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Estate of Betty Jean Shinholster v. Annapolis Hospital7/30/2004
t which "the trial court makes its post-verdict determination concerning whether the cap requires adjustment of the verdict." Post at 15. While the trial court noted that the Legislature used the present tense words "is . . . hemiplegic," it also observed that the Legislature did not specify at which time plaintiff must have sustained that condition for the higher cap to apply. The trial court disagreed with defendants' construction of the statute and ruled:
he only sensible way to interpret the statute is to hold that the Legislature intended [the higher cap] to apply to people who had been rendered cognitively incapable, quadriplegic, etc., from the accident in question. Betty Shinholster met this condition here: as the jury found, she suffered the requisite injuries from the accident--she endured these injuries in the several months she lay in a coma before she died. We thus hold that the higher, $500,000 cap applies.
The Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court:
We construe the statute in accordance with the trial court's ruling. Indeed, the adoption of defendants' position would lead to absurd and unfair results. For example, a person who endured months of paraplegia caused by medical malpractice but died of an unrelated and independent cause before the court's verdict adjustments would be subject to the lower cap, whereas a similar person who died a day after the court's verdict adjustments would be subject to the higher cap. We view the better approach to be that advocated by plaintiff and adopted by the trial court. Under this approach, the point of reference for determining whether the injured person fits within MCL 600.1483(1)(a), (b), or
(c) is any time after and as a result of the negligent action. Therefore, because Shinholster was rendered incapacitated by defendants' negligence, the higher cap applies. [Shinholster, supra at 354.]
We agree with the results reached by the lower courts and hold that § 1483 permits a plaintiff to recover a maximum of $500,000 in medical malpractice non-economic damages if, as a result of the defendant's negligent conduct, the plaintiff at some point thereafter, and while still living, suffered one of the enumerated conditions of § 1483. We base this interpretation on several textual indicators contained in § 1483 and other pertinent statutes.
First, this interpretation of § 1483 is consistent with the text of the statute itself, which, as noted, provides that the lower tier applies "unless, as the result of the negligence of 1 or more of the defendants, 1 or more of the following exceptions apply . . . ." As long as, at some point after the defendant's alleged negligence occurred and before the decedent's death, it could be said that, "as the result of the negligence of 1 or more of the defendants . . . he plaintiff is hemiplegic" or the plaintiff "has permanently impaired cognitive capacity" or " here has been permanent loss of or damage to a reproductive organ," the higher damages cap tier applies.
Not only is this understanding of § 1483, and specifically its use of the present tense of verbs, consistent with this Court's decision in Michalski v Bar-Levav, 463 Mich 723, 732-733; 625 NW2d 754 (2001)(construing provisions of the Handicappers Civil Rights Act, MCL 37.1101, which are also written in the present tense, yet holding that the "present" tense refers to events existing during the pendency of the plaintiff's employment, when her cause of action arose), but it also avoids the arguably incongruous results about which the trial court and Court of Appeals were concerned.
Second, we believe that the text of the wrongful death act, MCL 600.2922(1), (2), and (
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