testimony. In the supreme court’s view, the hospital rules and regulations introduced in evidence had “merely buttressed” the expert testimony. Specially concurring, Justice Karmeier wrote that the court should not have addressed the hospital’s primary argument regarding the type of evidence a jury may consider. He reasoned that the plaintiffs had presented only permissible expert testimony to support the professional negligence claim; accordingly, an instruction referring to other types of evidence could not have prejudiced the hospital.Sheffler v. Commonwealth Edison Co.
By Michael T. Reagan, The Law Offices of Michael T. Reagan In August 2007, severe storms swept through the Chicago area, creating widespread power outages. In Sheffler v. Commonwealth Edison Co., plaintiffs sought to maintain a class action on behalf of all Commonwealth Edison customers that suffered damages as a result of electrical power outages. Among the plaintiffs were a family whose son was on a device to assist breathing and who had registered under the life support registry provided for under the Public Utilities Act. That family had to relocate to a different area in order to obtain electrical service. Plaintiffs characterized their case as a suit for compensatory damages caused by insufficient maintenance practices and the structure of ComEd’s system, leading to not only outages, but also spoiled food, water damages, and damages to electrical equipment. Tariffs enacted under the Act not only set rates, but also address limitations on liability. Those limitations on liability have been held to be an integral part of public utility regulation and the rate setting process. Service is to be provided at a reasonable rate, "and reasonable rates depend in part on a rule limiting liability." The Act also specifies claims which must be brought before the Illinois Commerce Commission, and those which may be brought in circuit court. The pivotal issue in this case was whether plaintiffs’ claims were for damages, which could be maintained in circuit court, or whether those claims should be considered to be claims for reparations. A claim is for reparations when the essence of the claim is that a utility has charged too much for its service, while a claim is for civil damages when the essence of the complaint is that the utility has done something else to wrong the plaintiff. Here, the supreme court, in a thorough opinion by Justice Thomas, affirmed both the circuit and appellate courts’ dismissal of the entirety of the complaints for lack of jurisdiction. The complaints related to the provision of service, and therefore fell under the rubric of reparations, necessitating that the claims be brought before the Commission. The supreme court also addressed Village of Deerfield v. Commonwealth Edison Co., an essentially contemporaneous opinion of the Second District, in which a petition for leave to appeal had not been filed. Village of Deerfield was permitted to file an amicus brief in this case. There, the appellate court had held that the circuit court had original jurisdiction of the claims made in that case, but that the Commission had primary jurisdiction. However, the scope of the specific allegations made by plaintiffs in Village of Deerfield were not available to the supreme court here. Therefore, although the supreme court could not, in this case, address the entirety of the Village of Deerfield decision, that case was reversed to the extent that it stands for the proposition that a challenge to the adequacy of ComEd’s service can never be considered reparations. "Where, as in this case, a plaintiff’s complaint is based upon allegations concerning ComEd’s infrastructure and its provision of electrical services, and seeks relief based upon systemic defects in the provision of electrical services or the repair of those services when a power outage occurs, that complaint seeks reparations and is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commission."Snyder v. Heidelberger
By Alyssa M. Reiter, Williams Montgomery & John Ltd. How to apply the statute of limitations and statute of repose for legal malpractice cases divided the Court in this case. The applicable statute provided, at 735 ILCS 5/13-214.3 (West 1994), in subsection (b), that actions must be filed within two years from the date of knowledge of “the injury….” Subsection (c) provided that (except as in subsection (d)), an action must be filed within six years of the date on which the act occurred. Subsection (d) provided an exception allowing suit within two years of the death of the person for whom the services were rendered if “the injury” did not occur until that person’s death. Here, the plaintiff’s husband hired the defendant/attorney to prepare a quitclaim deed conveying real estate to plaintiff and her husband as joint tenants with right of survivorship. Unbeknownst to plaintiff, a land trust held legal title to the property. Upon the husband’s death, the sole beneficial interest in the land trust went to the husband’s son/plaintiff’s stepson. The stepson subsequently had plaintiff legally removed from the property. This malpractice suit followed. The Supreme Court held that “the injury” took place at the time the quitclaim deed was prepared. It reasoned that plaintiff was then deprived of her right of survivorship, which was a “present interest” that should have been created by conveyance of the property into joint tenancy. Therefore, the Court would not apply subsection (d); the two-year limitation in subsection (b) applied; but, because plaintiff did not file her action until more than 10 years after the negligent act, the six-year statute of repose in subsection (c) barred her malpractice claim. The dissent criticized that there was only a possible pecuniary injury at the time the quitclaim deed was prepared. The dissent opined that “the injury” contemplated by the statute did not take place until the husband’s death and, thus, subsection (d) applied. The dissent strongly criticized that this ruling undermined prior case law and improperly protected attorneys from their own negligence.Genius v. County of Cook
By Michael T. Reagan, The Law Offices of Michael T. Reagan Genius v. County of Cook, like last month’s decision in General Motors Corp. v. Pappas, deals with problems which originate during the transition from one statutory framework to another. Here, the Cook County Human Resources Ordinance, effective April 5, 2000, changed the procedures for disciplining county employees. The Cook County Civil Service Commission and its rules were abolished, and the Cook County Employee Appeals Board was created to hear disciplinary actions brought against county employees. Under the old rules, a department head had no authority to discharge a civil service employee; only the Civil Service Commission could do so. Under the new statutory scheme, a department head is authorized to discharge an employee, although a provision is made for review and also for an appeal to the Employee Appeals Board. Plaintiff, a police officer with the Forest Preserve District, appealed his discharge. A full narration of the procedures involved is beyond the scope of this format. Suffice it to say that the proceedings constituted an amalgam of both the old and new procedures. In plaintiff’s appeal to the appellate court, he raised three substantive