A state appeals panel has endorsed a state law allowing plaintiffs to tack on potentially huge interest payment demands to jury verdicts, calculated from the initial lawsuit filing date, rejecting arguments the law unconstitutionally limits the ability of businesses and others targeted by lawsuits to defend themselves.
At issue is a $6.5 million award a Cook County jury gave to Maya Cotton, who prevailed in a medical negligence lawsuit against Dr. Gregg Coccaro and Associated St. James Radiologists. Cotton said Coccaro, a radiologist at St. James Hospital in Olympia Fields, improperly read a mammogram scan and failed to diagnose breast cancer.
Coccaro and the practice challenged the verdict before the Illinois First District Appellate Court. They argued Cook County Circuit Court Judge Israel Desierto made errors regarding evidence, arguments and jury instructions such that a new trial is warranted. They also said an award of prejudgment interest was improper because a state law passed in 2021, allowing for expanded so-called "prejudgment interest," violates the state constitution.
The trial court initially denied Cotton’s motion for prejudgment interest. But she filed a posttrial motion for an increase in the award and renewed her request for interest. Judge Desierto modified the original judgment order to include prejudgment interest, after which Cotton withdrew her posttrial motion.
Justice Raymond Mitchell wrote the panel’s opinion, issued June 9; Justices Mathias Delort and David Navarro concurred.
In seeking a new trial, the defendants argued Judge Desierto’s errors hampered their attempt to put blame for Cotton’s misdiagnosis on two other doctors, each of whom settled with Cotton and were dismissed.
“The suggestion that the trial court somehow hamstrung defendants from arguing sole proximate cause is unpersuasive,” Mitchell wrote, saying they were allowed to provide evidence and expert witness testimony to bolster their point the other doctors didn’t “follow up on a palpable breast mass.”
In reviewing the matter of prejudgment interest, the panel noted the state has allowed such awards in several types of legal matters for more than a century, so the 2021 law allowing for such interest in personal injury and wrongful death suits was a logical expansion. The justices said the law could be justified on the basis that it encourages settlement, rather than trial.
“The prejudgment interest award complements the compensatory purpose of civil law by ensuring that the plaintiff is compensated not just for the actual injury but also for the delay in being made whole,” Mitchell wrote. “Conversely, it also ensures that a defendant is not unjustly enriched during that delay by retaining funds due to the plaintiff without cost: a defendant bears the full cost of his conduct.”
Other courts, including a Cook County judge, have found the 2021 law to be unconstitutional, but it has remained in effect while other courts mulled challenges. In May 2022 Cook County Judge Marcia Maras declared the law infringes on the rights of defendants to defend themselves before a jury, while also encroaching on the power of the jury to properly award damages under the law. Later rulings negated Judge Maras’ initial opinion.
The panel directly addressed that issue, saying “the method by which the jury calculates damages remains unchanged” under the amendment because the jury itself has no role in awarding interest. As such, Mitchell explained, an award of prejudgment interest is “no different from awarding costs, imposing postjudgment interest, or setting off the verdict, as in this case, to account for funds received from settling defendants.”
The defendants further argued an award of prejudgment interest is duplicative because a jury is allowed to consider “the time value of a plaintiff’s injuries prior to the entry of judgement.” But the panel said juries don’t get such an instruction, nor are juries told of prevailing interest rates. Any reference to duration, the panel said, is a matter of whether the legal harm suffered is permanent or temporary.
“There is simply no mechanism for a jury to award the equivalent of interest as tort damages,” Mitchell wrote. “Our entire jury system is predicated on the notion that juries follow instructions.”
The panel also rejected the defendants’ argument the prejudgment interest amendment — even if found to square with the state constitution — cannot be applied retroactively to a lawsuit predating the amendment because the law is clear it doesn’t “apply to judgments entered prior to its effective date.”
Coccaro and Associated St. James Radiologists are represented by Donohue Brown Mathewson & Smyth, of Chicago.
Cotton is represented by Michael Reagan, of Ottawa; Raymond & Raymond, of Schaumburg; Pfaff, Gill & Ports, of Chicago; and Clifford Law Offices, of Chicago.
The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, which pushed for the prejudgment interest law, filed a support brief through Benjamin & Shapiro, of Chicago.