10/10/05: Juries Can Best Set Payments -Darcy Haber, Wisconsin Citizen Action

Juries Can Best Set Payments

The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: 9A

Monday, October 10, 2005

Darcy Haber Wisconsin Citizen Action

Dear Editor:

As Assembly Speaker John Gard's medical malpractice task force sat down to discuss re-imposing a cap on pain and suffering for the most severely injured, they agreed coming up with a new dollar limit for the cap was difficult. After all, how do you provide a rational basis for a number that is picked out of the air, without knowing the impact on severely injured patients?

So, after the task force spent months trying to figure out what kind of cap would get around constitutional protections, they decided to punt the issue back to Speaker Gard.

Now Gard, who hasn't attended the task force meetings, will presumably pull a number out of a hat. The arbitrary nature of this decision alone will violate the Constitution, forcing us to use our tax dollars to defend the new cap in the courthouse.

In the end, only juries, who have carefully heard all the facts of a specific case, can properly decide what is fair. Perhaps that is why our Constitution requires it.

Tell your legislators that here in Wisconsin justice belongs to people not corporations, to juries not insurance companies, to citizens not politicians.