## Facts

- A patient, Jean Mary Wright, filed a medical-malpractice action against a hospital, a treating physician, and additional defendants.
- Illinois enacted section 401a of the Insurance Code in response to concerns about malpractice insurance availability and cost.
- Section 401a included (among other measures) pretrial medical review panels involving nonjudicial members and a $500,000 cap on damages in medical-malpractice actions.
- Two malpractice insurers filed consolidated declaratory-judgment actions seeking a ruling that section 401a was unconstitutional; a state insurance official defended the statute.
- The circuit court held section 401a unconstitutional in its entirety; trial-court orders in Wright’s tort case also rejected application of the damages cap and related constraints.
- The Illinois Supreme Court consolidated the direct appeals to determine the constitutionality and severability of section 401a’s provisions.

## Issues

1. Whether mandatory medical review panels that include nonjudicial members exercise judicial power in violation of the Illinois Constitution’s separation-of-powers requirements.
2. Whether the panel procedure and related mechanisms unconstitutionally burden the right to jury trial and access to a judicial remedy in medical-malpractice actions.
3. Whether the $500,000 damages cap in medical-malpractice actions violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.
4. If specific provisions are unconstitutional, whether the remainder of section 401a can remain effective under severability principles.

## Decision

- The court held unconstitutional the provisions creating medical review panels, concluding they improperly placed essentially adjudicatory functions in bodies composed in part of nonjudicial personnel.
- The court invalidated the $500,000 cap on damages in medical-malpractice actions as an arbitrary restriction that unlawfully discriminated against malpractice victims and unreasonably curtailed recovery.
- The court affirmed the trial court’s rulings as to the invalidity of the panel provisions and the damages cap.
- The court vacated other portions of the trial court’s broad invalidation of section 401a and applied severability analysis to leave unaffected provisions standing where not dependent on the unconstitutional parts.

## Legal Principles

- The legislature may not confer essentially judicial power over private rights on nonjudicial actors in a manner that intrudes on the constitutionally assigned role of the courts.
- Procedural screening devices that materially affect adjudication and diminish the jury’s role in determining liability and damages may violate the constitutional right to jury trial in actions historically tried to a jury.
- A damages cap directed at a single class of tort plaintiffs may violate equal protection and due process when it imposes an arbitrary and unreasonable limitation on full compensation unrelated in a fair way to the asserted public objective.
- Police-power measures addressing economic or social concerns remain subject to constitutional limits; asserted public-welfare goals do not justify arbitrary restrictions on protected rights.
- When a statute contains unconstitutional provisions, courts apply severability principles to determine whether invalid parts can be excised while leaving independent, workable provisions in force.

## Conclusion

The Illinois Supreme Court held that section 401a’s medical review panel scheme and its $500,000 medical-malpractice damages cap were unconstitutional and unenforceable, while rejecting wholesale invalidation of the entire enactment and severing the defective provisions so that unrelated portions could remain operative.


Wright v. Cent. Du Page Hosp. Ass'n, 63 Ill. 2d 313, 347 N.E.2d 736 (Ill. 1976)