arguments. However, the appellate court did not reach those issues because of its conclusion that the Employee Appeals Board lacked jurisdiction to render its decision because it had not complied with the procedures in the new human resource rules. Here, the supreme court reversed the appellate court and remanded the matter to the appellate court to address the substantive issues. The supreme court first noted that the term "jurisdiction" is not strictly applicable in these circumstances to an administrative body, but is properly used to designate the authority of an administrative body to act. The supreme court characterized the appellate court’s decision as being that the board lacked jurisdiction to discharge plaintiff because the board had acted contrary to its enabling authority. The supreme court took full notice of the complexity of the problem. "Whether a challenged administrative action is merely erroneous rather than statutorily unauthorized and void for want of jurisdiction can be difficult to discern." The court, however, did not take up the delineation of that borderline, in reliance upon a section of the Cook County Municipal Code which the court regarded as providing that the failure of a party to comply with the rules did not deprive the Board of jurisdiction to decide the merits.CRIMINAL
People v. Hawkins
By Kerry J. Bryson, Office of the State Appellate Defender 730 ILCS 5/3-7-6 authorizes IDOC to recover costs of incarceration from a committed person. 730 ILCS 5/3-12-5 limits the portion of prison work compensation which may be used by IDOC to offset the cost of incarceration. At issue in Hawkins was whether IDOC could properly obtain a judgment for the entire cost of Hawkins’s incarceration and then attach Hawkins bank account, consisting entirely of prison wages, to partially satisfy that judgment. In a decision heavy on statutory construction principles, the Court agreed that prison wages constituted “assets.” The Court went on to find, however, that Section 3-7-6(e)(3) precluded use of those particular assets to satisfy a judgment for the costs of incarceration because prison wages are not assets “which ought to be subjected to the claim of the Department under this Section” concluding that to hold otherwise would render meaningless the limitation of Section 3-12-5. Once prison wages have been properly subjected to the offset provision of Section 3-12-5, they are exempt from collection under Section 3-7-6. So, IDOC may not bring an action to recover the costs of incarceration where IDOC knows or believes that an individual’s assets consist solely of prison wages.People v. Ward
By Kerry J. Bryson, Office of the State Appellate Defender Ward was charged with criminal sexual assault based on an allegation of forced sexual intercourse against M.M. Ward claimed that the sex was consensual. Prior to trial, the court granted the State’s motion seeking to introduce evidence of a separate allegation of forced sexual intercourse by Ward against another woman, L.S. Ward had already been tried in that case, had claimed that the sex with L.S. was consensual, and had been acquitted. The court found the L.S. evidence admissible under 725 ILCS 5/115-7.3, allowing propensity evidence in certain sexual assault cases. Additionally, at the State’s request, the court barred the defense from introducing evidence of the acquittal. In a four-to-three decision, the Supreme Court concluded that the defense should have been allowed to present evidence of the acquittal, noting that the plain language of Section 115-7.3 permits evidence of defendant’s commission of another offense as well as “evidence to rebut that proof.” The majority determined that the acquittal evidence was probative and that admitting the other offense evidence while excluding the acquittal evidence had the potential for unfair prejudice to defendant. The majority repeatedly referred to the need to provide “context” for L.S.’s testimony. The dissent, led by Justice Garman, was extremely critical of the majority in several respects, including the failure to address the parties' arguments on the issue of whether evidence of the other allegation of sexual assault should have been excluded under principles of collateral estoppel or statutory construction, the misconstruction of arguments presented by the State, the application of a balancing test to rebuttal evidence as opposed to use of the general rules for the admissibility of evidence, and the potential for “unintended consequences.” This decision is significant for criminal defense practitioners in that it appears to give broad authority for the introduction of acquittal evidence to place other crimes evidence in “context.” There is the potential for this holding to be applied in other areas beyond the sexual-assault-propensity-evidence statute. For example, there is a similar provision allowing for propensity evidence in certain domestic violence cases where acquittal evidence might now be admissible. It might even be argued that acquittal evidence is now admissible in any other-crimes evidence situation.People v. White
By Kerry J. Bryson, Office of the State Appellate Defender White entered a negotiated plea to first degree murder in exchange for a 28-year sentence. White later sought to withdraw his plea, arguing that his sentence was void because the factual basis at the plea made clear that there was a mandatory firearm enhancement which put the proper sentencing range at 35-to-75 years, a range of which he had not been advised at the time of his plea. The appellate court agreed that White should have been allowed to withdraw his plea, concluding that the failure to impose the firearm enhancement rendered the sentence void. The Supreme Court rejected the State’s argument that because the State has the discretion to decide which offenses to charge, the court could impose the lower sentence as part of a fully negotiated agreement. The Court concluded that the legislature’s enactment of the mandatory firearms enhancements took away any prosecutorial discretion to fashion a sentence that did not include the enhancement. Further, while the State may present a factual basis which would “fail to acknowledge that a firearm was used” and thereby avoid the enhancement, the version of facts presented here established the use of a firearm and triggered the mandatory enhancement. Because the parties could not agree to, and the court could not impose, a sentence without the mandatory enhancement where the facts clearly established that a firearm was used, the 28-year sentence was void and the defendant would be permitted to withdraw his plea on that basis. In a special concurrence, Justice Theis noting the importance of plea bargaining to the criminal justice system, suggested that to negotiate around a mandatory enhancement, the State should amend the charge and present a factual basis which refers to a “dangerous weapon” rather than a firearm. As a practical matter, then, while the facts of an offense may require a mandatory firearm enhancement, the parties may still negotiate a disposition which does not include that enhancement. To do so, however, the charge will either have to be reduced to one not subject to enhancement or the charge and factual basis will have to be presented carefully, in such a way as to avoid any reference to use of a firearm.Filed under: