| Venue: | WI SC |
| Facts: | Ferndon got injured while being born: partly paralized and deformed tight arm. Seems a doctor was negligent. |
| Posture: | Damages awarded to Ferndon at trial. The WI Patients Compensation Fund moves to have those damages reduced, because there's a statutory cap on them. |
| Issue: | Is the statutory limitation violative of WI Const Art I § 1? |
| Holding: | Yes. It's regressive and doesn't have a rational basis. |
| Rule: | Rational basis is required for treating people differently. |
| Reasoning: | Poor people have to have access to justice; they have to file suite on a contingency fee basis, because they can't pay fees. This cap has a disparate effect on patients with families. We all want reasonable malpractice insurance premiums, but there's no showing that a $350K cap on noneconomic damages is dational. In fact, it's arbitrary. And it places the burden on injured plaintiffs, not on insurers. |
| Dicta: | Dissent (Prosser): the court is playing games with the concept of rational basis, and is effectively engineering a new standard of scrutiny in order to achieve its desired objective. |