Trial News

Post-judgment interest should be included in a jury award in a suit alleging that a hospital failed to diagnose a woman’s rare genetic disorder, the Missouri Supreme Court has held. The court also ruled that a state law that provides for periodic payment of future medical damages at a benchmarked interest rate is unconstitutional as applied here because it effectively double discounted the woman's future damages award. (Williams v. Mercy Clinic Springfield Cmtys., 2019 WL 191808 (Mo. Jan. 15, 2019)).

Emilee Williams became a patient of Dr. Elene Pilapil at Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities in December 2012 after developing a hand tremor and also suffering from anxiety and depression. Williams saw Pilapil three more times due to increasing physical symptoms, and in June 2013, she requested an MRI. Pilapil failed to diagnose any neurological disorder and believed that Williams’s physical symptoms were due to anxiety. Williams underwent an MRI in August 2013 that showed brain trauma consistent with Wilson’s disease, a disorder that causes copper to accumulate in the body.

Williams was treated at the Wilson’s Disease Center for Excellence at the University of Michigan. She was paralyzed for two and a half years, unable to walk, talk, or move, but has made significant physical improvements. However, she still suffers from personality changes and outbursts and has not been left unsupervised since August 2013.

Williams filed suit in Missouri state court, claiming that Mercy failed to diagnose and treat her for Wilson’s disease. At trial, the jury awarded Williams more than $29.8 million for past and future medical costs, lost wages, and pain and suffering. The court entered judgment, including post-judgment interest. Mercy moved to set aside the judgment and to allow for the payment of $10 million of future medical damages in installments at the interest rate specified in Missouri’s tort damages statute, Mo. Rev. Stat. §538.220.2 (1.2 percent). Mercy also objected to including post-judgment interest in the award, but only after more than 30 days had elapsed since the entry of judgment. Despite this untimely objection, the court entered an amended judgment striking the post-judgment interest and allowing periodic payment of $10 million of the future medical damages, subject to the statutory interest rate.

On appeal by Williams and Mercy, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the $29.8 million verdict. However, the court found the lower court lacked authority to strike the post-judgment. The 30-day window for amendment of the judgment had elapsed before Mercy filed its post-trial motion, so while Rule 78.08 of Missouri’s Rules of Civil Procedure allows a court to review a judgment for plain error, it did not give the trial court the authority, after the court lost it, to amend the judgment. In addition, under Rule 84.13(c), for an appellate court to reverse a trial court judgment based on plain error, it must find that “manifest injustice or miscarriage of justice has resulted therefrom.” The court found that including post-judgment interest in Williams’s award did not rise to this level.  

The court also held that allowing a portion of the award for future medical damages to be paid in installments subject to the 1.2 percent interest rate violated Williams’s due process rights. Because the future damages award was already discounted to present value using a higher rate, subjecting the award to an “arbitrarily low statutory interest rate” amounted to a double discount of the award, according to the court.

Williams’s attorney, Steven Garner, of Springfield, Mo., said he was very pleased with the outcome and that it would have been “really disturbing had the plaintiff not gotten the full value of her future medical damages award.” Garner explained that “Missouri’s future medical damages statute is intended to prevent an injured person from becoming a ward of the state,” and to achieve this, a plaintiff must receive the full award value.

In response to the court’s finding that the interest rate specified in the future damages statute is unconstitutional as applied to Williams, Garner suggested attorneys may be able to work around constitutionality issues by initially discounting a future damages award in line with the statutory interest rate. However, as this would be inconsistent with any economist’s future damages discount calculations, attorneys would need to provide the court and jury with an explanation of their use the alternate discount rate.