Wills v. Foster: The Illinois Supreme Court on Damages in a Personal Injury Case

In Wills v. Foster (pdf), the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff should have been allowed to recover "the reasonable value of her medical expenses" without limiting this to "the amount actually paid by Medicare and Medicaid."

In so ruling, the Court reversed an appellate court decision reducing the plaintiff's award of medical expenses to what Medicare and Medicaid had actually paid. The Court also explicitly overruled Peterson v. Lou Bachrodt Chevrolet Co., 76 Ill. 2d 353 (1979), which held that the "policies underlying the collateral source rule did not apply when the plaintiff incurred no expense, obligation, or liability in receiving the services for which compensation is later sought."

The Wills case effectively does for cases involving Medicare and Medicaid what the 2005 case of Arthur v. Catour, 216 Ill. 2d 72 (2005) did for cases involving private insurance. In Arthur, the Court held that a plaintiff could submit the entire amount of medical expenses billed by health care providers without being limited by what a private health insurer had actually paid.

These details and others--such as the proper foundation for the introduction of medical bills--can be found in the full Wills opinion.

Comments

[briefer]

Well crum...I am in the process of writing a Motion in Limine on this very issue from the defendant's standpoint. I'm in Oklahoma, so this isn't precedent, but I guess I better make sure I haven't cited Peterson. :)

I wonder how this would go if the defendant and the health care provider whose bill was reduced by Medicare were one and the same. That's my case. There's good arguments that the collateral source rule would not apply then because the Defendant's contract with Medicare is the source of the discount.

Brad
www.legalwikipro.com

[Chicago PI Atty]

How about your experience with liens post-Catour and the recent Illinois lien act -- I defeated a medical group by settling with the HMO -- and any thoughts of your experience with CMS and Medicare and Medicaid liens -- it is so slow --

[tom o]

The really terrible thing about the decision from the defendant's perspective is that they can't even bring up what was actually paid as evidence of what is "reasonable." At least Arthur gave defense attorneys that. We could ask doctors: You billed X but you took 1/2 of X, right? And that was full payment? Now we can't do that.